Friday 2nd February saw the whole of Year 7 come together for the annual Number Day activities, organised by Miss Theobald from the Maths department.
Over the last 14 years of Northgate taking part in Number Day, Year 7s have managed to raise over £3300 to contribute to the continued work of the NSPCC and Childline. There were a number of activities the Year 7s took part in. During Period 4 half of the year group gathered in the main hall. They started their session with number aerobics, which included some volunteers demonstrating what to do. It was great to see such enthusiasm from everyone!
The main activity was a quiz. Not only were students competing for their House Teams to earn valuable points for the House Competition but they were also competing against others in their teaching groups to win a prize. There were certainly some tricky questions however determination took over. The final part of the session involved students creating real life graphs. They were all given a coordinate and created a coordinate grid in the way they were sat. Miss Theobald displayed instructions such as ‘stand up if your x coordinate is 2’, ‘stand up if your y coordinate is -3’ and so on. Students were able to see that they were creating vertical and horizontal lines and impressed with the language they used such as parallel. It gave them an opportunity to start to discover more about straight line graphs, a topic they will develop later in their Maths curriculum. During Period 5 the remaining Year 7s had their chance to take part and they also took part in a ‘very strange game’ looking at properties of numbers.
There was a teacher treasure hunt which students could take part in during break and lunchtime or at home via Satchel One. 25 teachers had been assigned a number. Students had to answer questions such as ‘what is the sum of the Maths teachers?’, ‘which teachers are square numbers?’, ‘which teacher is the smallest prime number?’ and so on.
New for this year was a virtual escape room. Almost 30 students took part in this in their own time, solving problems and cracking the codes to 10 different rooms in the school. Some great problem solving on display.
Congratulations go to the following Year 7s who won the main quiz in their teaching groups – 7Aspire: Darcy F and Frankiie A-R, 7Tenacity: Robin W, 7Endeavour: Henry S, 7Courage: Tess C, Charlie B and Kaleb B, 7Integrity: Joshua B and Jack C, 7Motivation: Finn B and Phoebe L and 7Valour: Ezmae R. Winners were presented with chocolate and puzzle books. The winner of the teacher treasure hunt, receiving an Easter egg and puzzle book was Cameron N and the winner of the Escape Room was Austin B, who received an Amazon voucher!
Miss Theobald was pleased to be able to go into the last Year 7 assembly of the half term to present all the certificates and prizes. In the week before Number Day Year 7 classes took part in a lesson all about McDonalds and investigating the McNugget number (google it to find out more). Winning classes which demonstrated excellent problem solving skills were 7Courage, 7Aspire and 7Endeavour. They were all presented with boxes of biscuits.
In the House Competition, it was a very close fought contest, with Attenborough just pipping Holmes in to first place, with Hawking in third and Rowling in fourth.
Miss Theobald commented after Number Day, ‘it was great to see everyone so engaged in the activities in the hall and many of them continuing the fun at home with the two optional competitions. Year 7s are great mathematicians so I look forward to seeing what they can achieve in their next few years at Northgate! I look forward to Number Day again next year.’
Tess C, who was one of the winners from 7Courage, said, ‘On Number Day I really enjoyed the number aerobics at the beginning of the session. I also enjoyed taking part in the virtual escape room and cracking all the codes as I haven’t done an escape room before.’
Charlie, from 7Courage, explained, ‘My favourite part was making the human graphs. I liked seeing who stood up for each question and the lines they were making and the fact that Keira was (0, 0) in the middle. I also took part in the virtual escape room at home which was good fun.’
A big thank you to Miss Theobald for organising and running the event. Well done to everyone who took part and thank you to all those who collected sponsors for Childline and the NSPCC to help continue the vital work they do.
