Autumn - Queen Katherine School

Design and Technology News
Another Arkwright
Jonathan Cook in Year 12 has recently been
awarded an Arkwright scholarship.
This is an award for students who show prowess
in the field of engineering and have chosen to
study a combination of D&T, Mathematics or
Physics at A-Level. Jonathan was presented with
his award during half term at the Institute of
Electrical Engineers in London.
This is the fifth time that a student from Queen
Katherine has gained this prestigious award. If
other students are considering a career in engineering and are considering following this
pattern of A-Levels please see Mr Bell for further details.
Young Engineers for Britain
Students from Queen Katherine School Young Engineers (YE) came away from the
above event with in excess of £2000 worth in cash and prizes at the National Celebration
of Engineering at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich on Sept 11th.
4 students, Ben Stuart, Peter
Butcher, Liam Moffat and Niall
Till, from Y9 and Y10 (who were
representing the 15 or so students
who regularly take part in club
activities and competitions) won
£200 as runners-up in the ‘New
club of the year’ category. They
added another £250 to this by
being judged to have the best
teamwork that was observed
during a two-hour-long problem-solving activity. They were presented with two cut-glass
trophies and the cheques by Linda Sanford (a Senior Vice President of IBM) who had
flown over specially for the awards ceremony.
The School entered a series
of photographs, after an internal
YE competition, of wind
turbines taken by Jacob Deane
for a competition run jointly by
Young Engineers and The
Royal Academy of Engineering
(in remembrance of the 200th
anniversary of the birth of
Isembard Kingdom Brunel).
Jacob Deane
receives his award
Jacob won his age group category
and with it also the top
overall prize of £1000 (to be
D&T teacher Mr. Weightman receives
his award for his winning photo of
Jacob’s entry
split between him and the school) In addition to this he won a
compact digital camera worth around £150. On top of this the school won an 8 mega
pixel SLR digital camera and printer docking station worth around £500.
Young Engineers are a nationwide organisation who promote engineering activities in
schools. There are hundreds of clubs in schools up and down the country. The organisation
has a variety of major sponsors, including Airbus, BAA, The Royal Navy, Lloyds
of London, to name but a few. Engineering is promoted by competitions, resources and
sponsorship.
Year 8 Visit to Normandy
The 25th Year 8 visit to
Normandy took place in
October.
Once again, the party stayed
at the Château du Baffy, near
Caen, and completed language
talks as well as visiting Paris,
the Bayeux Tapestry and other
sites of interest and having a
generally good time!
The group at Pegasus Bridge, near Caen
Magistrates Court
competition
This year, QKS reached the North West finals at
Manchester… one of the QKS team members, Ali Sadek,
takes up the story.
“A group of thirteen year eight and nine students from
the Queen Katherine School found great success in the
2006 Magistrates Court Mock Trial Competition. After
winning both the local and regional heats at Kendal
Magistrates court, we found ourselves competing in the
national finals at Trafford Magistrates Court against
hundreds of greatly talented students from all around
the U.K.
We are all very proud to have been the only Queen
Katherine team ever to reach the national finals, and I
can’t express enough how much we all appreciate the
fantastic help from Mrs. McIntosh and Miss Atkinson.
Saturday 24th June finally arrived and we all met at the
school ready for our big day. We all breathed a sigh of
relief as we got off the coach in Trafford. Minutes later
we were greeted with music from Trafford’s finest youth
band, and as if that wasn’t enough, we then had a team
picture with the mayor of Greater Manchester. We could
already see this was going to be an experience we’d never
forget. We were then escorted to our seating area by our
team’s own personal guide. Our area was decorated with
balloons and ribbons. We all put our bags down and
decided to have a look around. The place was huge –
home to thirteen courtrooms in total! We began to practise
our roles as the prosecution awaited their trial.
The clock hit 11 o’clock and our prosecution team was
called in. Once again they performed to a very high standard.
We were positive they did well, however, we soon
became aware of the standard we were up against. The
pressure soon shifted onto our defence team. Around
twelve thirty we were given lunch to prepare us for the
afternoon. We had time for one more practice before the
defence was called in.
1:30, and it was time for the defence. We entered the
courtroom knowing this was our last shot, we gave it all
we could but the witnesses on the other team were excellent.
Again, the verdict rested in our favour, but was that
enough to have won the competition? We all felt the day
really tested our confidence and gave us a great insight
into how the court really works. The competition was
nearly over and we were all told to go to the main room
for the presentation. We waited in great anticipation and
finally the chairman of the competition came to
the stand.
It turns out we didn’t win. In fact we don’t know what
position we were. All we knew was we were somewhere in
the top 16 teams out of over three hundred from all over
the U.K. Finally, we have all benefited so much from this
experience and would like to thank Mrs. McIntosh for
making it all possible. Such skills as citizenship and teamwork
have developed throughout the competition and
I’m sure we will use them a lot in later life. So well done
everybody in the team, you were brilliant!”
A new team sets out on this competition this term, and
we wish them the best of luck!
Other citizenship initiatives included ex-deputy heads
and local councillors Austen Robinson and Sylvia
Emmott coming in to talk about local politics and that
was followed up by councillors visiting the School and 70
students being involved in finding out about their roles
and how to get the student voice heard.
There was also a session to raise motivation for a group
of students in Year 9, which also involved QKS staff.