Working in Partnership with Nottingham City DCFS and the Learning Zone at Nottingham Ice Centre, funded by Capital One

Learning zones are based at sporting venues and provide opportunities for pupils to combine sport with activities to improve skills in ICT, numeracy and literacy. MUNDI has put its unique stamp on this project and in collaboration with the Learning Zone staff and Capita One designed a project to combining Ice skating with global education activities for year 3, 4, and 5 pupils from local primary schools.

A series of 6 sessions for one class are provided on Tues mornings each half term. The class is split in half and one does ice skating whilst the other has time to engage with interactive sessions such as Fair trade bananas, The Story of Anne Frank, and Looking at culture, and exploring identity and artefacts in Britain and Mexico . 2 staff from the school are required to accompany the group. One group were lucky enough to meet Torvil and Dean during their session!

The Learning Zone classroom is state-of-the-art and pupils have a computer each to work on for part of the session where educational games provided by organisations such as UNICEF and Oxfam are used.

The pupils gain skills in speaking and listening and knowledge of global issues from the sessions with MUNDI and physical confidence and cooperation from the ice skating. A high staff to pupil ratio has also been of great benefit and achieved through the commitment of our volunteers and ice centre staff. Pupils have enjoyed working with a variety of providers.

This project provides a good example of the preferred way in which MUNDI now works directly with pupils. We work with staff and pupils in a series of sessions to maximise and sustain our impact. We no longer engage in one off sessions with pupils.