Recently, 6 of our Year 8 students had the opportunity to take part in a STEM challenge. Rikki was one of the students involved. Here he outlines the day and what was involved in the challenge.
‘On the 19th September, 6 students from Northgate High School took part in an engineering event, the ‘Faraday Challenge’ at Neatherd High School. Our ‘Chief Engineer’, called Phil, gave us an introduction to how the event was going to work. All schools and teams (Northgate was team 1) that took part were shown our task for the day.
Our project was to design and make a model of a feature that could be added onto the ‘James Webb Telescope’. On our table, we had a pile of the currency known as ‘Faradays’ (named after Michael Faraday). We would use this currency to purchase any materials or mechanics from a shop that was located at the back of the sports hall. These materials would be used to manufacture our prototype model that we decided to create. Phil revealed the grand prize was a beautiful glass trophy, and 6 x £10 Amazon gift vouchers, one for each of the winning team members.
Each school had 2 teams, but unfortunately, Northgate only had 1, so we were determined to work extra hard to win the reward! We saw a video explaining how the James Webb Telescope worked, and our team recognised that it won’t function properly if any dust/dirt came into contact with it. We each got our ‘roles’ from a sheet, and a sticker that had our name on and our role. The roles consisted of: Accountant (in charge of the ‘Faradays’), Project Manager (manages the project how it is supposed to work), and Diagnostics Engineer (sorts out any issues that the project may encounter).
Once we chose our desired roles, the team got to work on creating a filter that we designed to get rid of any dust particles that would come into contact with the telescope. After we explained how our design worked, and drew it out, the team then went to get the correct materials for our project. Each team had 120 ‘Faradays’ to spend on their project. Between each hour, Phil would tell us to write an ‘Event Log’ to explain how our project was going. Our filter worked as follows: dust particles get close to the telescope, an LED light detects the particles, which causes it to turn on. This also powers a fan at the bottom of the filter and blows away all the unwanted dirt away from the telescope.
After a few long hours of hard work, we built the fantastic filter, and tested it several times. Each test was rewarding, and the filter was a success! Lewis and I (Communication Officers) wrote out the presentation and practised it a few times before the real thing. Soon, the presentation came, and our team was outstanding compared to most of the other schools. The decider for the reward came and a team from Neatherd won. Although we didn’t win, the team did well and we all received a goody bag before we returned home.’
Lewis, one of the Communication Officers, said of his experience, ‘On the day we learnt lots of cool new things such as how to build an electrical circuit without batteries, instead using solar panels, and how to use resistors and LED lights. Overall the whole day was so good, especially when we got a certificate and goody bag all about the James Webb telescope. Our mini prototype could possibly help the telescope on the launch day in 2021! Although Northgate didn’t win, all of us went home happy as we attempted to help the telescope.’
Mr Logan, who attended with the team commented, ‘Our team gave an excellent presentation about their design and answered many technical questions about it. Although we didn’t win the competition, Northgate’s team were fantastic throughout the day and should be very proud of what they achieved.’Â
On World Peace Day, to commemorate peace in 1918, a service has taken place in the centre of Dereham. This was to mark the 100 year anniversary of the cease fire of the First World War with schools in Dereham, including Northgate High School, being involved.
Peace flowers were placed by The Mayor of Dereham, Hilary Bushell, representing Dereham Town Council, with Mr MacDonald representing Northgate.
In addition, children and staff from the Grove House Infant School, King’s Park Infant School, Dereham Church Infant School and Toftwood Infant School were in attendance. A service was given by Revd. Canon Sally Theakston, Team Rector of the Dereham and District Team Ministry. The centre piece was donated by Northgate and now proudly sits with honour inside the grounds of Dereham War Memorial. It will remain there until Sunday and then be moved to The Queen Mother’s Gardens for a short service. The children really enjoyed listening to the service and understood they are the next generation taking our message of peace forward into the next century. The service mentioned the huge sacrifices made by men and women 100 years ago and the hope never to be repeated in the future.Â
Autumn is well and truly with us, so it is lovely to look back on the hot summer days of our Year 6 Transition Week. Our theme for the week was Mystery and Crime; the Year 6 students experienced a range of subjects across all curriculum areas linked to this, including practical work in Science and a workshop on how to be a detective led by DS Graves. The week culminated in a team building day led by Mr Emmerson. Students enjoyed activities such as ‘Capture the Flag’ as well as a practical policing activity. We were also extremely lucky to have had a visit from Police Dogs Dizzy and Bronx, along with their handler PC Harwood. Students learned all about the wide range of roles undertaken by police dogs in Norfolk; PC Harwood has inspired lots of future dog handlers, as our pictures show!Â
The Year 6 students impressed both our visitors and their new teachers with their enthusiasm and positivity during transition week. Now, as fully fledged Northgate students, they continue to do so.Â
For one week during the summer holidays, while the majority of students and staff were enjoying their summer break, some of our new Year 7s came into school for our Flying Start Summer School. This ran from the 13th-17th August and was an opportunity for pupils to get more familiar with the school, make new friends and learn some key skills for the years ahead.
