On Wednesday 22nd January 2020, Miss Ahmed and Miss Millard accompanied the current Year 12s to Cardiff University's English department. The trip was a bespoke afternoon organised alongside the University's lead lecturers on Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, enabling the pupils to further develop insight and analysis of their poems and the context of their lives.

 

The pupils began the afternoon with a University standard lecture on Plath and Hughes, with a focus on crucial poems from their collections. The pupils were given the chance to challenge their independence skills in having to take notes to the same standard as a university student would have to. This was followed by a Q & A where many of our pupils asked thoughtful questions and shared some of their ideas, it was excellent to see them engage to such a high standard. This was followed by a break, the university kindly provided refreshments and gave pupils the chance to meet the PhD students who would be leading their group seminars.

 

After the break, the seminars began - pupils impressed the PhD students with their annotations, ideas and were able to debate numerous interpretations of the poems they were presented with. It provided them with an in depth exploration of the poems and gave them a taster for what to expect in university style seminars. All pupils thoroughly enjoyed this experience, as they felt it gave them the opportunity to verbally expand their opinions and analysis whilst being able to work in groups with peer support and support from the PhD specialists.

 

To end the afternoon, our pupils had the chance to question what Cardiff University provide in terms of their English course, hear about what Cardiff has to offer and what to expect from university life. Overall - it was an excellent day and inspired many of our pupils in their current and future studies!