Head for the hills with New Oak Primary

Last Friday, Year 6 boys travelled out onto the Mendip Hills to carry out the next stage in their QE Award programme. Our boys were joined by pupils from Oasis Academy New Oak Primary School for a day of navigation skills. Over the last term, we have been building links with New Oak and it was great to see pupils from both schools enjoying the fantastic weather in such an amazing location.

One of the key aims for the day was to improve teamwork skills and get on with each other, as well as people they had only just met, both of which were put into practice from the outset. After being put into mixed groups, pupils were tasked with working out what potential hazards they might encounter in this environment and the key values they would need in order to complete all the tasks during the day. This led to some excellent discussions and the ice was broken! The pupils were then given a navigation exercise to complete, before stopping for a well-earned lunch.

After lunch, it was onto the main activity of the day when each group had to navigate their way around a section of the Mendips on their own, with staff remotely supervising along the way. They all demonstrated the key values they had talked about at the start of the day and each group successfully completed the route, with no one being left out on the hills!

Many thanks to Mrs Hall, Mrs Russell and Mr Leighton for their help. Huge thanks also to the pupils and staff of New Oak who embraced the challenges with great humour and determination and made the day extremely enjoyable and memorable.

We hope this is the first of many joint activities and adventures between the two schools.