WGS SHiNE Together 2024

The WGS SHiNE Together 2024 programme ran for five Saturday mornings between 20th January and 2nd March. We welcomed 83 Year 5 and Year 6 girls and boys from 16 maintained primary schools in the Greater Manchester area (plus one child who is home-schooled).

Sessions were offered in Complete Creativity (Art, Design Technology and Food Technology); Computing; Creative Writing; Drama; Music and Science and all were delivered by WGS teachers using our purpose-built specialist teaching areas.

 The news skills that pupils learnt included:

Making pizzas and cheesecakes;
Working with circuits to produce interactive greeting cards;
Developing drawing, painting and 3D modelling skills;
Creating their own video games;
Using improvisation and drama games to devise scenes and scripts;
Carrying out Chemistry and Biology experiments and extracting DNA; 
Key poetic terms and creative writing techniques;
Editing music using Garage Band.
The Year 5 and Year 6 students reported overwhelmingly that they enjoyed SHiNE sessions and would recommend them to others. 

As well as being a great opportunity for the primary students who attended the sessions, we saw record numbers of volunteers from year 11-13 this year. 39 WGS students volunteered across the 5 sessions, and many asked to do additional dates after their first one as they enjoyed it so much.

We have also received extremely positive feedback from parents/carers who have particularly commented on the professionalism and friendly approach of the staff to the microbit that pupils got to take home from the Computing class being a big hit! One parent summed up the enjoyment her daughter got from creative writing explaining how it allowed her to ‘sift through her thoughts for that perfect sentence to build imagination’.