Over the last couple of week’s Mrs Ruck and I have been blessed to share a day retreat with every tutor group in KS3 at Sulis Manor to end the year. Ordinarily they would participate in one retreat per year, however, we added an additional retreat experience in these final few weeks to round up an extraordinary academic year. The theme of the days was ‘Dare to Dream’ and used the example of St Paul in Acts preaching to the Athenians at the Areopagus as a model for living out and being proud of what motivates us.
Students took part in a number of games and activities which explored this idea of sharing what drives us and what we dream of. The most positive of these sessions involved our young people using the inspiration of Mount Recyclemore at the G7 Summit to create their own sculpture about the environment and nature.
They used only natural resources in the woodland of Sulis Manor to express the care and passion they had for the world we live in. Some of their creations and explanations were awe inspiring, and truly showed how well our young people can react to a challenge and be articulate. There were several ways of representing the big issue of deforestation, sculptures about crude oil, the sewage we pump into our oceans and so many more.
One of the most impressive though belonged to Daniel S in year 9 who stood by a screwed up sheet of paper and subsequently spent 5 minutes explaining the life cycle of that sheet. He explored its origin as a seedling, life as a tree, usefulness as a sheet of paper and then its now discarded nature. More of the creations are shown here for you.
We also awarded house points to the best groups, as they were in houses. Stein and Bakhita each earned 350pts whilst Francis and Romero each 250 and 200 respectively.
Mr M Robinson
Lay Chaplain
