Ladder to Law

Daniel Stone from “Ladder to Law”, came into school to work with some of our Year 10 students on Wednesday 8 June. Daniel, who is well known to many of our students is a local man who attended Oxford University. He has previously worked with our students on Enrichment Days He was speaking to Year 10 about possible career options in the field of Law and the types of skills that a future Lawyer would need.

The students had to debate such issues as “Women should be able to pay football alongside men”, and “Stop and search policies had been a fair way of reducing crime”.

There was a terrific response from the Year 10 students who were really challenged by the discussion issues and yet displayed great debating skills.

Daniel will shortly be taking up a permanent post at the University of Birmingham in their Widening Access team, so we look forward to working with him in the future.

Mr Conway

Coding With The BBC Micro:bit

The Computing and Multimedia department has recently acquired BBC micro:bit computers to help year 7 students further explore different programming languages in their Computer Science lessons. The micro:bit is a handheld, fully programmable computer with 25 red LED lights that can flash messages. There are two programmable buttons that can be used to control games or pause and skip songs on a playlist. The BBC micro:bit can detect motion and tell you which direction you’re heading in, and it can use a low energy Bluetooth connection to interact with other devices and the Internet.

Students were given an opportunity to use MicroPython. It is a completely text-based editor and the online interactive development environment allows students to begin or continue their programming journeys confidently. A selection of ‘snippets’ are on hand to help auto-complete trickier tasks and a range of premade images and music are built-in to give a helping hand with their code.

Year 7 have now begun to use the micro:bit  as an introduction to the fundamentals of computer programming and games design via Kodu, a highly intuitive graphical development environment developed by Microsoft Games Lab. They will program a game to operate using various features of the micro:bit, such as the input A and B buttons, as well as the accelerometer to control precise movement.

“I have really enjoyed today’s lesson and I am mesmerized with what is possible with this amazing piece of technology. I look forward to using the other types of code as today we only familiarized ourselves with Python.”

Manish Kaler (7G)

Microbit1 Microbit2

Queen’s Birthday Honours List

Old Boy Adil Ray has been honoured with an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. The honour has been awarded to him for services to Broadcasting and many will know Adil for his work on the BBC hit comedy show Citizen Khan as well as his other television and radio work. Congratulations!

adilray

Academy Consultation

HGS E-Newsletter (10-06-16)

Clock and Bell Tower Restored to Former Glory

The Clock and Bell Tower have recently been restored to their former and (importantly) working glory. Sadly, they have been sat idle and broken for well over a decade until half term which saw the final renovations and remedial work take place. Both Towers have seen extensive renovation work take place and the clock has been restored to working order by Smith of Derby who are a bespoke firm of clock makers with over 150 years’ experience. It is wonderful to see this aspect of Handsworth Grammar School’s tradition and ethos taking centre stage once more.

ClockTower (4)

ClockTower (6)

West Midlands Regional Champions

Following their tournament wins in the North Birmingham tournament, then winning the Birmingham County FA tournament, the Boys’ Under 16s Futsal Team won the West Midlands Regional Youth Festival on Sunday 5th June.

Futsal is a 5 a side football with a slightly heavier ball that emerged from Brazil as an ideal way of developing excellent techniques and skills.

In a tournament which included the region’s finest school and club futsal teams, the HGS team began the afternoon by drawing 1-1 with Westbury Celtic Phoenix who are the Worcestershire champions. A goal from Shuja Mehmood ensured that the team began their campaign well.

After a short break, the team then played two fifteen minute games back to back. Two goals from captain Myles Henry, and another from Shuja secured a 3-2 victory over the Birmingham Futsal Club, and this was closely followed by an excellent 4-1 win over The Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School -goals were scored by Shuja, Emile Thompson- Smith, Ettan Korpal.

Our final victory was secured against NC United who are the Shropshire champions with goals from Ettan, Shuj and Myles.

This was a fine all round performance from HGS who fielded the smallest squad in the festival.  A number of other team managers complimented the boys on their skilful and exciting performances.

As well as the goal scorers, special mention should also be made of the dominant defensive work of Taran Gill and a fine goalkeeping display from Francis Czech.

HGS were crowned West Midlands Regional Youth Futsal Champions for 2016. The team now go on to represent the West Midlands in the National Championships.

The team:

Myles Henry (Captain)

Francis Czech (Goalkeeper)

Shuja Mehmood

Taran Gill

Ettan Korpal

Emile Thompson- Smith

Mr Conway

 West Midlands Regional Champions

DofE Update

Year 10 – If you have decided that you are interested in signing up for the DofE Bronze Award. You MUST:

  • Complete the application form – from Mrs Stanton in C3 or
    Student Resources:DofErecruitmentDofE_enrolment_form
  • Pay £45 for enrolment (£19 goes to DofE, £26 to HGS for licence fees) in the black box, by Weds 8th June, with your form
  • Decide and start arranging which activity to do 1st
    • Volunteering, Physical or skill
    • See Mrs Stanton, C3 or Ms Fisher, Room 32, to check that it meets the criteria

D&T Prototype MP3 Players

Year 8 students in Design and Technology have been creating prototype MP3 players. Working through the design process students researched user opinions, set specifications and sketched ideas. Then through the process of CAD & CAM using the department’s laser cutter students created a 3D prototype of their MP3 design and generated a computer model. The project concluded with students “selling” their designs to the class and teacher in the style of Dragons Den.

DT MP3 Prototypes