Enrichment

Enrichment and Reward Trips at ASCEND

Enrichment opportunities and reward trips form the cornerstone of how we enthuse, engage and build on student learning at ASCEND.

The enrichment and reward programme provides students with opportunities to experience activities which many of us take for granted and provide them with memorable experiences. We build many of these activities and trips into our reward and sanctions system to ensure that students see an end result of their continued good attitude towards learning and consequences to any negative behaviour.

If students complete a week of lessons which are generally positive they will be entitled to join the end of week trip which typically will take part on a Friday. There is some flexibility and days are judged to be either red, amber or green. A red day or two amber days automatically means a student is off the trip and require more time in school to catch up on missed classroom learning.

The underlying reason for the enrichment activities is to encourage our students to develop their confidence, self-esteem and social skills which are fundamental to their development and are areas that they find most challenging due to their Social, Emotional and Mental Health difficulties.

Students will discuss and have a say on which reward trips they would like to be part of the enrichment programme so that they are more invested and have more of an impact on their attitude towards learning. Examples of the enrichment activities include;

  • Trampoline parks
  • Ten pin bowling
  • Cinema
  • Indoor sky diving
  • Laser Tag
  • Crazy Golf
  • Top Golf
  • Thriftwood Scout Activity Site
  • Cooking activities
  • Theme Parks
  • Go-Karting
  • Paintballing
  • Wildlife Parks and Zoos

Additional enrichment activities to further embed learning from the curriculum subject have also included trips to the following;

  • Purfleet Heritage Centre (History)
  • Imperial War Museum – Duxford (Engineering)
  • Camping in Wales- Outdoor activity centre and climbing Mount Snowdon (Life skills, PE and Geography)
  • Mountfitchet Castle (History)
  • Cadbury’s World (Food Technology)
  • Southend Aquarium (Science)
  • Chelmsford Theatre (English)