Sports Day 2019
Well done to all the students who participated in Sports Day and congratulations to all the winners. A special congratulations to the following record breakers.
Year 7:
7 Alfred – 4x100m relay
Basel Ziyara – 7A – Javelin
Jamie Callaghan – 7N – Discus
Mahammed Faheem – 7A – Speed bounce (new event)
Year 8:
Nigel Agboola – 8H – 200m
Zane Baker – 8G – Speed bounce (new event)
Year 9:
Abdul Kazmi – 9N – 100m
9 Nelson – 4x100m relay
Adam Khan – 9N – Shot put
Chabota Changula – 9G – Speed bounce (new event)
Year 10:
Divine Wodi – 10N – Long jump
Keir Musuwa – 10W – Discus [New overall record]
Lewis Goddard – 10H – Speed bounce (new event) [New overall record]
Dovedale Trip
On Friday 28th June, all of Year 8 made the journey up to the Peak District. Starting at the stepping stones in Dovedale, we walked south, taking in the scenery. You could find marine fossils in the stepping stones, if you looked closely. This is evidence to show that the British Isles was once submerged underwater as it travelled up from Antarctica over a billion years, to where we are today.
The air was clean, fresher than most urban areas that usually give off many particles full of dust and pollutants. For this reason, national parks are a great place to relax, especially for those who work in major urban cities and towns in a busy environment.
Next we carried on until we reached limestone arch where we learned about how it was formed. Firstly, a deep crack penetrates the limestone layer; then, the crack widens due to the weathering process from acid rain. The acidic rainwater continually dissolved the limestone. This combined with freeze thaw weathering causes a small arch to form. This arch continues to widen as weathering continues. Eventually, the base will widen so much that the arch will collapse.
As we carried on, we passed Ilam Rock and studied its shape. The 25 metre high rock is the fossilised remains of sea creatures that lived in the shallow tropical lagoon. We were amazed about how it formed and it shape.
Next, we stopped at the Dove Holes to take a break while learning about how these caves formed: rainwater picks up carbon dioxide from the air and as it filters through the soil, turns into a weak acid. This slowly dissolves out the limestone along the joints, bedding planes and fractures, some of which become enlarged enough to form caves.
As we carried on we passed Ravens’ Tor where we learned about its formation:
- First of all the rainwater fills up the cracks in the rocks
- Second of all at night the temperatures drop causing the water to freeze and expand, making the rock weaker
- After it causes the rocks to shatter creating debris
- Next repeating the process makes what we can see today.
To end our journey we reached Milldale: a nice and quiet village where there was no litter at all. Milldale is at the bottom of a fairly steep hill and has a minor stench (only the animals!).
Overall we enjoyed our journey to Dovedale, learning about the history and the rocks. We would like to give an extra special thank you to the Geography Department for organising such an amazing trip.
Muhammad Yaqub, 8 Alfred
Legacy
Following on from the success of LEGACY 2018, the ‘community action’ programme attracted more than 30 students to compete for the title of WINNER of LEGACY 2019.
The aim of this programme is to establish two competing teams, each with their own community action project, to raise awareness of and/or improve, however little, the lives of people in the community. The two teams for this academic year were Project Relief and Team Utopia.
Members of Project Relief tackled the issue of ‘homelessness’ in Birmingham – a project they inherited from last year’s team ‘Project Reform’ who won LEGACY 2018. They organized themselves into four sub-teams, each with its own team leader: Communications Team, Promotions Team, Media Team, and Finance Team. All four teams worked closely with each other to organize various fundraising events through weekly meetings and via Microsoft OneNote – a cloud-based collaboration tool. The fundraising events included a bake sale, sporting events, workshops, assemblies, social media pages, penny collection, and field visits to various charities and soup kitchens including Sifa Fireside, Let’s Feed Brum, Homeless One, and Tooting Community Kitchen. Their efforts culminated in more than 100 care packages that contained many items and toiletries for both males and females along with written messages to liven their spirits, which they gave out to the homeless at an event organized by Homeless One – a charity that provides hot meals to the homeless.
