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The Inspire Scholars Programme for Years 9, 10 & 11 Information for Inspire Scholars and their Parents/Carers

WELCOME TO THE INSPIRE SCHOLARS PROGRAMME FOR YEARS 9, 10 & 11

You have been selected by your school to take part in the Inspire Scholars Programme for Years 9, 10 & 11 because of your academic achievement and potential – congratulations on becoming a St John’s Inspire Scholar!

What does an Inspire Scholar do?

The Inspire Scholars Programme for years 9, 10 & 11 is entirely free for Inspire Scholars. 2

We are delighted to welcome you to the Inspire Scholars Programme. This has been specially designed to help you explore your interests further, expand your academic horizons, and enable you to partake in a range of exciting opportunities both in-school and at St John’s College, University of Oxford. We are invested in your academic journey as a St John’s Inspire Scholar, and look forward to helping you achieve your full potential, equipping you with the skills and knowledge to continue your educational journey.

WHAT WILL I GAIN FROM THE INSPIRE SCHOLARS PROGRAMME?

WHAT WILL I DO ON THE PROGRAMME? As a Scholar, you will be able to take part in a number of fun trips and activities with the aim of developing your interests beyond the school curriculum.

As an Inspire Scholar you have the opportunity to: ● Build confidence in your academic ability and potential ● Learn about unusual topics ● Develop your critical thinking skills so you can debate with others and question the world to open your mind ● Be creative and take part in practical projects and experiments ● Learn more about university life and study

What did Old Norse sport look like?

Inspire Club Classes

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE PROFESSOR CAROLYNE LARRINGTON

These are classes run by your teachers which usually take place every fortnight outside of lesson time. These are unlike your typical lessons and give you a chance to learn about things that are not on the school curriculum. They involve fun and creative activities that make you think, debate, work in a team and be exposed to new ideas! Your teacher will be given a grant to buy you refreshments for these classes and any materials you might need.

Being an Inspire Scholar is valuable not just for expanding your knowledge and going on trips, it’s also about developing your skills which will be really useful for you when it comes to applying to Sixth Form, College, University or for apprenticeships.

Your teacher has many classes to choose from to suit your interests such as: ● History - Vikings: language and lore ● Physics - Black Holes: Looking into the void ● Computer Science - Games Master: Beginner’s Computer Game Programming

St John’s Summer Schools You may be nominated by your teacher to stay at St John’s for free in our residential summer school to help you understand what it’s like to be a student at Oxford University. You will get the chance to stay in a college room, eat meals in the dining hall and talk to our current students about their experiences at St John’s.

You will also meet like-minded students and become part of a wider Scholar community. You will receive a badge to show you are part of the Inspire community.

Throughout the day you will attend specialist classes and workshops in a range of subjects from Oxford academics, explore Oxford’s museums, go to the theatre and try punting! Every Scholar will also have access to the Virtual Summer School, which takes place online at your own pace. You can participate in online classes and activities from subject experts. There is also the chance to enter exciting competitions to challenge your thinking.

We all know someone who has gotten a little too competitive over a board game, but imagine this escalating into a full-blown battle on horse-back! As Professor Carolyne Larrington explores, Viking sport provided entertainment, but it also helped cement social hierarchies.

WHAT WILL I DO ON THE PROGRAMME? Visits to St John’s Every group of scholars will have the chance to visit St John’s College at the University of Oxford. Here you will get the chance to explore the College, receive talks and workshops from the Inspire Team and Oxford academics, enjoy lunch in the Dining Hall, and have a Q&A session with our undergraduate students.

School Trips funded by the Aspiration Grant You and your teachers will have the chance to apply for a grant from St John’s to fund special trips for you and your fellow scholars to go on. Examples include museum visits, adventure trips, theatre tickets and sporting events.

