Like the rest of the team at Queen's University Belfast's Widening Participation Unit, the team behind the Junior Academy Sports Programme and Junior Academy Programme are hard at work, transitioning resources and content into a virtual format for the current cohorts. With a new change to working from home, the team is focusing on creating online materials from exciting Fact Sheets, GCSE choices, Physical Activity worksheets and University jargon busters! The team, which consists of Outreach Officer Patricia Hampson, Outreach Assistant Michael Nevin and Graduate Intern Jamie Waring, continue to stay in contact with schools to ensure the young people have access to these resources and ensure they can continue their journey with Queen’s.

For the Junior Academy Sports Programme, the Year 10 students had their first taster with Michael, Outreach Assistant on the programme on March 5th, which you can read more about here. Michael went through a range of sporting practicals in the Physical Education Centre at Queen’s and helped the young people cover topics such as ‘What is a behaviour?’ and ‘What is a skill?’. This session looked at what attributes make a good leader within the context of sport.

Having successfully completed their first day, the team have since created online resources for the participants including home workouts, ‘What is a referee?’ and a ‘Toilet Roll Keepie-Uppie Challenge’. The toilet roll challenge sees people ‘passing’ toilet roll between each other in a creative way, which the students film on their phone, thereby maintaining the connection between them in a virutal way. Some famous celebs who have took part include John Terry, Lionel Messi and Tammy Abraham. There is also a Sport Psychology ‘Interesting Facts’ document to provide some information on how Psychology can be applied to Sport, and a short quiz after. Prizes will be up for grabs for the young people who participate in the quiz!

For Junior Academy, the current year 10 cohort completed taster days of two faculties at Queen’s. The Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPS) Taster Day took place on November 5th 2019 providing insights into Psychology, Engineering and Archaeology. The second day in December 2019 involved the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences which provided a taster of Drama, Criminology, Creative Writing, Law and Languages. The final taster, due to take place in April, instead took place online, looking at the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences. The team provided online resources to allow the young people to still engage with the subjects offered by the faculty. The students gained insights from a range of degrees offered such as Biological Sciences, Density, Food Quality, Safety and Nutrition, Nursing and Medicine, as well as useful resources and points to consider when picking GCSE subjects. For Junior Academy Year 11, we have a ‘Commonly Confused Words Document’ provided by Matthew Martin from St. Mary’s College, Belfast to know more about common mistakes in everyday English language.

Although they may no longer be looking over across the Lanyon Building, the Junior Academy Team remain committed to creating and developing online resources to the fantastic young people from these two programmes. If you have yet to receive any information and are on one of these two programmes, please check with your teachers or contact one of our team. Contact details can be found here.