School news round up: Cavendish School is celebrating athletic success

Success at athletics county championships

The Cavendish School is celebrating the success of their athletes at the indoor athletics county championships held at the end of March at the Lee Valley Athletics Centre.

The school was invited to attend the event after finishing in the top six in last years athletics season.

Cavendish finished second overall at Lee Valley, an outstanding achievement for the high performing athletes.

Student successes were as follows: Chenna Okoh was first in the 400m and first in the long jump; Jackson Cowans was first in the 60m hurdles and first in the triple jump; Jay Wilson came second in the 60m and first in the high jump; the relay team of Chenna Okoh, Jay Wilson, Jackson Cowans and Jay East came third; Jay East was fifth in the shot; Mitchell Bird was sixth in the 200m; and Curtis Bird was sixth in the 800m.

Learning how to broadcast the news

Students from The Hemel Hempstead School thoroughly enjoyed their first ever BBC School Report News Day.

The day saw over 1,000 schools, including The Hemel Hempstead School, take part in a national schools news day run by the BBC. This event, in its ninth year, is a project designed to teach young people the skills to find, write and broadcast news.

In the months leading up to the big day, the 55 Year 8 and 9 students involved had voluntarily spent time after school learning and practising journalistic techniques. This meant that on the day, after a few reminders of the core values of good reporting, such as objectivity, sensitivity and honesty, they were ready and raring to go.

Working almost entirely independently, the budding correspondents produced a range of interesting, balanced and topical stories covering, amongst others, science, history, sport, literature, popular culture and education. They produced news bulletins in the form of text, audio and video.

Staff, parents and students were all very positive about the day. Teachers commented on how engaged and committed the students were, and a parent wrote in to thank the school for inspiring their child to look for a possible future career in media.

Say WoW to walking

Primary school children from across Hertfordshire have donned their reporter hats and created a newsletter to celebrate the success of national charity Living Streets’ WoW scheme, introduced to get children enjoying the many benefits of walking to school.

Living Streets’ WoW (Walk once a Week) scheme has been running across the county since 2012 and has seen 118 schools take part. Over three years the walking rates across the county have increased from 57% to 70%, with over 1,069,885 journeys logged on Living Streets’ Travel Tracker, an interactive whiteboard where children can log their walk to school.

The newsletter, written by children from across the county focuses on the many benefits of walking and shares stories from children and teachers sharing how walking has made a difference to their lives. There is also a cartoon strip, a spotlight on a local school crossing patrol and a message from Living Streets’ very own mascot Strider, extending thanks to the school travel team at Hertfordshire County Council.

Terry Douris, cabinet member for highways at Hertfordshire County Council, said: “I’m delighted that Living Streets share our passion for encouraging children to walk to school. Getting pupils out of cars and on to their feet has so many benefits – it helps them to stay fit and healthy and also cuts congestion on our roads. The newsletter is a great way of teaching children about these benefits. Well done to all those who helped create it, and to any child who walks to school - keep up the good work!”

The newsletter can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/LShertsnews

School receives visit from author

Lockers Park boys’ prep school in Hemel Hempstead celebrated Book Week with a visit from children’s author, Harry Oulton whose books include A Pig Called Heather.

He talked to the boys about what inspired him to write and the joy of reading and writing, as well as the importance of using your imagination.

In addition to the visit, boys and staff dressed up as their favourite book character which meant that Mr Messy, several Harry Potters and Cats in Hats were seen to be racing around the playing fields at breaktime!

Formula 1 cars make for a thrilling maths week!

Longdean School Year 7 - 10 students were presented with various challenges for maths week, organised by Wonderstuck and members of staff from the maths department.

In teams of three or four, Year 7 and 8 students took part in building model belt driven cars following instructions, but the challenge was to use their scientific and enginerring knowledge to modify them and make them go faster.

The groups raced their cars against the clock to find the winners.

The whole experience required patience, skill and great care and it proved to be a real education for the students.

Some Year 9 students travelled virtually to Valencia in Spain to tune up Formula One cars and race 61 laps of the Grand Prix circuit.

They calculated angles of bends, lengths of straights, amount of fuel required and when to take pit stops to change tyres.

The result was a brilliant race with great calculations resulting in few crashes.

The winners will represent Longdean in the Hertfordshire race and if they do well they will go on to race against schools from the whole country to try and get to the final at the Heritage Motor Museum in Warwickshire.

Year 10 students were set a life aspirations task on budgeting. The activity was an eye opener in understanding, planning and organising income.

Other activities including solving unfamiliar problems originally posed by the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in 1500; drawing curves with a ruler; and quizzes.

Others had a memorable lesson about understanding the size of fractions, motivated by chocolate.

Students and staff enjoyed the week immensely and found the creative and fun activities to be an interesting way of learning more about mathematics.