As hinted on Tuesday, today was no ordinary day here at Reach! Today we held the interdisciplinary day, where classes joined together to have a morning of debating workshops, learning public speaking skills, before entering the debating chamber.
The students headed over to the Cambridge Union, host to a range of past speakers, including Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and the current Dalai Lama!
Each group took part in various debates across the day, such as “should drugs be legalised?”, “does social media cause isolation amongst humankind?” and “should euthanasia be legalised?”. The students had time to prepare their argument, either in favour or against the motion, before putting across their points to the chambers.
Continuing on from the debating lecture earlier in the week, the students impressed with their effortless public speaking and ability to persuade the audience in favour of their argument. There are once again some future politicians amongst this cohort!
Due to the debating schedule, students had a more flexible afternoon in terms of activities. Sports ran all afternoon, so no matter the debating times, students could head down to the park for some tennis and football in the park and its courts. After arguing on different sides of the motion, the students faced each other on the pitch! Those who did not fancy a kick-about could have a more relaxed afternoon, chilling in town after a morning of intense debate.
The evening’s lecture featured the documentary ‘H is for Harry’, a coming of age story about Harry, a charismatic 11-year old boy, who arrives at secondary school in suburban London unable to read or write. The students were then treated to a Q and A with its director, in which they could find out what Harry is up to now, and learn more about the process of the filmmaking.
The combo students here for 4 weeks also had a movie evening, watching Tangled, before reconvening with the rest of the cohort for the evening’s activities. Tonight, we hosted the always popular International Quiz, with questions about culture, sport, music and food from all over the world. Students had their knowledge put to their test, and in their teams won points for Ice and Fire! We also had Youth Theatre club, where students were able to act out scenes from a famous Shakesperian play that our students are fortunate enough to see this weekend…but more on that Sunday!
Come back tomorrow to hear all about our first excursion of the program, and as always, check out our Instagram and Tiktok for more daily updates! (@reachcambridge)
