Everest Author visits Northgate

by K Theobald | May 13, 2022 | Latest News, Northgate Way, Student Blog, Uncategorized

We were delighted to have successfully won a competition to host a day visit by intrepid Everest mountaineer, filmmaker and author Matt Dickinson.

Mrs Gill, Head Librarian, said, ‘Year 10 were given an informative and engaging insight into the dangers and euphoria of climbing such a perilous mountain accompanied by slides and footage from one of Matt’s expeditions. The presentation was ideally timed to link with their current AQA English GCSE non-fiction comparison text which contains an extract from his book, The Death Zone.’

‘Later Year 7s enjoyed a similar talk provoking a multitude of interesting questions relating to the climbing conditions, ecological impact and career opportunities as a writer/author. A creative writing workshop was also included for many of our Eco teams, proving that Northgate has an abundance of talented authors and were highly commended by Matt who was astounded at the level of work produced- along with myself and Miss Theobald!’

All of Matt’s books are available to borrow from the school library – although there may be a waiting list as they are proving very popular!

The competition was organised through our upcoming new Library Management System, Accessit – more details to follow shortly about this exciting move and added benefits to our school community.

Miss Theobald had the chance to step out of the Maths classroom and attend the workshop. She commented, ‘Members of the Environment Team, Earth Summit Team and Green Influencers were invited to a special workshop hosted by Matt. Some students were set a challenging task – creating a short story which had a different emotion for each part, the start, middle and end. The only element they needed to include was a high mountain environment and being lost in a storm. Students were completely engrossed in their writing, making use of dialogue, flashbacks and several literary devices, suggested by Matt. Mrs Gill and myself were on hand to hear some of the amazing pieces, as students read them out. We have some incredibly talented writers at Northgate, which can be seen from their pieces below.’

The remaining students were given the challenge of completing the sentence ‘If I went to Everest, the thing I would miss the most is …’. There were all sorts of ideas given and again, Matt was extremely impressed with their writing skills and use of language to convey what they wanted to the reader. He gave constructive feedback, tips and advice on how pieces could be improved even further.

The final task was an environmental one. Matt displayed a shocking photo of Mount Everest with a huge pile of plastic waste that had been left behind. The challenge was to create a short, snappy piece of writing (less than 50 words) to go on a poster to compel and persuade climbers and trekkers to stop leaving their litter on Everest. Our writers found this particular task more challenging than the first due to having to be concise with their words.

Matt ended by explaining that even if you are not a confident writer, you can become a better writer. The key is good, powerful descriptions and never think that your world is boring.

A truly inspiring workshop – a big thank you to Matt for working with our students.

Seren was one of the lucky students who attended the workshop and has written about her experience.

‘The author visit was really inspiring, because we got to meet someone who had been up Everest, taken pictures, and written about it! We got an opportunity to get tips from an author and we got to write a creative writing piece to share with him. We later got to create a poster, and Matt Dickinson gave us advice on how to make our writing on it appealing to the reader, as well as making them listen to the poster. We were shown a picture of a mound of rubbish on the mountain, which inspired lots of us to create our posters about the litter, as well as making us think about how to make it really effective. It was a fun visit, and we definitely learned a lot of new writing techniques, as well as being inspired to create more excellent pieces of writing. He gave us lots of advice on how to write a good story and has encouraged us to form more texts, posters and stories about things that are important to us or about Climate Change. It was a very fun and inspirational author visit.’

Below you can read the amazing short stories by some of our Year 8 and 10 students.

Northgate triumph in Institution of Engineering and Technology Faraday Challenge

by K Theobald | May 9, 2022 | Latest News, Northgate Way, Student Blog, Uncategorized

On Thursday 5th May, a strong team of Year 8 students (Amilie, Wyn, Esme, Kyra, Seren and Oscar) participated in an IET Faraday Challenge Day, hosted by Neatherd High School.

There were 4 schools from around Norfolk competing in the challenge. They arrived, eagerly anticipating what their challenge would be. Each team was given an outline of the task and then had to design, develop and construct a working prototype followed with a presentation.

All the teams throughout the challenge were exceptionally good and we are extremely pleased to announce that Northgate came out as the overall winners!

Congratulations to the whole team as they worked extremely hard and are a credit to our school.

