Creativity 3 - Raising Attainment in Literacy: Visit to Spirit FM

Last Wednesday saw our first 'proper' lesson with the students. We went on a visit to Spirit FM in Chichester to see how a radio station works. While in school before the visit, we came up with questions that the children wanted to ask the people who work at Spirit FM. They thought about what they wanted to find out and analysed their questions in great detail to make sure they were as good as could be. This involved lots of oral rehearsal and role play, which was great fun! The students were ready with video cameras and Dictaphones so there was no need for them to write anything down whilst at the station.

Huge thanks must go to all the staff, and especially Ian Crouch, at Spirit FM who made the visit so enjoyable and worthwhile! Some of the things we got to do included:

- Meeting the sales and news teams.
- Looking around the studios, including sitting in with presenter Millie while she was on air!!! We have to be very quiet!
- Recording a jingle, this took a few times to get it right!
- Three of the students recording vox pops that were played in all the news bulletins that day, well done you guys!
- Having a question and answer session with Ian, the programme controller.

It was so useful to see what really goes into making a show and the students all thought it was really exciting! According to JW, there was a real buzz about school the next day!

Back in the classroom we assessed what had been learnt and discussed the next session. The students were asked to try to design a logo for our station, as today we also democratically named our station....welcome to Diverse FM!!

As teachers we thought this session was really successful, a 'Super Start' to the things we have planned. For our next session we hope to think about working with other adults, as this is something that we felt could be improved to bring huge benefits to the intervention.

Here are some photos from the visit....