Celebrate - All in a year's work!

The festive season is upon us and the year is drawing to a close, and there is only one thing to do. Celebrate!

Highlights this year include:

·         Over 22,450 children and young people are registered with CU, and have collectively gained 944, 273 credits in total so far. We’re nearly at one million hours and we can’t wait to celebrate!

 

·         We have our first Children’s University Gold Doctorate winner, who has reached and exceeded 1000 hours! This special young person will receive their award at the next ceremony at Sheffield Hallam University in May 2014.

 

·         During 2013, Sheffield CU have given out over 2,905 Bronze Awards, 1,694 Silver Awards and have had a fabulous 980 Gold Award winners who have been invited to the Town Hall or Universities to receive their Award. 

 

·         There are currently 50 schools subscribed to Sheffield Children’s University. New additions include: Sheffield Springs Academy, Greenlands Junior and Infant Schools and Lydgate Junior School.

 

·         This International CU Conference took place in early December and provided us with a very special opportunity to share some of the work we have completed around the impact of Children's University here in our city, and the difference it makes to the children and young people who take part. Colleagues from across England, Scotland, Australia, Hong Kong and China were there, and were very impressed with the data collection and analysis that takes place in Sheffield.

 

·         From Autumn 2013, children and young people who are invited to attend one of our award ceremonies will be given the opportunity to have a professional photograph taken with their certificate in a special Sheffield CU graduation style cap and gown. Tempest Photography will be attending each of our award ceremonies from now on, offering all award winners a free photo-shoot and the opportunity to order prints directly with Tempest following the event. Feedback has been incredibly positive so far and we will continue to consult on this development in the new year.

 

·         Preliminary data has arrived for the last academic year, which looks at CU participation and attainment in both KS2 SATs and GCSEs. This data looks very positive and seems to follow the previous trend showing a clear link between participation in CU activities and attainment. Also, utilising FFT estimates, figures indicate that children and young people who take part in CU activities do better than they were previously estimated. Further analysis of the data will take place in the coming months and the report will be ready in the new year. 

·         Sakina Kingswood, our fabulous apprentice is now our fantastic business support officer as she was successful in her application to join the team on a permanent basis. She also recently raised nearly £200 for Sheffield Children’s Hospital by becoming Snow White for the day. She even recruited some dwelves (dwarves/elves) to join her!

 

·         Our lovely Helen (a level 3 trained Forest School leader) has delivered Forest School activities to 120 Y6’s from Lydgate Juniors and 70 Foundation Stage children and their families from Emmaus Primary. She has also delivered a series of woodland play training sessions to childminders from across the city and there are even more sessions booked in for the new year! As well this all of this, Helen has been working our special CU School ‘project-in-a-box’ which this year is all about Forest Schools. Up to 30 CU schools will receive special CU Forest School toolkits, which enables them to deliver a series of out of school activities. These woodland adventurers will then be brought together at a special jamboree day packed full of activities in one of Sheffield’s parks.

 

·         The Acorn Fund has been officially launched! This is a brand new initiative which gives each CU school the opportunity to bid for up to £250 of grant funding to create, grow or sustain a CU out of school activity. The application must come from students in school, as the idea is to encourage and empower children and young people to become fully involved in the development of activities in school, as well as interacting with school staff and their peers to survey need, identify gaps and consider sustainability. The first round of applications will be received early in the New Year, and we will be giving our first grants out soon after!

·         Free CU LIVE! activities have been taking place during the holidays, with some fabulous activities from Imagination Gaming, Museums Sheffield, The University of Sheffield to name but a few! CU LIVE! will be back next year, and will be coming to a venue near you! The team are currently exploring links with shopping centres, supermarkets and other venues in order to expand the programme.

 

·         February Freebie will be back and bigger than ever in 2014! Over 30 FREE CU activities for children and young people who have a Passport to Learning will be happening across the city during the February half term. Look out for leaflets and posters which will be available early in the New Year!

·         Using the Passport to Learning, children and young people have clocked up over 100,000 hours this year, by visiting 88+ Learning Destinations across the city such as museums, libraries, Heeley City Farm, brownies/scouts and local dance, drama, music and martial arts groups.  

 

And we are sure there will be lots more to celebrate in 2014!
Finally, we want to take this opportunity to say a HUGE thank you to you, along with all our colleagues, schools, Learning Destinations and partners for supporting our work and ensuring the children and young people of our wonderful city are celebrated and rewarded for their achievements.

