Churston Grammar
April Newsletter - Parent Update
Year 9 Interhouse Chemistry Challenge
Chemical Clock
Year 9 students have excelled in the ‘Chemical Clock’ inter-form competition. Two students from each tutor group were set the challenge of devising a mixture of solutions that would change colour after exactly 1 minute. Details of the complex reaction were provided to each team – not for the faint-hearted!
Following 20 minutes of experimentation, the students had to demonstrate their reactions in front of Dr Hall and Mr Skelly and the team closest to 1 minute were declared the winners. The results were incredibly close, with 3rd and 4th place separated by just one hundredth of a second. However, the 9S team of Sam Jordan and Jason Christoforou were the clear winners with a time of 59.63s – less than half a second away from the target time. Congratulations to all the students who took part.
Rhys Progresses in the Rotary Young Photographer Competition
Rhys Hurd in Year 12 has won the local heat of the 'Rotary Young Photographer' competition. He will now progress to the District Competiton and, depending on the result, the National Final.
Rhys submitted three pictures in response to the theme ‘A Different Perspective’. The first, a spiral staircase, was taken at South Devon College as part of his A-Level Photography Architecture project. The second was the old church roof at Torre Abbey, and the third was taken at Sagrada Familia in Spain when on the recent school music tour in July 2017.
Rhys is also running a photography club on Tuesday lunchtimes for any students in Year 9-11, in C3. Everyone is welcome.
Trialling New Technology in the Classroom
Churston has been lucky enough to take part in a trial of some fantastic new technology – a 75inch Interactive Multitouch Whiteboard. We are one of the first schools in the South West to trial this state-of-the-art learning tool.
The board is being used by many different subject areas during the trial period – to see how it engages students to be more interactive when learning within the current curriculum, and allows staff to teach concepts in new and exciting ways.
In this morning’s Year 7 maths class on 3D shapes, students could spin, move and turn the shapes bringing the usual 2D shapes we see on a normal screen or within pages of a book, to life. And as a result the students were able to grasp the concept of surfaces, edges and vertices in an alternative way.
The students then went on to take part in an interactive quiz game with multiple users, challenging and testing what they had just learnt.
Welcome to Cyber Discovery
Cyber Discovery, HM Government's Cyber Schools Programme, is an extracurricular learning programme for students in years 10-13 across England. Its goal is to ensure that many more people enter the cyber security profession in the coming years.
30 students from CFGS enrolled on the first Assess stage of Cyber Discovery in December 2017. Student comments:
“It is really good – it helps our minds to work in a problem-solving way”
“An amazing opportunity; a fun way to learn and it’s good to compete against other students.”
Based on their score in the Assess Stage, Cyber Discovery has now invited 17 of these students to continue to the Game stage. The Game stage features over 120 cyber security challenges for the students to tackle. Congratulations to these 17 students and Good Luck with the Games Challenges!
Swiss Snowboarding and Ski Fun!
International Women's Day Celebrations
On Thursday 8th March, Churston joined the ranks of women, and men, all over the world in #PressForProgress this year’s campaign for International Women’s Day. In a quest to promote gender parity and highlight possibility, students were invited to talks and workshops given by a number of successful and inspiring women. The message was clear: ‘we will press for progress and celebrate women’s achievements’.
Ex student, now BBC Introducing presenter and freelance journalist Sarah Gosling gave a practical and frank talk discussing her career path, her feminist stance and how she has dealt with sexism in the workplace.
Award-winning, television commercial producer Sally Humphries enthralled Year 8 explaining the importance of budgeting and technical accuracy when making a commercial recreating one of the most famous moments of WW1 - the Christmas truce - for supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.
Finally, Churston was delighted to welcome Astro to Atlantic - the four female teammates from Kingsbridge and Salcombe Hockey club who are planning to row 3000 miles across the Atlantic to raise money for the Devon Air Ambulance Trust. In order to raise money several staff and students pitted themselves against another ex student, gold medallist, Giselle Ansley, in a 500m row sprint challenge!
It was an incredibly positive and uplifting day as students gained understanding for their capabilities to bring change and that greater gender equality will have enormous benefits for everyone.
Torbay Schools Festival of Performing Arts
Churston take part in the event every year as it is always a wonderfully entertaining evening, a great opportunity for our students to perform to a large local audience and a wonderful way to showcase Churston's highly regarded music and arts faculty.
Young Enterprise Tenner Challenge
Results will follow in next terms newsletter.
Mrs Wills
Head of Business and Economics
Maths Challenge at Exmouth Community College
They were a real credit to our school - immaculately behaved and faced every challenge positively.
There were 4 rounds: Group Round, Crossnumber, Shuttle and Relay. There were some very difficult maths questions which required them to work in a mixture of pairs and as a group.
They came 17th out of the 27 schools! They will each be awarded a certificate and also got a pencil case and pen each.
Churston Attend SWAT Challenge Event at Colyton Grammar School
A team of four; Hannah Gorman, Megan Caunter, Connor Cornish and Ben Lavers, Churston’s SWAT ambassadors, took part in the SWAT challenge. It consisted of teams from different schools giving presentations on the question “How can Britain sustain its economic prosperity, social harmony and international standing in a post-Brexit world?". Each team had 10 minutes to deliver their presentation to 9 other schools and a panel of judges. Additionally they were given an unknown challenge on the day which they had to add to the end of their presentation.
The Churston team were magnificent - they spoke clearly and articulately and came up with some interesting, innovative and well-thought out ideas, composing their argument expertly. However despite their very positive feedback from the judging panel, the field was tremendously strong and the Churston Team were pipped to the post by Torquay Girls' Grammar School. A fantastic effort all round, and a great experience for all students involved.
Tennis Team Win Against Taunton School!
The CFGS boys tennis team have been entered into the National Schools Competition (The Glanville Cup) this year. We have four fantastic players representing the school, Joel While, Elliot Owers, Callum McGuiness and Oliver Biggs. They recently played their first round match against Taunton School. The match was tied at 6 rubbers each, resulting in a tie-break ten, the tennis version of a penalty shootout. Joel and Oliver held their nerve to win the tie break 10 points to 5! Well done boys!
We face Truro School in a home match in the next round of the competition on the 18th April.
Other new picture galleries:
Churston Ferrers Grammar School
Email: secretary@churston.torbay.sch.uk
Website: www.churstongrammar.com
Phone: 01803 842289