Our third ‘Masterclass’ event took place this week across three separate school sites across our Trust.
The day brought a number of secondary school students together from all over the Trust and it was a chance to enjoy some fun activities, be stimulated and take a deeper dive into certain subjects.
The masterclasses were held at Nene Park Academy, North Cambridge Academy and Sharnbrook Academy, covering a variety of subjects aimed at students in Years 7-10.
The specialist activities were led by our curriculum leaders, with the aim of getting students to think about their career interests and possible specialisms in the future.
A bit more about some of the activities that took place…
Science:
Students from Sharnbrook Academy, Lincroft Academy and The Ferrers School tackled several Science problems to solve 4-digit padlocks.
By using their science knowledge and team-working skills, students were able to crack a series of codes to solve a padlock on their own wooden box. Inside the box was a small prize plus clues to solve and unlock the treasure chest!
It was wonderful to see our students working so collaboratively in their teams to crack the codes. As the competition reached its climax we had teams from each of our schools who were racing to unlock the treasure chest.
James Brown, Science Curriculum Director for Meridian Trust said “What a wonderful way to end our series of hub events! Lincroft set a new record for completing the first challenge and another team from Lincroft were crowned the winners. Our runners-up were a team from Sharnbrook and it really was so close as to who would get the final clues! Huge thanks to the wonderful teachers and technicians from Sharnbrook who hosted the event”.
Careers:
Future engineers from Northstowe Secondary College, Ely College, Swavesey Village College and North Cambridge Academy participated in an exciting Design Challenge in collaboration with Bloodhound Education.
The students were set a challenge to make the fastest rocket powered car. After learning about friction, aerodynamics and weight small teams set to work to design and build their prototype air-powered rocket car.
The workshop allowed students to experience and learn from the engineering cycle, testing their solutions and improving them interactively. Students demonstrated skills including resilience as they did not give up and tried again if it didn’t work out.
Teamwork was key to achieving the best possible solution (within the given constraints) to solve the problem of whose car could travel the furthest distance. One team of young engineers were crowned ‘the winners’ with their engineered rocket car reaching 22.8 metres!
Students gained great insight into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Careers which is increasingly referred to as STEAM with the ‘A’ standing for ‘Art’ – a key factor when thinking about the aesthetics of a new product brought to market.
History:
Students enjoyed a visit from Rosanna and Jennie, from the Fitzwilliam Museum who bought along resources to help students learn about transatlantic slavery, race and diversity. The objects prompted some good discussions and students got the chance to plan out their own exhibition spaces to display the objects.
Visual Arts:
The Art Masterclass was hosted at Nene Park Academy, where Year 7 students were introduced to a new print making process using a ‘jelly plate’. They were able to experiment with colour, layering and image-transferring techniques. A really interactive and enjoyable session!
Modern Foreign Languages:
MFL students from across 4 schools took part in a Languages Challenge – think ‘University-Challenge-meets-The-Chase’!
In their mixed school and mixed language teams, they had to answer questions in and on French, German and Spanish and also about cultural aspects of the countries where those languages are spoken. After round one, students had a break where they had the opportunity to talk to students from the other schools as well as to take part in a song titles quiz. The music quiz proved very popular! Finally, the teams competed in a second round, when the translation got trickier… The final winning team had 3700 points! Well done to all students who took part. It was great to see them interacting so well across the schools and working very hard.
PE & Sports:
Nene Park Academy hosted a mixed Handball tournament for year 9 students. Students completed specific warm-up activities before competing in a round-robin tournament to put their handball skills to the test! Congratulations to Stamford Welland, who were the overall winners and thank you to all schools who took part in an enjoyable afternoon of sport.
Maths:
Keen mathematicians from Meridian Trust schools took part in a mathematical code breaking activity. Each team consisted of students from a mixture of schools. A team from Lincroft Academy and Sharnbrook Academy where the first to crack the code and win the prize! Well done to them and all of the students who took part.
