Invent, perform, grow – our journey through a variety of academies

This November, the 7a and 9a had the opportunity of participating in two project days with English native speakers of the organisation LevelUp, which gave us students the chance to dive into hands-on learning and practise English in real-life contexts. The days were filled with interactive workshops, teamwork, and opportunities to speak with English native speakers. Everyone had the chance to work in a team, develop personal skills, and experience learning outside the classroom in a fun and engaging way.

Turning language into art

As part of the English language project, we had the wonderful opportunity to take part in the Arts Academy. Together we explored acting, speaking with native speakers and a lot of teamwork. With our trainer, Kate, we organised an amazing play about visiting different worlds in a time travel machine. Everyone brought props and tried to perform his/her role as best as possible. We also played some icebreaker games, gave each other nicknames and simply had a lot of fun. Overall, speaking with a native speaker really improved our English language skills, but sometimes it was also a challenge. The Arts Academy was so much fun because it was really cool to explore our creativity together. (by Greta and Pauline, 7a)

Dream it. Build it. Sell it.

Wouldn’t it be exciting to learn marketing? Well, that’s what we learned during the LevelUp-project in our StartUp Academy. In the morning, we played a lot of fun language games before starting our workshop. After that, we talked about issues that really annoy us. In groups, we came up with solutions to fix them. Following up, we learned about marketing skills, for example, representing the company and pitching the product we created. It was so much fun that we even kept going in breaks. It wasn’t as difficult speaking to native speakers as we had thought it would be. Our trainer, Ed, motivated us to speak English. At the end, everybody felt so proud of him-/herself. Above all, it was a really awesome experience! (by Fatemah and Sila, 7a)

Two days, one vision: our start-up adventure!

During our project days, the StartUp Academy of the 9a focused on learning how start-ups work and developing our own business ideas. We started playing team building games before forming small groups to create an innovative product. The challenge: to combine two random objects in a new invention. Among the creative results were crunching nuggets made of chameleon tails and stand-up paddles with a hand-operated propulsion system for ship rescues. We then prepared presentations and designed posters to promote our ideas professionally. On the second day, we presented our products to the Growth Academy and listened to their results as well. This Academy taught us about teamwork, creativity, and the responsibilities of entrepreneurship while also improving our English skills. Overall, these project days were an inspiring and valuable insight into our possible future careers. (by Ela, Elisa and Paula, 9a)

GrowthAcademy – find out who you really are

The GrowthAcademy was about discovering our strengths and managing our weaknesses. One of the things we did was the M-A-G-I-C practice, which stands for mediation, affirmation, gratitude, intention and creativity. Aside from that, throughout these two days we worked on getting to know our strengths and weaknesses as already mentioned but also thought about our future selves. It was a lot of fun since we did this with games and theatrical scenes. It was a really unique experience speaking to an English native speaker but also speaking English for two days straight. We really enjoyed this workshop since we got to know ourselves better and had the opportunity to practise our English, which we don’t really get to do except in our English and bilingual classes. (by Esma and Sophia, 9a)

The project days were an amazing experience! We enjoyed talking to native speakers, exploring new topics, working together as well as practising English in practical, exciting ways. Learning in games and real-life projects made these days both educational and unforgettable.