Year 9 Virtual Summer School: Timetable

Virtual Summer School: Year 9

Welcome to the Pre-GCSE Inspire Programme’s Virtual Summer School! You can see the timetable for the week below. At 10am on each day, links to that day’s activities will go live, and you can work through them at your own pace and in whatever order you choose. We have suggested how long you might want to spend on each task, but we encourage you to focus on whatever interests you the most throughout the week. You will be expected to submit two pieces of work to us at the end of this week, which will be evaluated like the online class competitions earlier in the year:

  1. What is the power of a volcano?
    On Monday-Thursday, we will be publishing a series of four articles looking at this question from a number of different subject perspectives. Each day will have an associated task, either in the form of a creative assignment or short essay. Please complete all four of these tasks, and at the end of the week choose one of these to submit to us. For each of the four questions, the first prize winner will receive a £20 Amazon gift voucher, and two runners-up will each receive a £10 Amazon gift voucher. Submission instructions will be available on Friday.
  2. Natural disasters
    Your second assignment will be a short essay on the following prompt: Define a natural disaster and describe one way in which natural disasters have impacted on human civilisation, using an example. Depending on your interests, you may want to look at technologies that have been developed to help predict natural disasters, or art inspired by a natural disaster, or something else entirely. The top 10 entries will each receive a £10 Amazon voucher. Submission instructions will be available on Friday.

All students enrolled on the Pre-GCSE Inspire Programme are eligible to enter competitions during this week’s Virtual Summer School. All eligible students who enter at least one competition will receive a certificate of participation, to be distributed by your Teacher Coordinator in September. Eligible students who are unable to participate in the Summer School during this week may still submit entries anytime during August to receive a certificate of participation.

All the links in the timetable will open in a new tab, and we recommend you keep this timetable open throughout the day so you can refer back to it! All parts of the Virtual Summer School will remain live after the end of the week, so you can always come back and work through this material again on your own time.

Timetable

Monday
History: The power of Vesuvius in the ancient world (1 hour)
UK Parliament, Day 1 (2 hours)
Have a break for lunch & get away from your computer/phone for a while!
Natural disasters (1/2 hour)
Natural History Museum tour (1/2 hour)
Tuesday
Biology: Did volcanoes kill the dinosaurs? (1 hour)
UK Parliament, Day 2 (2 hours)
Have a break for lunch & get away from your computer/phone for a while!
Work on your natural disasters assignment (1/2 hour)
Ashmolean Museum tour (1/2 hour)
Wednesday
Languages and the Arts: Eruptions and transformations (1 hour)
Biodiversity & Conservation, Day 1 (2 hours)
Have a break for lunch & get away from your computer/phone for a while!
Work on your natural disasters assignment (1/2 hour)
History of Science Museum tour (1/2 hour)
Thursday
Chemistry: Telling the time with volcanoes (1 hour)
Biodiversity & Conservation, Day 2 (2 hours)
Have a break for lunch & get away from your computer/phone for a while!
Work on your natural disasters assignment (1/2 hour)
Pitt Rivers Museum tour (1/2 hour)
Friday
Proofread and submit your “What is the power of a volcano?” assignment (1/2 hour)
St John’s College tour with Agnes the Access Lamb (1/2 hour)
Have a break for lunch & get away from your computer/phone for a while!
Proofread and submit your natural disasters assignment (1/2 hour)
Open from 12 noon: Summer School Questionnaire (10-15 minutes) *

* We will randomly select 2 entries submitted by 31 August to win a £10 Amazon voucher as thanks for completing this questionnaire! Winners will be contacted in September.