Woodridge tests sports-first approach on Mondays
● Sport comes before class on Mondays in innovative trial to see what suits young pupils best
Woodridge Preparatory College has turned its academic programme on its head with an innovative sports-before-studies approach.
On “Turnaround Mondays’’, pupils arrive at school kitted out in sports clothes and white takkies instead of the usual formal white shirts and brown school uniform.
The experimental approach – where pupils start their school day with sports each Monday and their academic programme is pushed into the afternoon – has been in effect for the past two weeks.
For the rest of the week, a typical school day for the pupils starts with the academic programme at 8am followed by an early break and later a full lunch, which ends the academic day.
This is then followed by sport, classroom prep for general revision and fun educational time.
The Woodridge school is no stranger to innovative changes, with a no-homework policy introduced in April.
Woodridge Preparatory principal Trevor von Berg said Turnaround Mondays had been introduced because research showed that children’s brain activity reached optimal levels later in the mornings.
“As an independent school, we are lucky that we can experiment because we are not curriculum-bound.
“We do have an opportunity to see what works for children because we have smaller classes and as such its is easier to manage.
“Too often the education system just sticks to the tried and tested.
“Education has changed because it has moved away from recall and memory – it’s moved towards being child-centred as schools want to see what benefits the children best,” he said.
Von Berg said the pilot programme was part of the school’s ambition to be more pupil-centred.
“We have for a number of years looked at ways of integrating academics and sports more efficiently.
“As the staff, we need to still sit down and look at the pros and cons and decide how we can perhaps change it or decide if it is a waste of time.”
Although the programme will be difficult to co-ordinate, particularly with regard to inter-school sports, the change does allow for better sharing of facilities between the junior and high school. “We share facilities and resources within our school and by having our sports day earlier in the morning, it frees up our facilities,” Von Berg said.
Deputy principal and grade 7 maths teacher Steve Phillips said while the change had been a bit of a shock to his system, he found the mornings to be refreshing.
“This is an academic thing – we want to see if having sport and stimulating their brain on a physical level in the morning might stimulate their mental brain. There are a lot of different opinions because some like it and others don’t,” he said.
“The older children think that it should not be too physical in the morning because they still need to go to class.”
He said the changes were “part of the school’s focus on being a forward-thinking school and a child-centred school”.
Grade 2 pupils Unqobile Gambu, 8, and Juliet Erasmus, 8, said they loved the Turnaround Mondays.
“I love the Mondays because that means I do not have to worry about sport later on in the day so we can just go home,” Juliet said.
Von Berg said the school was also looking into cross-curriculum teaching, integrating different subjects in classes, to allow for students to think more critically, as “children do not do things in isolation”.
‘It’s moved towards being child-centred as schools want to see what benefits the children best’
Trevor von Berg
WOODRIDGE PREPARATORY PRINCIPAL