Carlene from Get-Lene Fitness Academy hosted a one hour bootcamp for some of our sixth-formers today. Filled with exercise circuits, from kettlebell training to boxing it certainly got them into that Friday feeling!
Get-Lene! Fitness
Partial Annular Eclipse
On Thursday the 10th of June the UK witnessed a Partial Annular Eclipse. This was the first partial eclipse visible in the UK since 2015. An Annular eclipse occurs when the moon is at apogee, meaning that it is at the greatest distance from Earth in its orbit, and when the moon’s tilted orbit lines up with the Sun. This apparent size difference causes the moon to appear slightly smaller than the Sun in the sky creating what is widely known as the ring of fire effect in which up to 90% of the Sun’s surface is covered. This was visible on Thursday in parts of Northern Canada, Greenland and Russia.
In Rochester at around 11:15 am we experienced a partial eclipse of the Sun with around 20-30% of the Sun’s surface covered at the maximum point. In the breaks in the cloud cover a small group of RIC staff and a few of students observed the eclipse using a pinhole projector positioned to project an image of the Sun on to the ground and were lucky to observe part of the eclipse from the roof of Underhill.
The next partial eclipse visible in the UK will be on October 25th 2022 at around 11am with 25% maximum coverage and for those of you wondering we won’t experience a total solar eclipse until 2090 (the last one being in 1999)!
Pursue Your Passion
Form 8b took part in a project called ‘Pursue Your Passion’ during some of their form time this year.
‘Pursue Your Passion’ (PYP) is a way for students to focus on something they love, research it and create an end project such as a presentation. This can be written or documented in other ways (such as video or website) or a combination of ways. It has the feel of a University-style assignment – a great way to up-skill their academic approach.
By focusing on one of their passions, students get to explore in depth, meaning that they will produce a good level of analysis and helping them think about how to present AND what they might be interested in studying further. It also gives them a chance to engage with a potential career path, opening up options for work experience with potential visits to businesses/charities etc as part of the project. Naturally, with lockdown restrictions, students were not able to visit anywhere but some of them did reach out to experts to help them with their research.
Projects include:
- Website about BMXing from Elsa
- Website about fishing from Jacob
- Website about set-design from Aayla
- Essay about Biodiversity from Leo
- Presentation script-writing from Elliot
- Photography presentation from Robert
- Website about football kit colours from Josep
Speakers for Schools
Speakers for Schools Inspiration Programme provides a network of today’s most inspiring figures across business, arts, politics and more donating their time to help inspire students to fuel their ambition. We are passionate about providing a high quality and personal service, making it seamless for speakers, educators and organisations to get involved.
Speakers in our network range from CEOs of major companies to notable national journalists, arts people, scientists, leading entrepreneurs and academics. You can find out more about our 1,500+ speakers
They also do live broadcasts with opportunities for students to ask questions. Talks this week include Green Banking, a talk from a commercial illustrator, an interview with an actor, and a psychologist talking about studying the subject at university.
You Can find it here
Children’s Mental Health Week
RIC students and staff will be taking part in a range of mindfulness and positive mental health activities this week in support of Children’s Mental Health Week which kicks off today. We are of course also still running our ‘RIC Around the World’ campaign, raising money for Young Minds.
Mission to Mars
Today some of our students attended the pre-launch of Mission to Mars. Set in the near future, Mission to Mars will be an innovative and imaginative online arts project. Through our virtual journey to a new world, we will am to better understand our own and our place in it. Especially, we aim explore the impact that lockdown has had on our lives over the past year, as well as our world.
Taking you virtually from bootcamp, to launch, to Mars landing, the Mission to Mars project will engage with big ideas of sustainability, social justice, isolation, uprootedness and belonging. Join us to develop the creative, academic and life skills to channel your current experiences into a research-based exploration of a near-future life on Mars. The project will span different creative arts – from theatre, to design, to music, to language – as we create content to share our Mission with the rest of the RIC community back on Earth.
RIC Photo of the Month: January
Our RIC Photo of the month is back and for January we kept the choice of two themes, this time – ‘Winter’ and ‘Colour’.
Well done to everyone who entered, all entries have been judged by our very own Michael Daks, under three categories – Lower School, Sixth Form and Staff it was a bit of fun for everyone, as well as a chance to get some fresh air at the same time – See the entries below.
You are all winners! Amazing to see the continuation of creativity within our RIC community.
Holocaust Memorial Day
Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day. Here is a short video you might want to watch – Our LS form groups will also be watching this within form time and completing activities adapted for discussion points around the topic.
RIC Around the World
Our Monday Motivation this week is RIC Around the world. Here at Rochester Independent College we are fundraising for Young Minds. We are challenging ourselves to travel the circumference of the Earth which is a whopping 24,901 miles!
All students and Staff will be partaking by running, jogging, walking, cycling and even skateboarding as far as they can to help us travel around the world! This includes our boarding students who are based in many countries around the world from Latvia to Japan.
We chose Young Minds as we are focusing a lot on Mental Health and Well-being during the very difficult times we find ourselves in. Taking care of your Mental Health is very important and the resources available through Young Minds for young people and their families are so valuable. Please help us in supporting this organisation so close to our students hearts.
You can donate here
Stay tuned for updates as we go along!
Parenting in a Pandemic
Top Tips to help you parent during a pandemicFear usually drives us to take urgent action, however, children can be really traumatised by fear so it is our job as adults to understand how to model overcoming fear, and how to help our children overcome their fear.