ACE (Academic Curriculum Enrichment) day
On Tuesday 31 January we held the first school-wide Academic Curriculum Enrichment (ACE) activity day. Opportunities to visit different exhibitions, places of interest, and to learn in different environments have always featured as part of our enrichment programme, but the drawback on occasion is that these opportunities can cause disruption to the timetable with different students and staff members missing a variety of timetabled lessons. To combat this whilst continuing to offer breadth and enrichment, we have instigated these ACE days so that whole year groups have the day off-timetable without causing disruption! By all accounts the first ACE day was hugely successful, and you can read about each year group’s day as follows. The Upper Sixth utilised the day as self-study ahead of their mock examinations.
Year 7
The Year 7 girls visited St Albans Cathedral for the day, focusing on enhancing their recent learning in History. They took part in a clay tile workshop in which they modelled their own designs based on the mediaeval artwork they had seen in the cathedral. The girls also spent time finding out about mediaeval pilgrimages; as part of this, they wore costumes and played the part of pilgrims from 1360. The group has been studying the mediaeval church in lessons, so this was a golden opportunity for them to visit what is, to this day, an important religious centre. They also used their time in St Albans to write their own ‘pilgrim letters’, describing their experiences as if they were a mediaeval pilgrim.
Year 8
Year 8 students visited Cadbury World in Bournville, Birmingham, as part of their Geography studies. The girls heard a really interesting lecture on primary, secondary and tertiary industries focusing on examples of how of these sectors play a role in chocolate 
production and retail. The exhibition takes around an hour and a half to explore and gave the girls a chance to find out about the history of the Cadbury family, their ethos, and how this is being carried on by Mondelez International (which now owns Cadbury) through its Cocoa Life programme. The girls enjoyed sampling some melted chocolate pots and found out why Bournville was chosen as the location for the first Cadbury factory. The trip helped to bring together the theoretical concepts that the students have been studying in the Autumn and Spring Terms in Geography lessons, showing how these are applied to the real world.
Year 9
Year 9 students spent the day in Stratford-Upon-Avon visiting the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and learning more about Romeo and Juliet, the play they will be studying later this term. Despite the rain the girls 
were in good spirits and enjoyed the chance to walk along the river towards the Church of the Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare is buried. After a visit to the RSC shop, where lots of Shakespeare themed goodies were bought, including some of his plays rewritten in text message format, the girls headed to the RSC Education Centre, where current RSC actors and directors gave an extensive workshop on the play. The workshop was energetic and helped the girls to engage with key lines from the play, Shakespeare's use of rhythm, and the presentation of character. There were some excellent performances and by the end of the day we had more than a few aspiring Juliets amongst the group!
Year 10
Year 10 students spent the day thinking about careers at a workshop run by Bright Futures. First the girls split into groups to undertake a ‘rollercoaster design competition’ – the teams were tasked to design the longest ride for a marble. The exercise taught the girls effective team working, working to deadlines, and the importance of following instructions – e.g. they were told that it was essential to keep testing their rollercoaster every time they added a new section, and those that did, were ultimately the more successful!
The girls then undertook a recruitment exercise where they had to shortlist two candidates to interview out of four applications for a Catering Assistant, explaining why they had made their selection; this gave the girls an insight into the type of errors people make in job applications. The girls learned that online recruitment agencies often only spend six seconds scanning applications before deciding whether to continue to read or discard them.
The last activity of the day was ‘The Art of Negotiation’ exercise, in which the girls had to approach members of staff, shake their hands, make eye contact, introduce themselves with small talk, and then try to negotiate a deal for the items they wanted to buy. Some were more successful than others and it was another valuable learning experience. It was an excellent day: the interactive format helped to keep the girls enthused and focused on what can seem to be a topic that is not yet of particular relevance to them!
Year 11
Year 11 students spent the ACE day engaged in a mixture of silly games and reflective film clips, as well as periods of quiet personal reflection. Together the girls considered trying to find balance in life and identify those things that are really important - looking at the life stories of some well-known and less well known people, and considering what was predictable and what wasn't, where inspiration and vocation come from, and where we might find them. The morning ended with a discussion in the format of Question Time (without David Dimbleby and with the RE department staff members on the panel), and a viewing of the reflective and affecting animated story The Man Who Planted Trees. The afternoon focused largely on the idea that ordinary good deeds can multiply by both the ripples of their unforeseen consequences and the way they might inspire others. We considered, as an extraordinary example, the life of Sir Nicholas Winton who, at the age of 29, organised the rescue of 669 Czech children on the Kindertransport in 1939 at the start of World War II. The families of the known survivors now number around 6000 and, inspired by his act, many of them have engaged in their own acts of service in the world, as have their children, grandchildren and further thousands of young people in a number of countries running projects inspired by the story of Nicky's Family.
Lower Sixth
The Lower Sixth students started with a session on study skills, investigating and learning about what learning methods and personal study techniques suit them. They used a framework which suggested a scheme of eight types of intelligence and four types of learning.
Thereafter, the students split into three groups and visited some local attractions, such as the Fitzwilliam Museum, where the girls were lucky enough to hear a talk on Art in Shakespeare’s time; the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, to encourage girls to think beyond what they are learning in their current studies; the Sedgwick Museum, where the girls looked at some fossils and minerals; and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where the girls visited the college grounds and the Wren Library, where they were privileged to view the first edition of Newton’s ‘Principia’. The day culminated at St John’s College, with a lunch time concert in the beautiful Old Divinity School. The day provided a chance for students to engage with the rich cultural and academic life of Cambridge