Inspire Critical Thinking This is an exclusive online Programme consisting of four workshops released throughout the year on a particular theme. This year’s theme is ‘Does Crime Deserve Punishment?’ and you’ll get the chance to read, listen and watch content to analyse, evaluate and consider your own opinions on the matter. Every workshop will also have a range of competitions, tasks and activities you can choose to submit work for, with many prizes to be won!

Inspire Critical Thinking 2022/23

IS SPORT EVER FAIR?

WHAT HAVE OUR INSPIRE SCHOLARS SAID?

WORKSHOP 3: DOES SPORT HAVE TO BE COMPETITIVE?

Exam Study Skills You will also have free access to materials to help you with your studying habits such as mindmapping, while also helping with exam technique. These will become very handy for your GCSE preparation.

Is doping in competitive sport cheating? BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES LUKE BARNES

THE BENEFITS AND RISKS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Critical Thinking Skill Focus:

Social Media Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Nike, Virat Kohli, and Neymar all feature in the top 20 mostfollowed Instagram accounts, with their followers numbering in the hundreds of millions. The content that these athletes and brands post has the potential to influence a significant degree of the population – for better or for worse. Social media can be a tricky place to navigate: it is a space where people can find a sense of belonging, learn more about the world, and keep up to date with current events, but it can also a dangerous space that is hard to navigate. In this critical thinking skills focus, we’ll be taking a look at how social media works, and how you can think your way through the content that you see.

Social media can help us to feel more connected to one another. It allows us to stay in contact with friends and family who live far away, and to make new friends who we otherwise would never have met. For many people, social media offers an outlet for selfexpression: people can share their thoughts, feelings and achievements, as well as content which they have created, whether that’s making slime or perfecting the latest dance challenge. Some people forge meaningful communities online, and post about shared interests, for example particular celebrity icons. Social media can also give a platform to people who are marginalised in the physical world, and they can post their opinions about the world anonymously if they feel they could face persecution or prosecution. There are, however, some dangers in having access to so much content produced by so many people. False information or ‘fake news’ can spread quickly online, and it is sometimes difficult to identify the point at which news becomes exaggerated, minimised, or misinterpreted when thousands of people are commenting in real time. The anonymity afforded by social media can also lead to online bullying, commonly referred to as ‘cyber bullying’. Common forms of cyber bullying include the use of threatening language or images, ‘catfishing’ (pretending to be someone else in order to embarrass or upset them), and exclusion (deliberately leaving people out of an activity or conversation). Social media can also amplify harmful content known as hate speech, which is the targeting

attack of someone’s protected characteristics (like race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or disability). UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL MEDIA The first step in thinking critically about social media is to understand how it works. Social media platforms are all concerned with one thing: sharing information. This information sharing can come in lots of different forms, including text, image, and video (or a combination thereof ). The more you engage with a particular kind of content – for example, cat videos – the more likely you will see them again and again. This is achieved through algorithms, which are rules or instructions that a computerised system uses in order to prioritise information. The algorithms used on social media websites are very finely tuned, and respond to different kinds of information, for example the information you give when you create your account (like your age and location), and the content that you engage with. Many social media platforms make money by placing adverts on their websites, which the advertising company has to pay for. Social media can be a very effective way to advertise a product or service because it can reach a very specific audience. Algorithms enable you to see more of what you like on social media, but they are also something to be wary of. Algorithms can mean that your social media feed becomes an echo chamber: a place where the views represented are the same as your own, with very little difference in opinion. This can lead to people believing that

Imagine training for four years to compete in the Olympic games, only to finish behind three athletes who have taken performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Would this feel fair? In this article, Luke Barnes explores the banned practice of doping and compares it to legal means of performance everyone agrees with their point of enhancement. These alternatives, such as altitude training and the view, because that is what they see identification of genetic characteristics, also provide unequal advantage. So, represented in their social media how does challenge the ‘spirit’ and integrity of sporting competition? feeds. Thesethis algorithms can also prioritise posts in your timeline or feed which contain extreme or controversial content because they often gain a lot of engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares, no matter whether this is in strong agreement or disagreement.

