Connection Through Play

Silkwood School has been attending the YLAA National Tour since 2023, each year bringing more students through the doors. But for their 2026 leadership team, the conference was just the beginning.

After attending the National Tour, Silkwood took part in YLAA’s Term 2 LeaderUp LevelUp incursion, designed to bring students back together after the conference and turn inspiration into action. The incursion gave their leadership team the tools to define their leadership identity, plan student-led initiatives, and build a clear roadmap for change in their school.

They had a challenge they could see clearly around them. Low motivation. Students feeling disconnected from their peers and teachers. The leadership team identified classroom culture, communication, accountability and a lack of opportunities to connect as the drivers behind it.

Their solution wasn’t complicated. Create more reasons for students and teachers to get involved, have fun, and break the disconnect.

The team designed games and activities that brought different year levels together through healthy competition and gave people a reason to meet someone new. It wasn’t completely smooth sailing. The leadership team didn’t know each other particularly well at the start, and a few absences along the way meant adapting on the fly. But they worked out each other’s strengths, divided responsibilities and built a clear action plan.

Then came the part that matters most: getting everyone else on board.

They built the hype in layers. Posters around the school. Year-level targeted promotion. A trivia challenge with prizes at whole-school assembly. Then an afternoon where students could trial three activities in a tournament-style showdown.

What started as a challenge around motivation and disconnection became a reminder that sometimes the best way to build connection is to create the space for people to play, participate and give something new a go.