Daily Schedule

8am – 8.45am	Students arrive
9am – 12pm	Morning work cycle
12pm – 1pm	Lunch and free time
1pm – 4pm	Afternoon work cycle

Music and art take place during the work cycles. Drama and sport are the only whole-group activities (other than community meetings) and these take place during the afternoon work cycles.

Possible Lessons Given That Day

Lessons in the Young People’s Community are given in small groups as well as individually. Lessons given during a typical work cycle may include:

4 students receive a lesson on carbon isotopes, related to photosynthesis work
2 students receive a lesson on fashioning bamboo shoots into calligraphy pens as part of their study on the Ming dynasty
3 students receive a lesson on plate tectonics related to a seminar discussion on the South Downs as a heritage resource
2 students shown how to use the kiln
3 one-to-one meetings with students to discuss their progress against iGCSE curriculum and decide on what needs doing over the next month.
2 students receive a lesson on using a graphing calculator to solve a quadratic equation
2 students receive a lesson on real and imaginary numbers
4 students receive a presentation on using a lathe to make a bowl
2 students dissect a frog and use a high-powered microscope to compare its anatomy with the anatomy of a fish
2 students receive a lesson on optics: reflection and refraction, related to study of the compound eye of a bumble-bee
3 students receive piano lessons
2 students receive a presentation on how to check if the books balance in the shop accounts
2 students shown how to pack the granola for sale
These lessons are just introductions: the real learning takes place when the student repeats the work, using the knowledge to do something real, or to attempt something new. Some examples of the kind of work one might see taking place in the Young People’s Community follow.

Work Possibly Taking Place

Work taking place during a typical work cycle may include:

2 students wash dishes and clean dining room
2 students meet individually with Guide to go through Learning Journal.
Other students continuing with independent research/study
2 students use surface temperature probes to conduct an experiment on heat loss due to radiation.
2 students reading in preparation for a seminar on women at the heart of civil rights movements
2 students research the lifecycle of bumblebees
2 students translate a Neruda poem into English
3 students plan a trip to a local archaeological dig
4 students participate in a facilitated seminar in French.
2 students import excel data on the impact of caffeine on heart rate in the community to their graphing calculators
2 students research techniques for making preserves
6 students participate in a seminar on the ethics of child labour in poorer societies.
1 student writing a play on the theme of redemption
3 students prepare an inventory of plant species on the land
3 students practise giving presentations, scoring each other using a suitable rubric they found on the Internet.
4 students bottling honey for sale (extract, bottle, label)
2 students leave to visit the Science Museum in London.
3 students accompany the ecologist on her rounds.
2 students sanding tables in the woodwork studio.
2 students plaster and paint a wall
2 students get lunch ready for the community.
Specialist interests

Where students have specialist interests (such as show jumping) the school would work with parents to ensure the student was supported to pursue those interests. If this were not possible on site, we would establish the necessary partnerships within the local community, or in London/Brighton. Our commitment is to provide a bespoke educational experience for each individual student.

Guest lectures

Guest lecturers share their work with the students each week, and so spark areas of inquiry in their own study. A sample lecture schedule drawing on parents in the TMP community might look like this:

Who	Possible 45 minute topic + 30 minutes Q&A
Tara Grant	Making etchings of bees for sale in context of declining bee population.
Ali Mapletoft	Silk scarves: identifying fashion trends, designing and printing on silk.
Nina Mazloum	Why a printer in Afghanistan can cost £10,000.
Ed Landauer	Why the Boeing 737 has a wingspan of exactly 34 meters.
Nye Wright	A day in the life of a graphic novelist.
Caroline Cromar	How we decided on Pret’s new positioning in the fresh food business.
Lisa Creagh	I’m no chemist but I print my artwork on aluminium.
Simon David	Filming in the rainforests of Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago.
Tony Berkeley	The Eurotunnel: building a 24-mile corridor under the English Channel.
Bob Saynor	Trucking costs and environmental impact.
Richard Burniston	The use of submarines in deep-sea exploration.