PREP
A BOYHOOD EDUCATION
The Millionaire’s Reading Club is a popular initiative at the school
By instilling traditional values of manners, teamwork and kindness and embracing kinesthetic teaching, Northcote Lodge School ensures that its boys learn with confidence and achieve their very best
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elping boys achieve their best is what Northcote Lodge is all about. Its motto, ‘Si Je Puis’ (I will if I can), exemplifies its teachers’ desire to give boys the confidence to know that, by trying their best, they’ll reap the rewards of personal satisfaction and achievement. Northcote Lodge’s teaching staff do this by embracing the best of traditional prep school values: manners, teamwork, kindness – while tailoring our curriculum to the kinesthetic learning style best suited to boys (which is learning by doing).
The value of competition
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… and collaboration
There’s also reward for effort and collaboration – particularly in music and drama. Boys have the space and opportunity to take on creative arts that have traditionally been the domain of girls and play all sorts of roles in drama, with the most recent production being Moana.
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The school takes full advantage of boys’ natural competitiveness with singing competitions, charity collections, art and science competitions, debating, public speaking, poetry competitions – and of course sport. Sport
not only helps with health, but pays dividends through learning the values of camaraderie and good sportsmanship and bringing self-esteem back into the classroom. The power of competition is also embraced in English. The Millionaire’s Reading Club rewards boys who have read more than a million words with cake! By introducing an element of competition and reward – and by enabling boys to track progress – teachers have seen even reluctant readers become avid readers. More importantly the impact of this can be seen across the curriculum in all aspects of learning.