Team Utopia chose to focused their efforts on raising awareness about ‘Mental health’ issues and help dispel the taboo associated with it. To do this, they organized themselves into four sub-teams, each with its own team leader: Content Production Team, Media Team, Communications Team, and Finance Team. All four teams worked closely with each other to organize various awareness workshops and assemblies through weekly meetings and via Microsoft OneNote. These included assemblies and workshops with KS3 and Year 10 students both at KEVI HGS for Boys and KEVI Handsworth for Girls, at various times in the year including Enrichment Days at school. They also did a bake sale as a joint fundraising venture with Project Relief to raise funds for their bespoke hoodies, and to give to their chosen mental health charity. Furthermore, in their efforts to raise awareness of their project they also created a YouTube channel and an Instagram page to document their journey and penned an article piece in the school’s Bridge Magazine.
On Wednesday 12th June 2019, both teams went head-to-head in front of a panel of judges comprised of Dr. Bird (Headmaster), Dr. Stephens (Chair of Governing Body) and Prof. Biddlestone (former Vice Chair of Governing Body). During this FINAL PITCHING CHALLENGE, both teams took turns to present their Digital Story (video) followed by a digitally aided, verbal presentation and finished with a round of grueling questions by the judges. Both teams did a terrific job overall and the judges took a long time to deliberate and judge each team against three keys areas: Personal Development (key personal skills and qualities), Social Impact, and Presentation. It was a closely contested challenge with both teams scoring maximum points for two out of the three categories and one team scoring one point less for Presentation. Our congratulations to Project Relief for winning LEGACY 2019.
Both teams did a terrific job this year to establish their own Legacy in the community. In fact, Team Utopia will be continuing their project into next year and will lead several workshops on Mental Health in September during the Y12 Induction Days in collaboration with Mr. Bird (Head of Sixth Form).
Mr. F. Ahmed
(Head of Enrichment Studies)
Space . . . the final frontier!
The National Space Centre in Leicester was a great trip as we all learnt many things about space and Earth’s satellites. First, we arrived at the space centre and saw the great view of the rocket from outside the building; it looked cool and was huge. It had a glass chamber around it, and the visitors looked like little ants walking around the different parts of the rocket. We then arrived at the entrance and went inside. We were welcomed by the staff and we all were staring at the cool mini games we could play and the gigantic Earth globe. We were able to play on the games and look around and we saw many satellites which had been in space. We then went to learn about many things about satellites and Earth in a special workshop. We learnt how objects orbit other objects like a satellite (the moon or a man-made satellite) orbits the Earth. We also had to work out where to place the satellite and moon in comparison to a small Earth, and we guessed the moon close enough to where it was supposed to be, but we were totally wrong about the satellite! It needed to be placed so close to the Earth, it was touching.
We were able to look around the gadgets and information, and the coolest of them all was the satellite we could control on a little piece of land which was said to be Mars – not the real Mars! We had to do little missions and collect materials and move the satellite around. But the problem was that everyone was crowding around it, so it took a while to play on it… There was some information about our planet’s closest group of stars and other information about the planets in our solar system. We also visited the planetarium. This was a different experience as we could tilt back on the seats and look up at the circular screen and observe the whole planetarium. It was a weird journey through the movie, as we first saw the bloodstream of human veins, and later a rocket in. We learnt that to be an astronaut, you must train underwater as being in the water is like being in space. Then after training they are sent off to space and while they are in zero gravity, they must train to make sure their muscles don’t waste away. If they don’t exercise when they come back to Earth, they won’t be able to walk. It was an amazing experience and was funny at the end when the cartoon characters were tested to see what would happen in space if you didn’t have oxygen, heaters and a door on the spacecraft.
After the Planetarium we went and looked around the tall rocket which involved climbing 146 steps to see the top of the rocket. There were also some gadgets and games we could play there as well but there was mainly information about rockets. We ate our lunch in the lunch hall and then went to buy things in the shop. I bought a mini 3D picture of our solar system which looks amazing, and there were all sorts of other things like, pens, pencils, posters, pictures, stationery, and even chocolate and sweets. At the end of the day, we had time for one last look before returning to Earth! It was an amazing trip and I would like to visit again.
Darius Ehssan 8N
