Drusillas

During the day students listened to an engaging talk about the visitor attraction's business model and learnt about the business rationale behind many of their decisions and also enjoyed exploring the zoo. 

An enjoyable day was had by all and students effectively transferred many of the business strategies that they learnt from the visit to help them develop their own business ideas in the rest of Enterprise Week.

Dragons' Den

Students rose to the challenge and created a series of impressive products and pitches that impressed the judges with the level of ingenuity, financial planning and confidence.

Students first competed in forms to develop products that promoted sustainability, using the preparation time to engage in market research, product development, financial forecasting and pitching. They then presented their pitches to an external judge who selected the most effective pitch to compete in an interform final.

In the afternoon these six teams competed against each other in front of a panel of seven dragons.  After some careful deliberation, the dragons agreed that they were most impressed by Carey's pitch for an AI augmented app which would allow for customers to scan the content of their fridge and be given recipe recommendations to prevent food waste (the winning team is pictured above). The dragons were impressed with the way in which the group engaged in realistic financial planning as well as the way in which they identified a clear target market.

Our sincere thanks to the dragons for generously donating their time and bringing a wealth of experience in a wide variety of areas to the project, including financial services, grants management, journalism, civil engineering project management, global portfolio management, sustainability, marine conservation and venture capital. 

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Mrs Crean explains more about IDU Week

"Being an IB school means that we have an opportunity to do things a little differently. One of the exciting things about the Middle Years Programme is that it encourages interdisciplinary working and exploring ideas outside of the curriculum in innovative ways. This week has been the first week of our interdisciplinary fortnight where we have all the students taking part in alternative activities to their normal timetabled lessons. We also use this opportunity to organise trips so that students can take part in enriching opportunities outside the school as year groups". 

Mrs Shaw, our MYP coordinator, comments "our Interdisciplinary Units of Work provide a unique opportunity for the students to showcase their understanding of disciplines in a new and unfamiliar context. The units are always grounded in collaborative working looking at a global issue(s) and include a reflection on skills learned and next steps. Students have reported this year that they have loved the projects, they appreciate the opportunity to work with students they don’t normally work with and they recognise their development of creative and critical thinking, leadership and teamwork skills even over this short period. It is clear to them how the units link to the world beyond school and skills they will need at university and in the place of work later. Interestingly, a number of students mentioned insight gained into time management and how they will use this going forward when attempting homework tasks!".