Each day students took part in special workshops in several subjects including Drama, English, Maths, PE and Science. Activities included testing the amount of force required to make a party popper ‘pop’, planning and producing a piece of descriptive writing, learning key Maths skills such as significant figures and rounding and putting these into practice with games such as a relay and bingo, playing a number of ball games including football and bench ball and working on a Beauty and the Beast performance.
These morning workshops were followed by large games and competitions in the afternoon. In Science, we had a rocket build off where students were challenged to create a rocket using only one piece of A4, cellotape and scissors; in Maths students learnt about a number of different codes including Morse code, Pig Pen Cipher and Caesar Ciphers and also completed a QR-code treasure hunt around school. In Drama they were tasked with solving a Murder Mystery and each had to play a different character and finally in Sports pupils took part in a Catch-Ball and Bench-Ball tournament.
Students and staff had a fantastic week and were able to celebrate this with their parents and families at a special presentation on Friday afternoon in the Dance Studio. Students showed off what they had learnt in drama and treated us to a brilliant performance of Beauty and the Beast (in which everyone had a part to play) and were then presented with certificates to congratulate them for their hard work all week.
Students wrote postcards at the end of the week about their experience. Here is what some of them had to say:
‘My favourite part about it was the treasure hunt. It was so fun!’
‘Overall summer school was a blast and Science was fun too.’
‘My favourite activity was Drama because we got to act Beauty and the Beast.’
‘I loved summer school and was very upset having to leave it. The Beauty and the Beast play was very exciting.’
‘My favourite part of summer school was the rocket making.’
‘I loved meeting the teachers.’
‘I have learnt that it is fine to make a mistake in Maths.’
‘My favourite thing about summer school is PE, it was super fun.’
A big thank you to Miss Ling for organising such a great week and to the teachers involved in delivering the sessions (Mr Russell in Science, Miss Lyons in English, Miss Breeze in Drama, Mr Llewellyn in PE and Miss Theobald in Maths).
We are pleased to introduce our September bulletin. In our bumper edition bulletin this month you will find out all sorts of information and updates including links to recent blogs, upcoming events, getting to know you, photos, tweets, merit update, House competition update, what the Team Councils and School Council have been up to and more. There’s news about a new recycling scheme the School Council have signed up to as well as our World Record attempt at Dereham Carnival.
We hope that you are able to take some time to have a look at all the goings on at Northgate from the last month and enjoy seeing what we’ve been up to. Please share with your friends and family via our Facebook and twitter pages.
Miss Theobald (School Council Coordinator) + Northgate School Council.
Our project was to design and make a model of a feature that could be added onto the ‘James Webb Telescope’. On our table, we had a pile of the currency known as ‘Faradays’ (named after Michael Faraday). We would use this currency to purchase any materials or mechanics from a shop that was located at the back of the sports hall. These materials would be used to manufacture our prototype model that we decided to create. Phil revealed the grand prize was a beautiful glass trophy, and 6 x £10 Amazon gift vouchers, one for each of the winning team members. 
Once we chose our desired roles, the team got to work on creating a filter that we designed to get rid of any dust particles that would come into contact with the telescope. After we explained how our design worked, and drew it out, the team then went to get the correct materials for our project. Each team had 120 ‘Faradays’ to spend on their project. Between each hour, Phil would tell us to write an ‘Event Log’ to explain how our project was going. Our filter worked as follows: dust particles get close to the telescope, an LED light detects the particles, which causes it to turn on. This also powers a fan at the bottom of the filter and blows away all the unwanted dirt away from the telescope. 
After a few long hours of hard work, we built the fantastic filter, and tested it several times. Each test was rewarding, and the filter was a success! Lewis and I (Communication Officers) wrote out the presentation and practised it a few times before the real thing. Soon, the presentation came, and our team was outstanding compared to most of the other schools. The decider for the reward came and a team from Neatherd won. Although we didn’t win, the team did well and we all received a goody bag before we returned home.’
On World Peace Day, to commemorate peace in 1918, a service has taken place in the centre of Dereham. This was to mark the 100 year anniversary of the cease fire of the First World War with schools in Dereham, including Northgate High School, being involved.
