Skills Academy sample challenge - beatbox and breakdance

What is Skills Academy?

Skills Academy was designed as a 10-week programme to help secondary school students in Years 7 and 8 improve their literacy skills, focusing primarily on comprehension. For each week there was a carefully designed lesson plan focusing on a national curriculum-based comprehension goal.

Our evaluation showed that half of students participating in Skills Academy improved their reading age on average by 8.4 months over the 10 week programme, while 7 in 10 (71%) students said reading interesting texts as part of the programme had motivated them to be better readers, rewarding their reading progress by unlocking a video reward. The videos have professionals teaching the students how to master a particular skill in either freestyle football or beatbox & breakdance.

Access this free resource

Skills Academy is currently unavailable to buy, but you are still welcome to download this free sample resource from the available files list and use it in your classroom.

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The resource gives you the opportunity to try the challenges from the first beatbox & breakdance lesson. The texts and questions in both challenges relate to the comprehension skill “questioning” and draw on what the students have been studying in class. Students can work independently or as a group.