We hope you enjoy the festive season, have a restful break and look forward to seeing you in the new year. 

Merry Christmas!

Katie and the Sheffield CU Team

 

 

High Hopes - The Children's University's 6th Annual Conference

The beginning of the week saw the Sheffield CU team taking a field trip to Cheshire to attend the annual Children's University Conference at the lovely Shrigley Hall.

The conference is a fantastic opportunity to catch up with our fellow CU's both home and abroad now as CU is active as far away as Australia, Singapore and China!  There were some incredibly inspiring speeches from Jay Griffiths, an award-winning British writer and author, Dr Keith Bartley, former Chief Executive of General Teaching Council, Joel Cadbury, founder and Chief Executive of Longshot Ltd, as well as the Chief Executive of Children's University Ger Graus. 

There were also some fabulous workshops delivered by our lovely colleague Emma from Kent CU, and Debbie from the CU Trust who demystified the social media movement as well as Caroline Gilbert from the CU Trust who gave some very practical advice on income generation and fund-raising.

This conference also provided us with a very special opportunity to share some of the work we have completed around the impact of Children's University here in our city, and the difference it makes the the children and young people who take part.

Delivering our workshop on data and measuring the difference

Through our magnificent database, we have completed a number of studies for over 5 years, and each time we see that children and young people who take part in Children's University do better than children who don't take part. And it's not just the children and young people who are expected to do well too, we look at what each student is estimated to get (an estimate based on their previous results and assessments, as well as their school, gender and age etc) and we see that children and young people who take part in CU also do better than they were expected to do, whilst Non CU students often don't do as well as expected.

Children's University also makes a difference to the most vunerable groups, so for those CU children who are living in the most deprived areas of the city and traditionally don't do as well at school, their results are better than those who don't take part in any activities. The same goes for children and young people with special educational needs and those who have english as a second language.

Whilst we are clear that there are lots of interventions at school that can affect children and young people and their attainment, because of the consistent results we produce, we do feel confident in saying that there is a clear link between Children's University and attainment at school. Raising children and young people's self-esteem and confidence through the rewards and encouragement of CU affects how they feel about learning, and that then impacts on their learning in school.

When you think of how many hours of voluntary learning some of our children and young have taken part it, its very hard to believe it doesn't make a difference! School staff, parents/carers and even children and young people themselves will tell you this, all we try to do is provide the hard evidence.

We are very grateful to the CU Trust for being given the opportunity to share this message with others and hope we have been able to give other local CU's some food for thought at the very least.

The theme of the conference was 'High Hopes'. And here in Sheffield, ours certainly are!

If you would like to read our most recent participation and performance analysis which evidences the impact of Sheffield CU, please click here

Celebrating in style - part 2!

Our second awards ceremony of the season took place on Wednesday 20th November with over 200 children, parents and carers and school staff descending on the Town Hall to celebrate in style.

Children from Whiteways Primary School receive their awards

Children from 16 schools attended along with their parents and carers and were presented with their awards by the Lord Mayor, Councillor Vickie Priestley and our Sheffield CU Chancellor Eliot Kennedy. There was also a marketplace where some of our fantastic Learning Destinations displayed information about their activities and involved parents/carers, children and even in the Lord Mayor in some demonstrations!

During the ceremony, there were a number of inspiring speeches by some of the children involved in Children's University from Whiteways Primary school. A group of pupils from Prince Edward Primary School also read out their Remembrance Day poems.



Pupils from Prince Edward read their Remembrance Day poems

HUGE congratulations to our fantastic award winners, their parents/carers and school staff. We are so very very proud of all of you!

All photos from the ceremony are on our Facebook page. Click here to view them now!

Celebrating in style!

Our first awards ceremony of the academic year took place on Wednesday 13th November with over 200 children, parents and carers and school staff descending on the Town Hall to celebrate in style.

Pupils in their caps and gowns have a photo call with the Lord Mayor

Children from 12 schools attended along with their parents and carers and were presented with their awards by the Lord Mayor, Councillor Vickie Priestley There was also a marketplace where some of our fantastic Learning Destinations displayed information about their activities and involved parents/carers, children and even in the Lord Mayor in some demonstrations!

During the ceremony, there were a number of inspiring speeches by some of the children and young people involved in Children's University from Carterknowle Junior School, Dobcroft Junior School and Malin Bridge Primary School. Each student spoke about their out of school activities and what CU meant to them (and succeeded in bringing a tear to our eye!)