Seren, one of the team members said of the day, ‘The STEM competition was really fun and exciting. We were given a task, which was to create something which could distract unwell or scared children from the things going on around them. We all instantly agreed on the idea of a sensory board, and so we began to build on and develop that idea. We tried to make it as accessible and as inclusive as we could! We were given ‘money’ to spend in the shop, and so we had an accountant, a project manager, someone in charge of the paperwork, and others who built our sensory board. Together, we managed to create a sensory board, which fitted the criteria and was what we had designed it to be. It was a really good experience, and was amazing to win.

Esme also enjoyed taking part in the challenge, learning new skills along the way. She commented, ‘At first, I was really nervous and stressed out about the actual making of our project. It had only just begun and we already knew what we wanted to make, but making that was really difficult. We had to make our own circuits, which I had never done before, and it wasn’t easy.’

‘Our project was all about helping children in hospital, and how to improve their stay on the ward. We came up with the idea of a sensory board, to help keep children calm and able to concentrate on that, rather than the scary things they might be going through in the hospital. We thought it was important that our invention was accessible to everyone. It included brail, lights, sound and many other features. Overall, this was an amazing experience and I enjoyed it so much. The day was really fun and it was even more fun when we won the competition!’

Kyra was a keen member of the team and said of the experience, ‘For the Faraday Challenge, not only did we need to work as a cohesive team but we also needed to come up with a design that no engineer had ever seen before. Although we didn’t have all the components to create our full creative design we managed to create a bright and colourful prototype of our sensory board. Initially, we all came up with different aspects of the project but in the end, we combined our ideas of bright LEDs, a calming buzzing sound and a cheerful nature design with flowers and bees. The actual shape of the board was a honeycomb fragment to give it a more engaging and appealing aesthetic but also to follow our theme. The biggest contributor to our winning score was our organisation of recording our development of the sensory board and we even got the first full score on paperwork in the history of the competition! We were only one point away from getting to the finals in Liverpool where the Alder Hay Hospital was constructed with the design of a small group of school children like ourselves. Working with IET for their Faraday Challenge was a truly inspiring experience and has made me really interested in engineering.’

Breckland Councillors receive special recycled plastic plaque

by K Theobald | May 9, 2022 | Latest News, Northgate Way, Student Blog, Uncategorized

In July 2021 Northgate High School were awarded a £10,000 Breckland grant to purchase a plastic recycling machine. Breckland Council Leader, Sam Chapman-Allen, Ian Sherwood, Member Champion for Breckland Sustainable Strategy and Councillor Hilary Bushell recently visited Northgate to see the machine in action.

Year 8 students, Amilie, Esme and Kyra were on hand to demonstrate how the machine works – shredding plastic, such as milk bottles and yoghurt pots into plastic shavings and then melting into plastic sheets. These sheets are being used in various Design Technology projects by students and this is allowing the Design department to promote the recycling and reusing message.

Mr Mottley, who is in charge of Design Technology commented, ‘We are asking pupils and staff to bring in various types of plastics like milk bottles to recycle in our plastic shredder/sheet maker. In lessons, students will be able to shred the plastic and make new reusable plastic to make products like bird houses, speaker casings and clocks. We want our department to be as sustainable and carbon neutral as possible and recycling plastic is a fantastic way to achieve this goal.’  A group of committed students regularly sort and process the items, with support from the Technology Department.

Kyra, who has been involved with the scheme said, ‘Having the opportunity to help the environment is always fulfilling. One of the many great environmental benefits of our plastic recycling machine is that we are doing three helpful things without taking much extra effort. Firstly, we are reducing waste, secondly, we can make new items to be used around school and finally we are saving money by using recycled plastic sheets in our Design Technology lessons. Recycling plastic is also a great way to get involved in practising with machinery and learning to manufacture a flexible material.’ 

Esme, also Year 8, who is part of the School Environment Team commented, ‘Having the plastic machine is really great, we can reuse all the old plastic we don’t need and make really cool projects using the bright coloured plastic. Talking to the councillors was exciting as we got to share our progress and what we have accomplished using the machine. We demonstrated the machine and what we can make using the shredded plastic. Hopefully in the near future they can come back and see just how much we have done and how hard we have worked to save our environment.’

The Councillors were presented with a special plaque, featuring the town’s deer head, made from recycled plastic.