THIS time of year is always fun, with extra-curricular activities, workshops, school trips and reward presentations!

Across the Design & Technology and Art departments, we were fortunate to have MATIPO ARTS visit us and conduct sessions based around design processes and sustainability. These sessions involved our prospective GCSE pupils and our current GCSE pupils. It was very useful to them to design and make in a relaxing environment, without the pressure of assessment. Pupils created inspiring products such as miniature interior design models, garments made from scrap fabrics, and puppet models.

External speakers and activity leaders often bring a fresh approach and engage learners. The pupils are also grateful and excited to be part of something different. Such an event is always a memorable experience, and pupils can use the skills learned in the workshops, within their practical GCSE courses.

Design and Technology is such a fascinating subject with so much knowledge and skills to learn, and the popularity of the subject is ever-growing and ‘moving with the times’ (especially at Stewards with our newly refurbished department). These bespoke workshops have inspired us as a department to create new modern projects within our curriculum to offer at KS3 and develop into KS4.

The new GCSE groups are coming to us soon and we hope the pupils taking the various courses within our department are just as excited as us!
If you are interested in following the life of Stewards Academy, we regularly have updates on Twitter and Instagram. Please follow us @StewardsAcademy and @Stewards_Head on Twitter and @stewardsacademy on Instagram.  A final source of information is here on YourHarlow where you can see lots of things we have been up to previously: 
 http://www.yourharlow.com/category/education/stewards-academy.