Super-curricular Enrichment Resources
Another element of our Sixth Form offering is a wide variety of opportunities to engage in super and extra-curricular activities.
These are designed to enhance your profile in readiness for UCAS and career applications and also to give you the opportunity to read around your A Level subjects outside the prescribed syllabus and to delve into areas which are particularly interesting to you.
Doing this is a vital part of independent study and we are pleased to be able to promote a large range of opportunities to our Year 12 and 13 students.
Some of the activities will form a compulsory part of your independent study as we believe that they help to enrich your existing knowledge.
For example, one thing you really need to be doing on a regular basis is reading – we have provided an excellent reading guide below, which is broken down by subject:
What is the difference between the two?
- Super-curricular activities are anything relating to your academic interests which aren’t part of your A Level syllabus. They show you’ve engaged in independent study around a subject.
- Extra-curricular activities are also important but include your hobbies, outside interests, sports and leisure activities and part-time work. For some subjects, such as PE, you may find there is considerable overlap between super and extra-curricular content, although super-curricular should have a more academic focus.
During your time at the Sixth Form, we expect every student to complete a minimum of two super-curricular activities. Many of these come in the form of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Learning Courses) and can be completed during your independent study sessions at school or in your own time.
We ask students to undertake these activities as we believe they are important enrichment tasks which will help them to explore life skills and broaden their understanding of their subject specialisms.
The school makes use of a superb online platform called ‘UniFrog’ and this is one way that we signpost students to these various opportunities. We also have a dedicated notice board in the 6th Form Centre focusing on ‘Super-Curricular’
FutureLearn – we recommend that every student in Year 12 completes a FutureLearn course and we dedicate time through our enrichment programme to enable them to do this
Coursera features 500+ courses, from more than 100 partners worldwide, including Duke University in the US.
Udemy offers free and paid-for courses, many from non-academic instructors.
MOOCS@York – the University of York offer around 30 free online courses in various subject areas
Forage is an absolutely brilliant resource where you are able to engage in 5-6 hour virtual ‘work simulations’ for free.
EtonX – offered free to all state schools in the UK. Eton X offer a range of courses in crucial areas like academic success at school and beyond, leadership, effective communication, and career preparation. All students in Year 12 will receive a log-in to Eton X.
Udacity focuses on free courses, categorised into beginner, intermediate and advanced-level. Students may also enrol in a number of paid-for courses in order to gain California State University system credits.
EdX is a non-for-profit provider, created by Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) universities. Today partners include the Australian National University, TU Delft (the Netherlands), and Rice, Berkeley and Georgetown universities in the US. EdX also offers ID verified certificates of achievement, for a minimum fee.
We also offer all students the opportunity to complete the EPQ – or extended project qualification, for more information about the EPQ click here
Below are a wide range of different super curricular opportunities we would like you to engage with:
Recommended Super-Curricular Activities from the University of Cambridge:
Gresham College in London offers an extensive range of free public lectures delivered by experts in their field. Recordings of these lectures are available online and are an excellent super-curricular resource.
TED Talks are also a brilliant resource where students can explore a diverse range of subjects and learn about innovative research in a concise and accessible format.
Staircase 12 – a brilliant resource from University College, Oxford – in particular their ‘Reading Bank’ has a wide range of suggestions in terms of the wider reading you should be engaging with
The Quad – this is an enrichment resource bank from Trinity College, Oxford – with a wide range of extension materials to engage in for most A level subjects
STEM Book List – a list of recommended reading resources for STEM subjects from Imperial College, London
The University of Cambridge – Virtual History Classroom – which contains information and interactive exercises relating both to areas of history that are commonly studied in Years 12 and 13 and to other areas less often studied at post-16 level.
iWantToStudyEngineering – a website full of challenging maths and physics problems related to engineering that go beyond the A-level syllabus.
nrich– a website developed by the maths faculty at the University of Cambridge which contains an extensive range of stretch and challenge maths activities for any age.
iBiology- an incredible collection of online talks on all aspects of biology from leading scientists.
HE Plus – a website containing super-curricular resources for a broad range of subjects created by University of Cambridge students and academics.
Great Writers Inspire – a superb English resource from the University of Oxford for students and post-16 teachers containing video lectures, eBooks and contextual essays that could be used for extended project work, in preparation for university study, or set as additional reading around specific central texts.
Science in Medicine Schools Team Prize – a brilliant annual competition from Imperial College – aimed at aspirational Medics.
Additionally, there are a wide range of essay competitions that you can enter
Please CLICK HERE for the full range of different competitions that you could enter
New College of the Humanities (various subjects)
https://www.nchlondon.ac.uk/pre-university-programmes/essay/
United Kingdom Mathematics Trust-Solo maths competitions, senior level
Trinity College Cambridge (various subjects)
https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/essay-prizes/
National Novel Writing Month
Imperial Science Challenge
Christchurch College, Oxford (English)
https://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/research-and-academia/enter-tower-poetry-competition
Oriel college, Oxford (Social Sciences)
https://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/study-us/schools-liaison/lloyd-davies-philosophy-prize
