A Level PE Trip to London

Miss Hodges with this trip report:

“This week Year 12 and 13 A level PE students have been on a trip to London. Students left Manchester bright and early on Sunday morning and headed to the capital by train. Our first stop was to the London Stadium, home of West Ham United and previously the centre point for the 2012 Olympic games. The students had a tour guided expertly by our guide Hassan. They went into the dressing rooms, interview rooms, technical areas and the tunnel. Students also saw the training and warm up facilities at the stadium that were mainly used by the 2012 Olympic athletes and even had a go at sprinting on the track.

From here we headed to check in to our hotel before venturing into central London for tea at Planet Hollywood and a walking tour of the sights by myself and Mr Morgan, taking in Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament and the London Eye.

Day 2 saw an early start and bus trip to the Olympic Velodrome. Here the students had a taster session cycling on the track of Champions, they all did extremely well and I was particularly pleased that we had no fallers! With aching legs the students then embarked on a guided walking tour of the Olympic park, where Owen, our wonderful guide, talked us through the history of the area and the benefits and consequences of its regeneration due to the 2012 games, excellent information for their A level studies.

From here we had a very quick dart across the tube network over to Wimbledon where the students had a 3 hour Wimbledon learning experience. We had a lesson about the history of technology in Tennis which was very hands on and involved students dressing up as 1900s Tennis players, comparing tennis rackets and strings through time and discussing the use of Hawk Eye in modern day tennis, we even got one of Andy Murray’s winning racket strings to take away. Following our lesson we went on a guided tour of Wimbledon’s facilities taking in interview rooms, BBC filming studios, the outer courts and centre court itself. The students were amazed at the quality of the facilities and the ground preparation involved for a 2 week tournament, after a quick visit to the museum and shop it was time to head back into Central London.

Tea on Monday night was at Hard Rock and from here another walking tour to take in Buckingham Palace, the Mall and a return to Trafalgar Square before getting the tube home.

Our final day started with a 6:50am breakfast and check out and then a bus across to West London to the Sky studios. The students had a tour of the studios where various sporting shows are filmed before heading to the Skills Studios where they created their own news report. The students used cameras, editing equipment and auto cue to create their own Sky Sports News report about the increasing levels of childhood obesity in the UK- an absolutely brilliant experience for the students who performed exceptionally well. The experience finished with the students watching Sky Sports news being filmed live and seeing the work of the journalists first hand. From here we headed back to Leicester Square for an hour of shopping and lunch before catching our train back to Manchester.

The students had an incredible time learning about the socio cultural and contemporary aspects of their A level course, but also experiencing first-hand the wide variety of careers that qualifications in sport can offer. As always, the students were extremely well behaved and did Wellington proud, getting lots of praise from the venues we visited and the public!”