2009, Jan 16: Silverdale School, Sheffield

Silverdale School is a secondary school newly reopened in January this year, under the BSF Programme. Its specialism is on Languages - in which it runs several foreign language programmes.

Some observations:

• The first structure that captured my attention is the staircase - which is a contrast to the glass and concrete. Thought that's nice. Nevertheless, after taking a second look, am pretty sure it's not suitable for the Singapore weather... 'cos it's 'open'... It becomes un-usable in rainy days.
• Space, again, there's plenty. The main colours are blue and purple.
• Here, there are corridors! The learning spaces are concentrated at the end each block when there's a split of the building, hence creating a 'triangular' learning space, filled with computers, round tables and chairs.
• "Student Receptionist" - 2 students (pretty young, a boy and a girl) sat at one of the tables in the open area where the delegate was briefed before the tour. There's a label - "Student Receptionist" - on asking, we were told that they were supposed to be there the whole day, to run errands for teachers (eg. sending messages). According to the boy, some kind of training that every student will go through. Hm... if that's the case, I guess such training comes with a price - just wondering if all students are able to catch up with the whole day's work?
• "Student of the Half Term" - seems to be a common practice among UK schools - to recognise students' efforts and performance.
• Some useful terms - "Student Receptionist" (ah! role has to be re-defined...), "Restaurant" / "Cafe" (instead of the usual "Canteen")

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