Doing Retreat Days the Year 5 Way
This week, Zumba danced its way to 韩国AV, with Year 5 throwing in salsa swivels, painting a giant mural, doing an Amazing Race in the park and listening to best-selling author, Nikki Gemmell.
“Hands up if you think you can’t dance,” shouted Ali Cavell from Fit Fantastic, as she prepared to Zumba with a group of Year 5 students this week. A few tentative hands crept up. “Great, you guys are with me,” said Ali. “In Zumba it doesn’t matter what you look like, just bring your sass and have fun!” So, they did.
The ‘get fit and have fun’ ethos, which is the key to the success of Zumba, soon had all the girls beaming with joy as they followed Ali’s easy-to-follow workout routines set to high energy music. Before long they were dancing and singing at the top of their lungs.
So what if they missed a step here or there! It didn’t matter. The steps in Zumba are repeated, so it was easy to join in if they got a bit lost – and nobody cared anyway because Ali made it all so much fun. Soon everyone was energetically performing dance moves, including Mrs Burkett. From salsa and flamenco, to hip-hop and contemporary, they mastered it all. To the casual onlooker, they looked like enthusiastic extras in a pop-music video. The joy. The energy. The smiles. The laughter.
Zumba was all part of Year 5’s two-day retreat. It was an opportunity for the year group to come together, get to know each other better, solidify friendships and forge new ones, work as a team, relax, and have fun. And have fun they did!
There was the Amazing Race in the park, with ninety-six students forming sixteen teams to perform all sorts of challenges and activities. If you’re a fan of Survivor then you’ll know that each tribe, sorry team, needs a combination of brains and brawn, collaboration and communication, endurance and resilience. And so, it was with the Amazing Race as the teams raced across the park solving puzzles, making slingshots, building bamboo towers, using their listening and drawing skills, answering trivia questions and playing dodge ball.
Back at Hooke House, the students were divided up into different groups to paint a giant and colourful mural in the garden with a street artist from HAPPY SCHOOL Grounds. It brought the girls together as they worked alongside each other to transform the back fence into a riot of pinks, purples and oranges.
Then there was the giant Sphero assault course in the garden. Working in small teams, the girls had fantastic fun trying to code and steer their Spheros, using their iPads to navigate a course that looped its way around the play equipment. It was all so much harder than it looked, requiring mathematical thinking, creative problem solving and lots of communication and collaboration.
Nikki Gemmell, the best-selling author of thirteen novels and four works of non-fiction, also dropped in to talk to the students in the Independent Theatre. Many of the students were already familiar with her work from her Kensington Reptilarium books series for 9 to 13-year-olds, and her Coco Banjo series for slightly younger readers. Nikki spoke to them about the importance of resilience, dealing with challenges, holding their head up high, giving things a go, standing up for themselves, and being able to cope with whatever life throws at them.
Talking, painting, dancing, racing, bonding, reflecting, unwinding, thinking, relaxing. What a fantastic two days it has been for Year 5. Well done teachers!