After School Activities

Our after-school activities aim to give children a wide range of experiences and skills to equip them to achieve their maximum God-given potential and further improve the cultural capital in our school.

Remember… learning and development aren’t always things that happen in school, a lot of a child’s development can happen outside of school hours. After school activities are a fantastic way for children to carry on their development outside of school while having fun.

Our aim is that every year:

• Every child at St. Mark’s will experience at least one after school club activity.
• We respond to pupil and parent feedback about what clubs they would like to see provided.
• We use data to identify gaps in the afterschool provision data and we take action to close these gaps i.e. targeted gender/age groups.
• Our children become more and more experienced and skilful in a range of sports and gain a wider range of skills and receive further character development opportunities enabling them to further fulfil our mission statement, ‘proudly and joyfully, we love, live and learn as God’s children’.

Joining a club or taking part in sporting activities after school can make a huge difference to children’s physical and mental wellbeing. Doing something active and productive after school gives children a necessary outlet, which can be really beneficial if they’ve had a bit of a challenging day in school. In that way, after school activities can teach children about the importance of healthy coping mechanisms when they’re having a difficult time.

A lot of after school activities involve socialising. Any kind of after school club will help children work on their social skills, particularly if that club involves cooperation or competition. Sports for example see children playing together in teams and also playing against other teams, developing healthy competition as part of their social development.

Getting your child involved with after school clubs from an early age will teach them lifelong lessons about making friends and the importance of working towards goals as part of a team. It’s something that’ll be useful in school as they work on group projects and as they move on to the world of work as they get older.

Pupil Premium first approach to our after-school clubs

To improve the cultural capital of our disadvantaged pupils, we target pupil premium children in our school to attend as many extra-curricular activities and clubs as possible. However, we also aim for ALL children to attend at least one after school club per year as well as many wider learning activities as possible. We do this by tracking our after-school club data each term and we look at ways of how we can improve provision to meet our young children’s needs.

Our after-school club achievements

At St. Mark’s, we love to see our children receive recognition for their hard work and achievement at our after-school clubs. There are many important skills that can be gained from attending some of our after-school clubs and so we celebrate this with our children at every opportunity!

Board Game Club

At board game club, the children get to play a range of games that develops their language skills, team work, problems solving and concentration skills. They have to work together and in doing so they also have great fun!

Taekwondo Club

Taekwondo is a Korean martial art. Children learn new skills, improve their fitness, flexibility, co-ordination, and improve their confidence in these sessions taught by a martial arts instructor.

Dance Clubs

We love dance at St. Mark’s and we have a girls’ dance group and a boys’ dance group. This is because feedback from our boys suggested that they would be more comfortable having a group solely for boys. As a result, we have two thriving dance groups.

We love to dance and showcase our talent at dance competitions with live audiences.

Art Club

 At Art club, the children learn and apply a range of artistic techniques to create individual pieces of art work. We are always keen to showcase our children’s art work and we regularly get this put on display.

Our art work from Art club has been displayed at Birmingham Central Library.

Football Clubs

Our girls and boys play football after school with our sports coaches. This helps them to improve their skills in preparation for when they play fixtures against other schools.

Gardening Club

At gardening club, the children improve the school grounds by growing flowers and/or vegetables. They learn about sustainability and how we can show better care for our natural home.

Craft Club

Over the year, our craft club runs sessions to make a positive contribution to society.  Here are children making items to sell at the Christmas fayre and to give to our local neighbours at Grove Court.

Competitions

Throughout the year, staff in school run competitions to develop and deepens pupils’ understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, mutual respect, tolerance and the following Catholic Social Teaching Principles: Solidarity, dignity of the human person, the common good, option for the poor and vulnerable, peace, creation and environment and the dignity of work.

Some examples of competitions the staff organised in 2024 include:

• A poster competition during Women’s History Month, where the children created a poster of a woman who is an inspiration to them.
• A Poetry Recital, with a theme of Laudato Si (taking care of our common home), where the children were judged on their pronunciation, stage presence and memorisation.
• A nativity art competition, where the children created colourful artwork depicting scenes from the nativity.

We enjoy seeing our children put their hobbies, gifts and talents to good use by entering a range of competitions throughout the year.