Primary Outreach

At Sir Thomas Rich’s School, we are passionate about supporting our local community. We currently collaborate with many of our local primary schools and aim to improve our local links by offering activities and learning opportunities across a variety of subjects.

If your primary school would like to collaborate with Sir Thomas Rich’s School and you are not currently part of our mailing list, please email our co-ordinator for Primary Outreach, Mrs Ellen Holt ([email protected]), to hear more about our outreach offers.

We have a long-established relationship with local primary school science leads, and our most recent work has included inviting students and staff in to take part in scientific experiment workshops at Rich’s. Seven of our local primary schools have benefitted from bringing Year 5 students to the School on a Wednesday afternoon, where students have had the opportunity to enjoy one of the following sessions of their choice, supported by our Science Department and Sixth Form mentors studying A Level Biology, Chemistry and Physics. The workshops have included the following topics:

Separating Salt from Rock Salt

Crushing rock salt, dissolving, filtering, and evaporating using Bunsen burners.

Reversible and Irreversible Changes

Various demos and a burning investigation for students using Bunsen burners.

Levers, Pulleys and Gears

A variety of hands-on activities to investigate smaller forces having a greater effect.

Pond Dipping and Bug Hunting

Using the wildlife area in the School grounds and pond to investigate biodiversity and various life cycles.

A team of 12 of our Year 9 Modern Foreign Language students, who are keen linguists, have been working as Language Ambassadors by visiting local primary schools to support students with their French and German studies. Below is an excerpt from Elmbridge Primary School’s newsletter regarding the work our Language Ambassadors have done with their Year 3 and 4 students:

“In the last few weeks, Year 3 and 4 have been incredibly lucky to continue our links with Sir Thomas Rich’s School (STRS) with visits from their Year 9 Language Ambassadors to inspire our children to enjoy learning other language. The STRS Language Ambassadors taught French and German in both year groups. Special thanks to Mrs Khokher, Mrs Testoni-Ranken and Mrs Ferguson from STRS for encouraging the STRS boys to support language teaching in local schools. We now look forward to our French language play from Onatti Theatre on Tuesday 28th February.”

Last July we welcomed 120 Year 4 students from local primary schools to compete in a Football Tournament day hosted at Rich’s. The students enjoyed a great day, with the Longlevens Junior School A Team emerging victorious. Our PE Department set up an excellent day for the local primaries, helped by students in Year 9 who will be taking GCSE PE next year. All the primary schools took part in several matches, with everyone receiving a certificate at the end, and of course Longlevens also had a trophy to take away with them for their efforts. Well done to all the students and schools who took part, we hope to welcome them back (and any other primaries who wish to take part) next year.