As part of the Prep School’s Inquire 2 Inspire programme, and the school’s commitment to developing STEAM subjects, we were fortunate to welcome Adam and Heidi Wilson, directors of Wilson Architects, last week.

Adam founded Wilson Architects in 2018 and shared his journey with our pupils in Years 5-8 with a focus on the time, commitment and academic aspects of becoming a chartered architect. Throughout the engaging talk, the pupils learned about some of the more exciting projects Adam has worked on, including football stadia and St John’s College, University of Cambridge. However, Adam was keen to share the message that architects not only focused on aesthetic design, but environmental issues, constraints, planning permission for listed buildings, the flow of people and the history of buildings.

To demonstrate this, Adam discussed a recent project he has led step-by-step – from assessing a derelict Georgian warehouse site, and its history, to becoming state-of-art student accommodation. The pupils had access to the various models, drawings and plans that had been produced.

As ever, our pupils listened carefully, asked pertinent questions, and started to make links to previous talks on structural and civil engineering. Needless to say, we thank Adam and Heidi for their time and many of pupils left super inspired to explore their options within architecture and other STEAM subjects and careers. https://www.wilsonarchitects.co.uk/

The Prep School were delighted to welcome Mike Walters, Chief Product Officer at Form2 Financial Cloud, to talk to our Year 8 pupils as part of the ABE Endorsed KidsMBA program.

Mike kindly offered to support the pupils’ understanding of the key principles of money through an interesting analogy of carrots, cows and coffee. His engaging talk touched upon may aspects of finance and the history of banking, before exploring credit and the technology and process of real life, daily credit card transactions.

The Prep School are grateful to Mike for giving up his time and sharing his wealth of knowledge on complex ideas in an accessible way. The ABE Endorsed KidsMBA programme is being run by the Prep School to inform pupils of the real world skills and understanding to be entrepreneurial or manage businesses successfully; so far they have touched upon branding, patenting and pricing.

Year 3 had great fun celebrating Roald Dahl Day this week. Everybody came to school dressed in some fantastical costumes and spent the day taking part in Roald Dahl themed activities. These included natural Mr Twit art in their OWLS session; designing a new ‘healthy’ confectionary for Willy Wonka’s factory; writing a new recipe for a marvellous medicine and making dream catchers. It was a fun-packed day and really brought our English topic to life.

Year 6 visited beautiful Hickling Broad and went on a habitat trail, played some environmental games, explored hidden channels in the reeds by boat and did some dyke dipping. The pupils were even treated to rare sightings of a bittern and a Kingfisher. It was a fantastic day; the sun shone and everyone gained a lot of new knowledge from the experience.

Our Year 4 pupils had an exciting morning at West Runton, learning about the geology of the North Norfolk coast. Having spent time looking at the cliffs and talking about erosion, the children then studied the Cretaceous Chalk sea floor, finding fossil belemnites and micrasters. They even had time to talk about the wonderful theories regarding the formations of the Paramoudra!

Last week, the Prep School’s innovative ‘Inspire 2 Inquire’ programme began with gusto as Mr Stephenson, Head of Teaching and Learning, delivered a talk to pupils in Years 5 – 8. The aim of the programme is for pupils to be inspired by members, and friends, of the Gresham’s community – about their passions, interests and careers, or inclusion, diversity, and relevant current affairs. The aim is to widen the knowledge, awareness, and information our pupils receive and encourage them to be curious and to find out more. This may be a conversation over dinner, a research project, the development of a new hobby or passion or even a career in the longer term!

The talk, entitled “A truly gobal superstar: Emma Raducanu’s journey”, was a 35 minute session that touched upon many themes, including global citizenship, shaping your own path, the history of women’s tennis and Emma’s commitment to her academic studies alongside co-curricular opportunities. The pupils were asked to consider what they wanted to know more about and how they could begin to find that out.

Next, the Prep School is delighted to welcome Mr Rob Panter, Managing Director of Canham Consulting, based in Norwich. Rob is an experienced Chartered Civil and Structural Engineer who has offered his time and expertise in helping the Prep School implement STEAM into the curriculum and wider engineering initiatives.  Rob will be welcomed a number of times over the coming academic year to speak to pupils at Inspire 2 Inquire.

Thank you to those from the Gresham’s community who have responded to the talks. There will be other interesting presentations for the pupils to look forward to, covering Ancient Greece, international humanitarian aid, the history of Gresham’s, becoming an architect and much more.

The Prep School are still keen to hear from others for the Lent and Summer Term who feel they can share their passion, career or interest to our pupils on a Friday afternoon. If this interests you or someone you know, please contact Lloyd Stephenson at [email protected] and we can discuss sharing your passion with our pupils!