Pupils from Malin Bridge talk about their CU activities

Tempest Photography were also on hand to take portrait photos of children and their familes in their caps and gowns, and our CU Souvenirs superstars Sakina and Leah were very busy making sure awards badges were securely fastened to newly purchased CU lanyards!


Siblings from Birley Primary try on our new caps and gowns

HUGE congratulations to our fantastic award winners, their parents/carers and school staff. We are so very very proud of all of you! A special thanks too to our spectacular events team - Chris, Dee Helen, Leah, and Sakina. We couldn't do it without you!

Visit our Facebook page to view all the photos from the event! www.facebook.com/sheffieldcu



CU LIVE! - Day of the Dead Celebrations

 

202 children and 134 adults attended the CU LIVE! Day of the Dead Celebrations in the Winter Gardens last Friday. Many thanks to Weston Park Museum and the Spanish Society from Sheffield Hallam and members of the Mexican community, for helping CU to organise this.

 

Children were able to take part in a wide range of interesting and unusual activities

 

 

Decorating sugar skulls with paint, sequins and glitter

 

Day of the Dead songs

 

 

Day of the Dead dance

 

 

Colouring in

 

Also on Halloween over 200 children and adults tried out craft activities linked to spooky animals.

Many more CU credits were logged.

 

Come and join us for more fun CU LIVE! activites in February half term 2014.



 

CU LIVE! - Imagination Gaming

Thanks to the Imagination Gaming Team, who provided lots of fun and educational modern board and card games for families to try out in the Winter Gardens on Wednesday this week. Over a hundred people aged from 3 to 75 years, came to try their hand at games which develop thinking skills, numeracy, literacy and hand eye co-ordination.

There were some brand new games which Nigel from Imagination Gaming had discovered at a recent International Games Festival in Essen, Germany, which went down really well with all ages!

CU LIVE! in the Winter Gardens

 

Many thanks to the student volunteers from Sheffield University who put on a series of exciting activities as part of CU LIVE! this week. Over 150 children visited on Monday and Tuesday and had lots of fun decorating biscuits with smiley and scary faces

 

                                                    Extracting DNA from strawberries

                                       Learning about teeth and making them out of play dough

                   Trying on an interactive body tunic and learning about our internal organs

 

                         And making paper buildings and placing them on a map of Sheffield and creating the face of a judge on a paper plate.

 

A special thankyou from CU to Amy Jones and Meredyth Hayler from Sheffield University.

Young achievers celebrate their success!



Sheffield CU Passport to Learning children and young people receive their awards 

It was time to celebrate at the University of Sheffield this autumn as we held our 6th secondary awards ceremony at Firth Hall. Over 100 young people from 6 secondary schools, and 50 students who have been collecting credits with their Passport to Learning at Learning Destinations across the city were invited along to receive their Children's University awards.

A fantastic performance by Razzamataz Theatre School

The glittering celebration, hosted by the University's Outreach Team, honoured young people who have dedicated more than 100 hours to out of school learning activities in and around school and also at community and citywide Learning Destinations using their Passport to Learning.

 

One of our award winners tries on our new Sheffield CU caps and gowns!





A student from Forge Valley receives her award

The Chaucer Bezzies!

Firth Park stuents receve their awards

Students from Chaucer School receive their Awards

Jane O'Brien from Languages Sheffield speaks about the HoLA project 

 Sheffield CU also works in partnership with Languages Sheffield to ensure students who give up their time to learn their home language are celebrated and rewarded through the HoLA (Home Language Accreditation) project. Representatives from each of the language schools involved will also attended the ceremony to receive Gold awards on behalf of students for giving up their time to learn their home language.

Representatives from Sheffield Star Mandarin School receive their award

Huge thanks to the University of Sheffield for all their help and support. And a massive congratulations to all our award winners!

CU LIVE! - Chess fun at Fir Vale

 

Twenty five children and many parents joined the successful CU LIVE chess event at Firvale School. Andrew Ledger (International Chess Master) and Alan Potts (Hallam University) led the session. A junior chess champion, Sam Cobbold (Silverdale School), was also present to give advice,  having just returned from playing in the junior England squad in Romania. Andrew and Sam provided an impressive simultaneous chess display by playing twenty games of chess at the same time, with all the children attending.

