Celebrate!

It was time to roll out the red carpet again as our 31st Gold Awards Ceremony took place on Wednesday 19th November with nearly 200 children, parents and carers and school staff invited to the Town Hall to celebrate in style.

Children try on University style caps and gowns

Families can purchase a number of CU souvenirs at the ceremony. All funds raised go straight back into providing activities

Very proud parent/carers celebrate their award winners

Children from 13 schools attended along with their parents and carers and were presented with their awards by Jayne Ludlam, Executive Director of Children and Young People and Families, and the Assistant Director of Lifelong Learning, Skills and Communities, Sam Martin. There was also a marketplace where some of our fantastic Learning Destinations displayed information about their activities and involved parents/carers, children in their demonstrations.

During the ceremony, there were some fantastic performances from Razzamataz Theatre School Sheffield. There was also a brilliant performance from Sheffield Sea Cadets band who closed the ceremony with a bang!

Children from Hucklow Primary School receive their awards

Children from Malin Bridge Primary School receive their awards

Sheffield Sea Cadets round off the ceremony will a special performance

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

Visit our Facebook page to view all the photos from the event! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.809763685747275.1073741845.239129216144061&type=1&l=76e495727d

The big 3-0 - Our 30th Gold Award ceremony!

Our 30th Gold Awards Ceremony took place on Tuesday 11th November with nearly 200 children, parents and carers and school staff invited to the Town Hall to celebrate in style.

Children from Abbey Lane Primary receive their awards from the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Councillor Peter Rippon, the Lady Mayoress and Assistant Director of Lifelong Learning Sam Martin

The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress congratulate the award winners

Children from 9 schools attended along with their parents and carers and were presented with their awards by the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Councillor Peter Rippon, the Lady Mayoress and Assistant Director of Lifelong Learning, Skills and Communities, Sam Martin. There was also a marketplace where some of our fantastic Learning Destinations displayed information about their activities and involved parents/carers, children in their demonstrations.

During the ceremony, there were some fantastic performances from Mia and Lucy from Razzamataz Theatre School Sheffield. There was also a brilliant performance from Sheffield Sea Cadets band who closed the ceremony with a bang!

Children from Carterknowle Junior School receive their awards

Lucy from Razzamataz Theatre School Sheffield gives a fantastic performance

Children from Birley Primary School receive their awards

The Sheffield Sea Cadets band give a fantastic performance to round off the ceremony

The Sheffield Sea Cadets wow the audience with their performance

Members of the team were on hand to encourage the award winners to try one one of our special Sheffield CU 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!

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 - Sakina, Leah and Chris. We couldn't do it without you!

Visit our Facebook page to view all the photos from the event! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.805393619517615.1073741844.239129216144061&type=1&l=c5f0335f3c

CU LIVE! - Fun in the Winter Garden

We had a fantastic October half term in the Winter Garden, where a number of free CU LIVE! activities took place. For those who don't already know, our CU LIVE! programme aims to provide free fun learning experiences for the family across the city.

Our friends from Imagination Gaming, Sheffield Volunteering and Museums Sheffield provided a number of fantastic activities for all the family to take part in during the week. On Monday, Weston Park Museum were encouraging children and families to think about and draw what they would like to see in Sheffield as part of the 'It’s Our World’ big draw art activity project.

On Tuesday a number of student societies including the Baking society, Science Brainwaves, Singapore Society, Law Society and Unicef showcased some of their activities. Children and young people took the DNA of strawberries, built their own pathogens (e coli, bread mould) out of plasticine and pipe cleaners, decorated biscuits, made chinese lanterns, cut out chinese characters and learnt to use chopsticks.

Wednesday saw Imagination Gaming hosting a gaming session, with children and their families playing a number of board, card and strategy game, including some brand new releases.

Finally on Thursday, Museum Sheffield were back making bats and pumpkin and monster face masks just in time for Halloween!

Children and young people who took part in these activities and brought along with Passport to Learning collected CU credits. There will be more CU LIVE! activities taking place soon - watch this space!

Celebrate!

Last week we worked in partnership with the Outreach at team at the University of Sheffield to host our 29th Gold Award Ceremony at Firth Hall. Over 100 young people from 4 secondary schools, and 77 primary and secondary students who have been collecting credits with their Passport to Learning at Learning Destinations across the city were be invited to receive Gold awards for choosing to take part in over 100 hours of out of school activity.

All ready for the ceremony to begin in Firth Hall.

A proud award winner tries on a Sheffield CU cap and gown

Proud award winners have their photo taken by Tempest Photography

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 also attended the ceremony to receive Gold awards on behalf of students for giving up their time to learn their home language.

