Configur Academy - Autumn Term, Week 5

Dear Parents,

Hello, this is Orgesa from Configur Academy, and before I get to the clubs, thank you very much for your incredible support since I shared my news about expanding, and to everyone who has been in contact to help and to get involved, it has meant a great deal to me. I have now created an application form, as I believe it will be easier for everyone, so if you think that anyone might be interested, please do share this link with them: https://www.configuracademy.com/teach-a-club/. Thanks again to this amazing community.

And now, back to the clubs. 😊

After spending the last 2 weeks on structure and how to write a presentation, we have now moved on to how to deliver one. We talked about how important it is to work on their posture, to grab the audience’s attention by looking people in the eye, and to project the voice right to the back of the room, so that everyone can hear the presentation. We then moved to our favourite part of the day, a challenge that brought all the elements of writing a presentation and delivering one together into a single presentation, and the brief was to be headteacher for the day and come up with the 3 rules they would introduce at school. The ideas the children came up with were amazing, so do ask them about their rules.

Finally, we gave the children a list of 30 topics, so that we can start preparing for the end of term presentations, where all you lovely parents are invited, and I will send the list to you by email as well, in case it is lost or misplaced. I will share the presentation dates with you nearer the time.

The biggest news first: our Young Founders Christmas Market will happen on Saturday 12 December, from 12:00 to 3:00 pm at Patch. Thank you very much to all of you for taking the time to let me know your thoughts about the market, and yes, I have heard you, and the overwhelming majority agreed that having the market on the Saturday, in collaboration with Discover Twickenham and their Twickmas events, will be a lot more beneficial for all the children. And a special thank you to the families who will be missing some of their usual Saturday courses so the children can be at the market, I appreciate all of your support very much.

This week we taught the children about Giving, our third jar, and what a great week it has been. We had a very special guest, Tony Dickinson, who came in to talk about a very special charity called the Suu Foundation, which supports the people of Myanmar through healthcare, education, humanitarian relief and human rights. The children loved learning about the foundation and asked so many questions, and if you would like to learn more, or to donate, you can do that here: www.suufoundation.org.

In November and December we are planning visits from other charities, because I would love for the children to learn first hand how every penny they give, and their time too, makes a change to somebody’s life, preserves a place or saves an animal. And in the coming weeks we will be teaching the children about Investing, and then we will make a plan together on how they can divide the money they earn from the markets, or any other money that comes their way, with some planning and budgeting along the way. 😊

In our Monday class the children put their memory to the test, working in their teams to identify suspects, with a witness describing a suspect’s photo to their detectives from memory alone. And in our Wednesday class we cracked our very first case, which had some very complex maths hidden inside it, a lot of careful reading of the details, suspect statements to pick apart, and a lot of thinking before they got there.

I will not say any more than that, and certainly not who did it, because a detective club has to keep its case files closed. 😊 Do ask your detective on the way home.

What a great session we had this week, and I want to tell you where it came from. As a parent, I am always worried about the day my daughter receives her first phone, how long she will spend on it, and whether she will be careful with her screen time without me being the bad cop and telling her not to use it every single time. I truly believe we cannot always be in control of what they do with their phones, but we can definitely make them aware of the risks and the rewards, and trust that they can make the best decisions for themselves when we are not in the room.

So for this reason, this week the children each designed their own video game, and on purpose I asked them to put in as many tricks as possible that would make children spend more time playing and get hooked into the game. They came up with the most amazing ideas, a leaderboard, notifications inviting you back to play, fake money and rewards to make you play more, and as they invented them, they started to see for themselves that these are exactly the tricks the real platforms use on them every day. And with that, we came to a few ways they can help themselves control the time they spend online. Their mission this week is to catch 1 of these tricks in the wild, so do ask them what they have spotted. 😊

Half term and INSET day

Young Founders Market

Check our new website here: https://configuracademy.com/

Thank you so much again for your support. I do not take it lightly. I would love it if you could give me some feedback on the form below. I read every one, and it helps me make these programmes better for our children. I certainly do not take anything personally, so please do complete it. 🙂 It helps me more than you can imagine, and if you could leave a testimonial too I would be extremely grateful: feedback.configuracademy.com

Have a lovely week.That is everything from this week. As always, if you have a question about either programme or if there is anything you would like to talk through, you can reply to this email or message me directly on 07414 962803.

If you have missed any of our previous newsletters, you can catch up on them all here:
https://newsletter.configuracademy.com/

Have a lovely week.

Orgesa
Founder,
Configur Academy
Wesbite: www.configuracademy.com
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