 

The Chess Master Class covered the following topics:

• Middle game tactical themes e.g. 2 move checkmates
• Checkmating with a queen or a rook - and avoiding stalemate
• Pawn break-throughs

 

Children even took home a booklet of notes to help them improve their game.

 

One parent emailed CU to say:

“I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who were involved in the chess master class at Fir Vale School. I thought it was well organised, fun and the kids learnt new skills. Please pass my thanks on to all involved.  We look forward to the next one!”

 

 

Many thanks to Jeremy Hamm, Sakina Kingswood, Rashida Hassanali, Farshad Ali, Alan Potts, Sam Cobbold, Andrew Ledger, Phil Nichols, Richard Steele, Firvale School and all our volunteers for making this event possible.

 

Planning your October Half Term Fun?

There are some spooky happenings all across Sheffield this October half term - have you planned your holiday fun yet?

 

 

 

The Autumn Children's University Passport to Learning newsletter which includes details of activities across Sheffield happening during the October half term is now available! Click HERE to start planning now!

 

Children and young people who take along a Passport to Learning will be able to earn additional CU credits at these activities. There's also a list and contact details of our validated Learning Destinations.

 During the October 2013, children and young people can also use their Passport to Learning to access new, FREE exciting and interactive learning activities for families called CU LIVE! These are taking place in the Winter Gardens everyday between 10am and 4pm. There is also a special free Chess Master Class happening at Fir Vale School on Saturday 19^th October between 1pm and 4pm. You can find leaflets about these events in any local library, or at school.

Autumn fun in the Botanical Gardens!

We are very excited to welcome our newest Learning Destination -
Sheffield Botanical Gardens!

 

 

From October 2013, you can have lots of fun taking part in two terrific trails and an Autumn Scavenger Hunt AND you collect CU credits using your Passport to Learning as well! 

The trails and hunt will be available from The Little Nature Shop at the Clarkehouse entrance to the Botanical Gardens daily from 10.00am-4.00pm and are suitable for children aged 4-7 and 8-10. And they only cost 20p each!

The Autumn Scavenger hunt involves collecting fallen leaves and fruits and nuts (bag and gloves provided). All the activities take an hour earning you one CU credit so wrap up warmly and wear waterproof shoes as you will need to walk on the grass!

There are also plenty of drawing and colouring opportunities on the trails so don’t forget to bring your pencils!

CU LIVE! is back!

Are you looking for things to do in the October half term holidays?

CU LIVE! is back and better than ever! During the holidays, you can use your Passport to Learning to access even more free CU LIVE! activities. If you don't yet have a Passport to Learning, don't worry! You can buy one at a local library for £2 and use it to collect credits at all our Learning Destinations.

Fun in the Winter Garden with Imagination Gaming

See below for details of the activities happening.

Date	CU LIVE! activity	Place	Time	Who is it for
Monday 28th October	Sheffield University   Meet Professor Fluffy and try science and craft activities	Winter Gardens	10am – 4pm	All ages No need to pre-book
Tuesday 29th October	Sheffield University   Meet Professor Fluffy and try science and craft activities	Winter Gardens	10am – 4pm	All ages No need to pre-book
Wednesday 30th October	Imagination Gaming ‘The power of play – Why Games work’	Winter Gardens	10am – 4pm	All ages No need to pre-book
Thursday 31st October	Museum Discovery boxes   Learn about spooky Halloween animals – related arts and crafts	Winter Gardens	10am – 4pm	All ages No need to pre-book
Friday 1st November	Museum Discovery boxes   World ceremonies – related arts and crafts	Winter Gardens	10am – 4pm	All ages No need to pre-book

 

On Saturday 19^th October, we are also hosting an extra special FREE chess master class at Fir Vale School.  Do you know any aspiring players or of a chess club who would like some extra tuition? Please pass this information along and encourage them to come along for a chance to learn from two of the best players in Sheffield! Details are below, booking is essential, and will operate on a first come first served basis.

CU LIVE! Chess Master Class

Improve your chess-playing skills with interactive tuition from two of Sheffield's best players!

Saturday 19th October, 1 - 4pm
Fir Vale School Dining Hall
Suitable for 8 - 14 year olds. Please book early as places are limited.
This is a FREE event. Refreshments will be made available but lunch is not provided.
Please note: to take part children must already understand the rules of chess.
To book a place email cu@sheffield.gov.uk or phone the CU office on 0114 203 9134.