There were fantastic speeches from Professor Zoe Ollerenshaw Senior Lecturer and Director of Widening Participation from the University of Sheffield, Sam Martin Assistant Director of Lifelong Learning, Skills and Communities, and Student Union Activities Officer Clio Symington. We also had some spectacular performances from Razzamataz Theatre School, and the Sheffield Sea Cadets

Professor Zoe Ollerenshaw talks to the audience about her uniform of learning

Students from Razzamataz Theatre School perform at the ceremony

Students from Parkwood Academy receive their awards

Children and young people who have been collecting credits in their Passport to Learning receive their awards

Student Union Activities Officer Clio Symington talks about learning beyond the lecture theatre through the Universities socieites

Sheffield Sea Cadets give a fantastic performance at the ceremony

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 - Sakina, Leah and Chris. We couldn't do it without you!

Visit our Facebook page to view all the photos from the ceremony: http://goo.gl/5sQobY

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 October 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 or the link on the side of these page 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 2014, children and young people can also use their Passport to Learning to access FREE exciting and interactive learning activities for families called CU LIVE! 

These are taking place in the Winter Gardens Monday to Thursday between 10am and 4pm. Activities will be provided by The University of Sheffield societies, Imagination Gaming and Museums Sheffield.

Evidencing the impact - the Sheffield CU 2013 Participation and Performance Analysis

Any school, or Learning Destination will tell you that being part of CU and being celebrated and rewarded for taking part in out of school activities makes a difference. 

Here in Sheffield, we do lots of work looking at the impact of participation in these activities, through lots of data analysis, but also through case studies and anecdotal evidence collected from schools, providers, parents and the children themselves. With over 26,000 children and young people in Sheffield having over 1,200,000 Children's University credits between them, we have lots of data to work with!  For the first time we are able to publish a complete report which outlines the real difference being part of CU in Sheffield can make.

We are extremely pleased and very proud to share with you the Sheffield Children's University 2013 Participation and Performance Analysis which evidences the impact of out of school learning accredited and celebrated by CU in Sheffield.

This is our most detailed report to date and includes in depth analysis of the impact of participation in CU activities on attainment and attendance, using a variety of measures including progress and Fischer Family Trust estimates. These estimates show both estimated levels and grades for specific subjects as well as the 'chance' or likelihood of achieving a range of results.  Impact of the most vulnerable children and young people in our city is also examined.

And the findings are fantastic! In 2013 at both primary and secondary, Sheffield children and young people involved in CU activities did better than their non CU counterparts and often exceeded their estimates. As they progressed through the CU Award levels, their performance improved, particularly once they had achieved the Gold Award for 100+ hours of participation. These findings are reinforced by previous local impact reports which have been produced in Sheffield on an annual basis since 2009.

This year Sheffield CU were also awarded Quality in Study Support (QiSS) Advanced status, the final level of a 3 step national quality assurance framework that schools and learning organisations can utilise to demonstrate that they deliver quality provision that makes a real difference to children and young people. 

You can find the report by clicking the link above, or the link on the right hand side of this page.

Sheffield Passports to Learning go GLOBAL!

Wow! What a wonderful summer of Passport to Learning activities we've had! Sheffield children and young people have taken their Passports far and wide, to Sea Life Centres, castles, museums, factories, forests, and even marine centres from up and down the country.
We held two competitions over the summer, encouraging Passport to Learning holders from Sheffield to get out there and explore the fascinating, exciting and inspiring learning opportunities across the country and even further afield!

Children and young people were asked to send in a picture of themselves with their Passport to Learning at a Learning Destination BEYOND Sheffield.  We had a brilliant response and after some very difficult judging, we are proud to announce the winner!

Libby and her Passport to Learning at the Yorkshire Museum, York


Libby sent us this great picture of her at the Yorkshire Museum in York!  She said she learnt about the Romans, dinosaurs and 'the old days' on her visit, and the best part was holding an owl!  Well done Libby!  A special Sheffield CU goody bag will be winging its way to you!

Our second competition asked for photos of Passports which had been taken to Learning Destinations and the winner would be for the Passport which had travelled the furthest.  We had many entries from children who had visited Learning Destinations in London, York, Hull, Doncaster, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and the list goes on...

However, the outright winner of the competition was (drumroll please!)...

Max in his taekwondo uniform in AUSTRALIA!

...Max!  He visited Australia where he took park in a taekwondo training session on the beach with his Learning Destination - Yong Gi Tae Kwon Do.  We're certain this was the furthest from our office in Sheffield!  Max said 'I completed an hour of taekwondo, practising my patterns and learning my new green belt pattern for my next grading.  The best thing was doing taekwondo in a different country and learning new steps'.  Well done Max - a CU goody bag is on it's way to you too.

Well done to all our children and young people for collecting so many credits at Learning Destinations throughout the summer.  Well done to all the parents, carers and families who made the extra effort to visit exciting learning activities outside of Sheffield   We hope you had a great time.

DON'T FORGET: If you visit a Learning Detsination outside of Sheffield, you MUST complete and return a Diary Sheet (www.sheffield.gov.uk/cu) so we can award your credits.

To find details of Learning Destinations beyond Sheffield, please visit www.childrensuniversity.co.uk/maps to search for your next adventure.