Enterprise Week 2006 at New Mills School

Year 7 Designing the new Programme for the School Concert

On Enterprise Day 7S produced various programme designs for the next school concert.

Resources included – Paper/Card in various colours, felt pens or pencils, reprographics price list, facts to be used in the programme, imagination!

We discussed

This lovely class also produced some rainbow posters to advertise to Year 7’s that we are still looking for winners and these are about to be displayed.

Tamandra Ford

Y7 Design Technology Bridge Building

During their tutor time Year 7 students had been involved in a team building assignment to build a tower as tall as possible using basic materials such as plastic straws, tape etc.

It was decided to develop this theme by using some of the principles learnt in the tower exercise to design and build a bridge. The students were presented with a small selection of materials and a set amount of cash to buy components. They were asked to design and construct a bridge. The most successful bridge would be judged in respect to the load that the bridge could support.

Phil Dangerfield

Y8 Relocation Challenge

On Enterprise Day a representative from Alken Engineering came in and set the brief for our Y8 relocation challenge — students had to find a new site for a new factory in New Mills.

By the end of the day, students had to give a presentation to Alken explaining which site they had chosen and why. Tasks carried out during the day included fieldwork (questionnaires, environmental quality survey and car and pedestrian counts), PowerPoint presentations and marketing and advertising.

Jim Searle, the representative from Alken Engineering, came back in the afternoon to judge the presentations. The company donated £50 for the winning team. Mr Searle was very impressed by the standard of work put into presentations—an excellent day!

Jemma Gower

Y9 Jaguar Maths Challenge

On Enterprise Day the Mathematics Department took on all the year 9 pupils for the day. The pupils took part in the Jaguar challenge.

The pupils were split into two groups, one group stayed with Miss Fagin in Room 5 and the other stayed with Miss Elliott in M6. The pupils had two hours to prepare their cars for the BIG race in room 5 where the two groups would race against each other. When the pupils arrived they were put into groups of two and were told that they were representatives of car manufacturers, this would become their team name e.g. Volvo, BMW, Ford etc.

The task involved the pupils dealing with angles, estimations, percentages, conversions, basic arithmetic, decimals, metric conversions and much more. Pupils were given a car that they had to drive around Silverstone race track. The pupils were given two hours to estimate the length/angle of each of the 20 features of Silverstone. Pupils also learnt a little about car mechanics, e.g. aerodynamic downforce, working out the miles per litre of fuel required for the car to race around the track 25 times, tuning the engine, and looking at the suspension and gear ratio.

The whole event was very successful and all the pupils really enjoyed the session.

A big thank you to Deborah Fagin for her hours of effort in making doing Maths for half a day with Year 9 fun!

Year 10 Make Your Mark Challenge

A select group of year 10 vocational studies pupils took part in the Make your Mark Challenge on Enterprise day. On the morning of the challenge, schools log on and find out the topic for the days activities. This year students were given the instruction to ‘have fun and make a ton’.

The groups came up with some fantastic ideas including a lunch box with an integral whiteboard to allow children to play games and write messages to each other, a chip shop fork with a serrated knife edge, a car accessory to make cleaning the car easier and lots of ideas to refurbish the Mill on the Torrs with hotel rooms, gymnasium, and outdoor activities. The winning group redesigned the mill as a mini Trafford Centre with restaurants, bowling and ice skating.

The students learnt many skills from the day, including team work, communication skills, marketing and presentation skills.

The quality of the final presentations made choosing an overall winner a very tough decision, but the overall choice was unanimous. Well done to the winning team, Lloyd Haytack, Jennie Trueman, Emma Willerton, Dan Walters and Tom Richardson

A video of the planning and presentations was made and can be viewed in school.

Anne-Marie McCarley

Year 11 – Stop Motion Animation

Students arranged themselves into small groups and were given the task of making a short animated film using plasticine figures.

They had to develop a storyline and decide on characters involved, then create the various figures out of different coloured plasticine. The still pictures were captured using web cams and then put into a piece of software called “Frames”. Between capturing still photographs the figures were moved a tiny amount and thus when the movies were replayed the illusion of motion was created.

Most groups also made some scenery as a backdrop using plain card and coloured pencils. One group actually found pictures off the Internet and printed this out in colour, which made for a very effective way of creating the scenery.

All groups also added music clips to play for the duration of their films, some added transitions between sections of their film, while some superb effects were created with rolling credits and typed commentaries.

Martin Wadsworth

Year 11 – Drama

A group of Year 11 students spent the day devising, rehearsing and then performing a piece of "Theatre in Education" to a group of Year 5 and 6 pupils from a local primary school.

The theme was "If I knew then, what I know now ....".

After the performance there was a feedback session where the visiting children could comment about the performance and ask questions about becoming a Year 7 student. A great time was had by all!

Laura Musson & Alison Barker

Y11 Junior Sport Leaders

18 Year 11 students from last year's Junior Sport Leaders group ran team building, leadership and communication activities for all our Year 7 students on Enterprise Day.

The year 7 students were set varying challenges in the course of their session planned and developed by the sports leaders. The activities that the year 7 students took part in ranged from team problem solving in both the warm-up phase of the session and in navigating an obstacle course, teamwork and leadership experience in developing a team game and developing their communication skills when leading a blindfolded individual and group around a circuit of the sports hall.

Ian Hamilton

Year 12 and 13 Stock Market Challenge Day

On Tuesday 14th November all Sixth Form students participated in the stock market challenge, the hall was transformed into a trading floor and S5 was transformed into a news room.

Students were in groups of approximately 8 and had to invest £100,000 in the FTSE 100. There were four rounds and each round represented a day on the stock market. The students who made most money in each round won £50.

Groups were required to buy their shares from stockbrokers and the newsroom issued news bulletins throughout the day, which of course affected share prices. Students took the challenge very seriously often using mobile phones to communicate with their team members from the newsroom so they could keep ahead of the game.

The winners of Round 1 were ‘Morris and Sons Ltd’ and Round 2 was ‘Get Rich Without Trying’. A special congratulations to ‘Seven’ which consisted of: - James Stevens, James Harris, Edward Brierly, William Handford, Tom Brook, Dan Hindle and Shaun Brewin who won both Round 3 and 4 walking away with a £100. ‘Seven’ were the only group who made a profit in the last round, all the others lost money- thank goodness they were not investing for real!