School exchange: Berkhamsted and Adeyfield Academy

Posted on: 15 Jan 2025

Richard Thompson, assistant vice principal (external relations) at Berkhamsted School, reflects on a recent collaboration with Adeyfield Academy, where students came together to share learning strategies and enhance their personal development skills.

As part of our commitment to collaborating with the wider community, our prefects and ‘learning leaders’ from Berkhamsted Sixth took part in an exchange day with Adeyfield Academy in Hemel Hempstead. Learning leaders act as academic ambassadors within the school, influencing school strategy and teaching and learning policy. This opportunity enabled them to extend their reach to the wider community, developing their leadership skills whilst exchanging learning strategies with Adeyfield students.

Students began the day with a learning and leadership session, starting with an engaging icebreaker. The ‘get to know me’ session saw students rotate around the room, asking light-hearted questions like “If you could choose one superpower, what would it be?” Ms Attfield, Berkhamsted’s head of design and technology, explained that by confidently communicating with strangers, the students were already demonstrating important employability skills – as well as learning some fun and whacky facts about their peers along the way.

Berkhamsted’s prefects and learning leaders led insightful sessions with Adeyfield’s students on metacognition and emotional intelligence. Metacognition is an important reflective skill which focuses on ‘learning how to learn’. Understanding their own thought processes can help students with problem solving and enables them to devise learning strategies that work specifically for their brain. Equally, developing emotional intelligence is crucial for managing difficult emotions like anxiety and stress, which can impact learning and performance. Berkhamsted students discussed how these skills have improved learning in their own lives and gave Adeyfield’s students tips on how to continue to develop them. These personal development skills are not only transferrable across all academic subjects but, once mastered, are tools for unlocking potential in all walks of life.

The session concluded with Mrs Chatwin, assistant head of Sixth, leading a session on ChatGPT. Students were excited to learn that they could transform ChatGPT into their personal revision tutor! As part of Berkhamsted’s EdTech and Digital Literacy Programme, students are encouraged to use artificial intelligence effectively, using highly specific prompts to produce tailored revision resources. Used correctly, ChatGPT can save time on resource creation, meaning students and teachers can focus on developing higher-level thinking. Berkhamsted also runs a super-curricular course on AI and Year 12 students can apply to become AI ambassadors. Firmly believing in preparing students for a rapidly changing world, Berkhamsted is at the forefront of human-AI collaboration and continues to innovate in this field.

In the afternoon, Berkhamsted’s Sixth prefects travelled to Adeyfield where they were welcomed by the Prefects for a tour. Adeyfield’s head of Sixth, Mr Cook, then led an engaging ‘Dragon’s Den’ inspired session where students collaborated to create a pitch to solve a problem in the local area. The students embraced adventure and presented their engaging pitches to the rest of the team. Inspiring teamwork, communication and public speaking, the activity was a great chance for students to push themselves outside their comfort zone and work collaboratively to reach a solution.

When asked about the experience, students from both schools were enthusiastic about the opportunity to network and learn alongside new people. “At Sixth you end up seeing the same people every day,” said one of Berkhamsted’s prefects, “so today has been a great opportunity to meet and socialise with new people.” Coming together with students in our local area to tackle local problems helped forge community bonds and a sense of a wider network, beyond Berkhamsted as a school. Students were challenged to work with new people in unfamiliar environments, which helped prepare them for further education and the world of work.

We look forward to growing our relationship with Adeyfield Academy and watching students from both schools flourish through interactions with students in the local area.

About Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson is assistant vice principal (external relations) at Berkhamsted School.