f a tablet or injection could make you perform better than anybody else in your field, would you take it? What consequences would you be willing to accept? Surprisingly, when elite athletes were asked this question in the 1980s, over half of them were happy to take a drug that guaranteed success even if it killed them within five years. This number has since dropped in more recent surveys, however the allure for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport remains strong. The rewards of success are no longer limited to personal and national pride, but also include promises of millions in prize money, sponsorships, and endorsements. Meanwhile, only 10– 15% of participating athletes are tested in each major competition, so to many, the often-small penalties make such a risk seem worth taking. It seems that almost every week, another high-profile doping story makes its way to the headlines and threatening the integrity of competition, but is there anything that can be done about it? Will there ever be a place for PEDs in sport?

Only 10-15% of participating athletes are tested in each major competition. A key determinant of sporting success - and thus potential for performance gains - is the body’s ability to deliver oxygen to muscles. With more red blood cells, the oxygen carrying capacity of blood increases, 16

thus allowing an athlete to push their body further and gain a competitive edge. Whilst red blood cells are naturally produced in response to anaemia, blood loss, pregnancy, or living at altitude, select individuals have always tried to boost their counts beyond normal limits. Historically, this was achieved through blood transfusions, either from willing donors, or from athletes reinjecting their own blood, after allowing enough time for it to be naturally replaced. However, the discovery of erythropoietin (EPO) as the hormone controlling this process made doping much simpler, and in the 1970s, injections of the recombinant hormone allowed athletes to directly stimulate red blood cell production.

The discovery of the drug erythropoietin (EPO) made doping much easier, and athletes could inject the drug in order to stimulate red blood cell production. The use of EPO was officially banned in 1985, and the surrounding safety concerns remain one of the strongest arguments against the use of PEDs in sport. Whilst safer than blood transfusions (which carry a risk of not only allergic reactions but also the transmission of bloodborne infections), EPO still thickens the blood, and is consequently associated with a higher risk of strokes and heart attacks. This is particularly problematic for endurance sports, in which dehydration further increases 17

blood viscosity, and ultimately, EPO use is thought to be responsible for the inexplicable cardiac arrests that killed dozens of Belgian, Dutch and Swiss cyclists in the 1990s. The health risks from raising an athlete’s blood counts are therefore real and serious, but questions remain as to how to manage them. An open system would force us to accept certain known risks (in the hope that they can be minimised with regulation and medical supervision), here is no doubt that sport is whilst a stricter policy attempting beneficial to its participants. The to eliminate risk entirely, may end true extent of these benefits is not to be up pushing a small number of understated; from physiological gains determined athletes to making less to mental health improvement, taking informed, riskier decisions. We in sport is actively encouraged and should also be warypart of assuming enforced from primary school all the that elite competition is otherwise way to the end of GCSE study. Despite perfectly safe. There is no such only 23% ban for events such this, as boxing and of the UK population actively participate in sports. BMX cycling, whichstill have a similar part in sports reduces your inherent danger, butTaking ultimately who riskfor ofathlete countless diseases; affects your should be responsible and boosts your mood, yet safety? With dopingphysique becoming of these are yet to be increasingly popularthe in mechanisms amateur sport, fullytop described by science. However, decision makers at the must also thewider mostsocietal understood mechanisms are carefully consider the which increase muscle tone and implications of theirthose policies. improve onathlete cardiorespiratory fitness. Aside from taking EPO, an The most common method may increase their blood counts of stimulating by training at altitude, or using a muscle growth is exercise. You hypoxic air machine.through Despiteresistance all up a weight and your muscles three methods beingpick biologically combat the resistance of the weight. identical, only the first is illegal. What’s more, is thatRepeated access tobouts these of resistance exercise induce muscle protein synthesis and performance enhancing strategies lead to hypertrophy – the varies hugely acrosseventually different sports growth of individual cells. In order and backgrounds. Technologically your superior equipmentfor may be muscles within to grow you need which reach for Team GB,proteins, which spent an are the basic building blocks cells. When you start estimated £4.29m for eachofofmuscle its out on your fitness journey, the protein Olympic medals at London 2012, is all about repair. When but legal methods ofsynthesis raising blood you lift heavy weights in motions that your muscles aren’t used to, it typically causes damage, and the repair of these damaged proteins takes up most of the synthesis capacity of your muscle cells. This means that when you start exercising, you don’t necessarily see muscle growth straight away. However, if you stick with it, and you keep on lifting weights, you will notice that the constant repair of your muscle fibres has set the stage for the development of new fibres. As new fibres are produced, they take up more space and this causes your cells to grow, which in

