EN BON ESPOYR

Issue 43 - March 2016

Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar SchoolAshbourne, Derbyshire

Bringing Academy News to the CommunityQEGS PRESSEngineering In Motion

Follow us on Twitter@QEGS_Ashbourne

Congratulations to Team Dim3nsion from QEGS who have reached the National Finals of the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) 4X4 Challenge to be held at Silverstone ‘Wing’ Conference suite next month.The challenge is to promote STEM within schools, with a bias towards promoting Engineering. Our Team Dim3nsion have been working on their RC Land Rover design since the end of summer 2015 term and have designed, prototyped and developed a vehicle which uses a Raspberry Pi programmer and 3-D printed body as its technical innovation.To get to the National finals, Team Dim3nsion were awarded a judging discretionary award, following their entry and display at the North West Regional Final held on 23rd February at the JLR Halewood Merseyside facility.There are 6 regional finals held across the UK and team Dim3nsion will face very tough competition from winners and other discretionary winners of the Advanced class group, which is open to entrants from schools, colleges and universities at the National Final in April.

Thanks go to our team sponsors JCB, who have provided both financial and resources support to enable Team Dim3nsion to get this far. Hopefully, the team will return with another award following their final day. Whatever the outcome, the Team’s experience in undertaking this challenge will be invaluable, and their hard work and commitment are exemplary. We are all very proud of their achievement.

Wed 16th - Sat 19th March 2016 7:30pm

QEGS Main Hall

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Great Big Dance OffA group of 30 girls and boys from Years 7, 8 and 9 performed in the Great Big Dance Off in February, competing against several other schools from across the East Midlands. They had been rehearsing for a few months and put a lot of time and energy in to their performance. On the night they thoroughly enjoyed

themselves on stage, as well as watching the other dances - eyeing up the competition! The group got a really high score and we are awaiting the results to see if we have got in to the National Final against schools across the country ... keep your fingers crossed!

Annual Construction Skills Competition 2016Some of our Key Stage 4 students have been nominated in the annual Construction Skills competition 2016 on Friday 11th March. This

competition is a great way to showcase the talent and skills of our Year 10 and 11 students. Good luck to all taking part.

DANCE4: Centre for Advanced(CAT) Training Workshop

A practitioner from the CAT program at Dance4 in Nottingham came to work with the Year 10 GCSE Dance students on a technical and choreography workshop. Students were given a rigorous technique class, challenging their capabilities and pushing their own limitations. Students thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were able to use the material they developed from composition in their solo choreographies for their GCSE.

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Inter-House Maths Competition 2016The morning of 17th February saw 80 students from Years 7 to 11, as well as 20 sixth form helpers, gathering in the hall for the second running of the Inter-House maths competition.Teams of four students in each year group, from each house, were competing over a number of tasks through the day, with the marks being combined to award the trophy (donated by The University of Derby) to the highest scoring house. Spalden were defending the trophy, after a strong showing in 2015.The first round saw the teams working together on a set of problems that they had to get completely correct to gain the marks for each one. The 50 minutes allocated were enough for the Year 7 Spalden team to get all correct answers and a maximum of 60 marks; for Cokayne, Year 8 and 10 students also scored well, with over 50 marks. After round 1, Cokayne, with 200 points, were just ahead of Spalden with 196 points.Round 2 was the cross number round; each team was split into pairs with one pair solving “across” clues, and the other pair solving “down” clues. The maximum 60 marks on this round went to Year 11 Spalden, with all the Year 7 teams, and Year 11 in Boothby and Hull not far behind. After this round, Spalden had pulled ahead of Cokayne, with 458 points to 430.After morning break came Round 3, the mini relay, where the answer to each question in a set of 4 depends on getting the previous question correct. All the Year 7 teams sailed through their questions to get maximum marks, as did most of the Year 10 teams. Year 10 Boothby even completed some of the Year 11 questions!In Round 4, the organisers responded to feedback from last year and allowed the use of calculators. This round was based on the number problems in the TV programme Countdown. All year groups had the same 10 problems to complete, with 5 minutes on each problem. There were some great individual performances, especially from Zizi Peck in Year 7 and

