Week without Wall with Walls!
Week Without Walls with Walls!
At Dulwich, we believe that international education extends well beyond the boundaries of the classroom. On the 19th and 20th of November, learning left the ‘traditional’ classroom even though we were unable to physically leave the campus due to COVID restrictions. In the mornings, students were able to take a ‘deep dive’ into an area of interest, developing new skills and understandings. In the afternoons, tutor groups and year group activities helped to build strong personal characteristics such as collaboration and community. Here is just a small sample of the activities that took place.
Year 10 in the Gym
The focus of the activities in the Gym were all about using teamwork to solve problems. The teaching staff in the gym created a series of puzzles to challenge the year 10 students and encourage them to think “out of the box" in order to reach a solution together. What they tried to do in the Gym was mirror the sort of activities that the students could have encountered outside of the school during a regular Week without Walls!
Spanish Cooking and Dancing
In the modern languages department, Spanish Teacher Gines Bernal ran two separate Week Without Walls With Walls Workshops, both with a Spanish theme. In the gym, a professional Spanish Dancer was brought in to teach our students Flamenco style dancing. In the Dining Hall, Gines himself showed the students how to cook a variety of spicy Spanish dishes. Teamwork was needed in both tasks and the students worked together to cook some delicious food and learn how to dance. Both of which are useful, transferable skills that will help to prepare our students for life at university and beyond.
Programming Computer Games
In Lee McKelvey’s computer games programming class, the students experienced a more traditional style of lesson, but in far more depth than is usually possible. They learnt how to programme computer games in X-Code (an integrated development platform for Apple Devices). As well as teaching Maths at Dulwich International High School Suzhou, Lee is also an accomplished software developer and has had several of his own games published in the Apple Store. All the students in the class were able to benefit from his experience and learn transferable skills. They all came away with a greatly increased knowledge of coding!
Planes and Rockets in Physics
In the Physics Department, students learned about aerodynamics and the physics of flight as they first started building planes and competed to see whose plane would fly the furthest! After this, they worked in teams to build complex, multistage bottle rockets, with different groups of students designing and building different stages of the rockets. Teamwork and analytical thinking skills were required to complete the tasks and launch the rockets on time!
Do you Like Frogs?
In the Biology department, students learned everything there was to learn about the biology of frogs when they dissected them! The focus was also on teamwork with the students split into small groups. They worked together to carefully dissect the frogs and learned about their anatomy in detail before preparing posters to showcase their knowledge.