turn makes your muscles bigger– this is the process of hypertrophy.

In order for muscle growth, you need proteins which are the basic building blocks of muscle cells. While resistance training is beneficial for increasing muscle tone, the sports that benefit the cardiorespiratory system are known as ‘aerobic exercises’. These include sports like running, cycling, and swimming. By following an aerobic exercise regime, you can increase the ability of the heart to pump blood. By exercising consistently, you increase the volume of the chambers of the heart, especially the left ventricle. This means that the heart fills with more blood each cycle and can eject it out to the muscles, lungs, and the rest of the body. The vascular benefits of exercise are seen throughout the body, especially in the coronary arteries – those that supply the heart. Similarly, we notice a reduction in coronary artery disease in those who take part in regular exercise, which in turn means a lower risk of heart attacks.

By exercising consistently, you increase the volume of the chambers of the heart, especially the left ventricle. The lungs also see a dramatic improvement with consistent exercise. As your muscles become more efficient, they require less oxygen for the same level of exercise. This reduces the strain on the lungs. At the same time, the muscles used 8

in breathing get stronger, and over time this helps with endurance by increasing the time before they fatigue. During exercise, respiratory volume goes up as you utilise your residual lung volume that is not used during normal day-to-day activity. Continuing with regular exercise eventually leads to an improved ability to consume oxygen during maximal exercise and the overall efficiency of the respiratory system goes up.

Immediately during exercise, respiratory volume goes up as you utilise your residual lung volume that is not used during normal day-to-day activity.

Stronger Together: How can sport be used as a tool to empower refugees and displaced persons? MIGRATION STUDIES ANA ALANIS AMAYA

Taking part in sports with other people is a great way to make friends, but it can also help people recover from traumatic experiences. Many international organisations have begun to make sport a focal point in their efforts to help displaced people. Ana Alanis Amaya explores how and why sports are being used in programmes for displaced and refugee children and young people across the world.

Muscle growth is but one of the many benefits afforded by sport. The cardiorespiratory benefits dramatically reduce the risk of heart attack and strokes and in the course of many illnesses, improve recovery and lower the risk of mortality. All these physical factors, coupled with the endorphins released in exercise make sporting one of the most effective methods of improving one’s physical and mental health.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maksim is a 5th year medical student at St John’s. He grew up in London and made the short move up to Oxford, where he has lived since. Once he has finished his degree, he is looking to start working towards a career in surgery. In his spare time, he enjoys playing squash, socialising, and working behind a bar.

“ I feel this Programme really helps to give us all that extra push, so that we can extent to the best of our abilities – because we are all capable. This just gives us more knowledge which helps to make us understand a variety of subjects”

“ I honestly enjoyed all the classes as they have been fun and I’ve learnt so much that helps me at school”

“ Inspire has given so many opportunities to help me learn and try new things. It has also helped me make new friends and meet new people”

SUPPORTING INSPIRE PARENTS AND CARERS We provide Inspire Parents and Carers with a range of resources and sessions to help support their Inspire Scholar’s academic potential. There will be live information sessions delivered once a term in the evening, followed by a Q&A on subjects suuch as: ● How do I support by academically-able Inspire Scholar? ● What does university study look like now? ● Applying to University: What should I expect? ● Going to University: What does it cost?

After the live session, the recordings will be posted online for parents and carers to access.

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