Oliver Reed in Year 11, helping their teams to top scores of 74 and 78 out of 80, respectively.After lunch, the year groups in each house were mixed up for the final whole house round, to find various categories of number (square, Fibonacci, prime, etc) from the numbers between 500 and 1500. Boothby were strong finishers in this round, with Cokayne dropping back somewhat. At this stage, we were very pleased to welcome Dr Lynn Senior, Dean of the College of Education at the University of Derby. (Lynn declined our offer to try out some of the tasks, preferring to observe and talk to some of the students instead!)Some final calculation of scores brought us to the results:Year group winners were:Year 7: Spalden (Evie Selby, Amelia Bridge, Cameron Grady and Alexander Mills)Year 8: Cokayne (Aaron Buckler, Emily Pitts, Sam Kirk and Evie Broom)Year 9 joint winners: Cokayne (Ben Horwood, Scott Shelton, Adam Partlett and Rebecca Harry) and Hull (Joe Reed, Adrian Lamb, Millie Heras and Eleanor Kelly)Year 10: Cokayne (Georgina Chamberlain, Charlie Washington, David Denny and Ben Stevens)Year 11: Hull (Oliver Reed, Alex Cranstone, Jamie Lomas and Amy Wood).Next, Dr Senior presented a trophy to the top performer in each house; these were chosen with the help of the sixth formers working with each team and were given to:Boothby – Zizi Peck (Year 7), Cokayne – Georgina Chamberlain (Year 10), Hull – Oliver Reed (Year 11), and Spalden – Cameron Grady (Year 7).Finally, the house trophy went, for the second year running, to Spalden. It was presented by Dr Senior to team captains Sam Glossop and Beth Peers.

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Health & Safety - Vehicles on siteTo safeguard our students, we have restricted vehicular access to the top tier of the academy car park between 8.50am and 4.10pm. If you need to visit the academy during these times and need to park in a disabled parking space, please ring ahead where possible and speak to our Receptionist, who will make arrangements for you to be able to do so.

During a normal academy day, vehicle movement is restricted to emergencies only during the following times: 8.40am - 8.50am, 11.00am - 11.20am, 1.25pm - 2.25pm and 3.45pm - 4.10pm.

Thank you for your co-operation

Netball: QEGS vs Abbotsholme U14 29-0 - U16 20-13

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forTHCoMING EVENTSTErM: Mon 4th Jan - Wed 23rd March 2016

Wed 16th Mar - Sat 19th Mar - Hairspray

Wed 23rd Mar - Academy closes for Easter at 3.55pm

Thurs 24th Mar - INSET Day - Academy Closed

Mon 11th Apr - Academy Re-Opens

Mon 25th Apr - Year 8 Parents’ Consultation Evening

Thu 28th Apr - Years 7 & 8 Junior Maths Challenge

Mon 2nd May - Academy Closed: May Day

Tue 3rd May - 7.15pm FPTA Meeting

PCE feedbackIt was good to see so many parents and students at the recent Y11 and Y9 PCEs. Parental feedback was positive following the re-location of all staff into one building, and also the fact that email or phone call-backs can be requested if a suitable appointment slot isn’t available. We hope to continue to improve PCEs and are grateful for the feedback already received.

Year 9 students raise money for Macmillan Cancer Katie Cresswell and Zoe Martin have been raising money for Macmillan Cancer during February. They both decided to give up sugar, chocolate, sweets, biscuits and fizzy drinks for the whole month. Both families and the academy are very proud of the girls for doing this and they have raised between £300 and £400.

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At QEGS, we appreciate that parents welcome all opportunities to visit the academy. With this in mind,during this academic year we plan to hold termly coffee mornings, to which parents are cordially invited.Each coffee morning will have different foci, which parents will hopefully find useful and of interest.

The next scheduled coffee mornings are:

Fri 18• th Mar - Focus STEM

Fri 20• th May - Focus TBC

Fri 15• th Jul - Focus TBC

CoffEE MorNINGS9.30am - 11.00am