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Coin Street Project

The Community Service Organisation sends boys every year to help at the Coin Street Community Builders project which is located on the South Bank of the River Thames at the OXO Tower. Boys typically go to Coin Street on a Monday and spend one or two hours helping at the after-school club. They are involved with various activities helping to supervise the children with games, arts and crafts and reading.

The project is rewarding for City of London boys who, in turn, provide invaluable assistance to the staff team at Coin Street. The School has a master in charge of CSO who accompanies boys on their initial visits.

The work carried out by pupils falls into several different categories, as described below:

 

Drama

Since September, when the new CSO recruits returned to school as 4th Formers, we got straight on with business. With the help of Harry Smith and Harry Michell, CSO has been running drama activities for a small group of seven to eleven year olds from the Coin St Community. We improvised fairy tales and also got up to various drama activities.

The children were very enthusiastic and willing to participate in everything we did. The warm up games proved a lot of fun, not only for the children but for us too. The most popular game was definitely “the king game” where the children had to think of a reason to get the king off the throne. However, the children were a lot better at being the king than anything else so getting new people on the throne proved very difficult. The quick thinking needed for some of the improvisation games was of a high standard, but the children coped very well and were enjoyable to work with. It has been a very active half term of CSO and I hope the children show the same levels of enthusiasm for our next half term of Science.   

Science

We began our first session on the 24th September. This half-term we were to help teach the children some basic science. Mr. Easingwood was the volunteer teacher and this lesson we would be making paper towers to illustrate the concept of a centre of gravity. At the end of the lesson Mr. Easingwood showed us an experiment with a giant Bunsen burner that he had put together, the lesson ended with a bang and tin lids flying in the air. The second week, we did experiments with sound, using tuning forks and water as well as making a harmonica made of test tubes. These experiments showed that sounds are caused by vibrations. The children particularly enjoyed trying to make songs with the ‘harmonicas’. The third week was, again, centred on sound with more practical demonstrations. The fourth and fifth weeks were taken up with electricity. We learnt about building circuits and then about adding a resistance factor into the circuit. The kids were pleased when the bulbs lit up if their circuits were correct.  

 

Art

The children started to make the Christmas decorations that were to be their project for the next few weeks out of clay. On the third week of the half-term, they finished painting their decoration which took the form of angels, snowmen and Santa Clauses to name but a few. This painting, however, only took up half of the lesson and in the second half, they started to make Christmas cards. They finished off the cards in the next lesson and took them home along with their decorations which they had left at school to dry.  

 

ICT

For the first ICT lesson I went through the basics of using an internet search engine to research a subject of their choice. The children spent the lesson making presentations on things that interested them.

In the second lesson James Donovan showed the children how to use Microsoft PowerPoint, a slideshow presentations creator programme. After James’ presentation, the children made their own presentations.

 

Joseph Jackson taught them about using Microsoft Word, a word processor, in the third lesson, and Vladimir Podgornov show them how to use a photo editing programme called Paint in the fourth lesson.

 

We continued with ICT, kicking off with Aaron Garrod showing them how to use some of the more complex functions of Internet Explorer. Last but not least it was Xan Boperan’s turn. He taught the children to use Microsoft Publisher.

 

In the next two weeks the children learnt to use Mavis Beacon, a programme that teaches touch typing and then they practiced their typing skills. Then in the last week, they had monitored free time on the computers.  

 

French

Over four weeks the children learnt, with us and the school French assistant, how to say various things in French and the words for object to do with certain subjects. For example, they learnt how to introduce themselves in French, the learnt how to say the names of animals in French, they learnt how to say the names of sports and different types of food in French. In the last week, we played games in French combining all the words we had learnt over the past four weeks.

What have I learned and gained from my time participating in CSO

I spent a number of weeks over the past year helping and assisting the children form Coin Street to cover some of the basics in four different subjects ranging from Science to French. One of the main things I have gained from CSO in an increase in how long I can be patient for, as sometimes they children, being quite young, didn’t pick up on things as fast as, maybe, somebody of a few years their senior might have, and I also found that they had a tendency to get distracted remarkably easily, so one of my main jobs was to keep them focused on the tasks at hand. However, the children also picked up on other things remarkably quickly, and I now respect how clever children actually are, and how little credit we (even though only slightly older) give them. From now on I will probably be less patronising towards small children.

Reports by Gabriel Cramer and Sam South, Fourth Formers at City of London School