Healthy Eleven Plus Parents

One way for a teacher to keep up to date is to attend Education Shows. Last month the BETT 2013 show was held in London. As usual it had all the predictable big names along with some smaller vendors.

Eleven plus children need elements of direction towards the examination – some more than others. Some eleven plus children need to feel enriched and extended as well focused on the `examination’.

I was fascinated by the enthusiasm of the team at www.twig-world.com who offered 1500 short films to bring curriculum subjects to life. The films cover science, geography and mathematics.

I also enjoyed the stand at www.zu3d.com . They offered an interactive interface with film-making and story-telling potential.  It was easy to see how a bright eleven plus child could become hooked and start wanting to develop his or own films. Steven Spielberg – you need to be on-guard a new generation are on the way!

The other show I attended recently was the London Bike Show. This is not strictly an Education show – but some of the stands were very educational! There was far more to the show than bikes – but this demonstrates how parochial my thinking is. There was a stand www.essexlegacy.org about Hadleigh farm – where the Olympic mountain bike cycling took place. The farm would be a wonderful place to work off a little energy.

There was a stand about the Circe family of cycles.  www.circecycles.com. A bike called the Morpheus was shown. The bike could act as a child transporter, it could carry the weekly shop or even a heaped pile of eleven plus books to your child’s lesson. To see pictures of the remarkable bikes and gain a small hit of the potential, a visit to the website could prove fruitful.

One other stand was organised by the Surrey Human Performance Institute at the Surry Sports Park at the University of Surrey. You could indulge yourself with a full cardiopulmonary exercise test, strength and conditioning advice, nutrition assessment, a blood pressure test and a flexibility work-over. Some eleven plus parents may find that over the year they need healthy bodies and minds. These ingredients may well be all part of the paraphernalia or baggage that some eleven plus parents crave. (email shipi@surrey.ac.uk)