William Brookes School Blog

There is a unique opportunity, open to William Brookes students to take part in a motocross and motorbike club.  Students will learn the mechanics, maintenance and safety issues, as well as riding, and potentially eventually competing.  

You have to provide your own boots and helmets.  The club is run by PC Lippitt and is for people genuinely interested in taking part. Places are limited, so please give your name to Ms Steward (ICT Office, opposite the Library). The first meeting is Saturday 31^st May, 11.00 am at Farley Quarry.

Good luck to all Year 13 students, we wish you all the best for your future and will miss you very much. Here are a few pictures from your last day. There will be more photographs on the school website this week.  http://www.williambrookesschool.co.uk/

Mr Ali’s D&T students are taking part in an exciting project to design and develop post boxes that will be used in several locations. The postboxes are for PACT (Partners and communities together). The purpose of the post boxes is to allow students, staff and members of the community to be able to complete a leaflet outlining issues in the community that they would like to see resolved.

We interviewed three students that had already come up with some great ideas. The first student we talked to was Sam, he has designed a box which opens on both sides: it is split down the middle, so that one side is for leaflets that haven’t been filled in, and the other side is for ones that have been completed.

The second student is Adam; he has a slightly more complex design which will be the shape of a trapezium. The leaflets are kept in the front; so that they don’t fall out they are leaning inwards at the top. The letter box is at the very top. The leaflets are then dropped through to a drawer at the bottom, which slides out at the back and has tabs to stop it falling out.

Our final student of this group is Lewis, he too had a drawer at the bottom with tabs. However, unlike the two other designs his has a lid at the top, where you lift and slot the leaflets in.

Soon the students will have to choose one design collaboratively. There are six groups in the class, so there are bound to be a range of innovative ideas to choose from.

If you are a William Brookes student or member of staff you can access our very own “Cool Wall” on the school network.  Here you will be able to give us your reaction to possible design features for our new One School Pathfinder school.

Pierre de Coubertin became an Honorary Member of the Wenlock Olympian Society in 1891, 3 years before he founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Today, we had a peek at all the wonderful things being made in modelling club and interviewed two students. Daniel, a Year 9 student, is making a Messerschmitt Me-262 plane from WW2. He has spent the last three Friday lunchtimes doing it, but now it is nearly finished. Daniel enjoys doing the club each week. He is looking forward to seeing the plane finished, because it will be his first completed model!

He takes us through the process: “The first step is to look and check all the parts on the sprue, next you have to read the instruction manual. This is a clip-together model, but you can also get glue-together models.”

Dayle, another Year 9 student, is working on a plane model, but he has just finished his. It has taken him only two weeks to do! However, he is somewhat of an expert: he has been coming to the club for just over a year and is also a member of the TA. His plane is a Hawker Hurricane, also from WW2.

Dayle, has grown to enjoy the club more and more since he began in Year 8. He has made lots of different models, by a variety of methods. His favourite model was also the most challenging; he made a car, which he also got to paint.

The process of modelling is an intricate, creative and practical one: it takes logical thinking when you are at the planning stage, patience with the finer details; attention to detail with filing, sticking and painting, but it is a lot of fun and is very rewarding to see all your hard work pay off. All students also get to keep their models or put them on display.

The Club meets every Friday Lunch time. If you are interested in joining, see Mr Ali.

This week, we have a great, free website which you will find useful for a variety of subjects, especially Geography, Science and History.

It is called ulearn by infomapper and helps teachers and students share information all over the world.  Similar to Google Earth or Geograph, ulearn has a world map which you can move around: however, with this website you can search for relevant resources or see what resources are linked to certain places.

Jeremy, a student representative, shares what it is like to be part of the School Council.

“The School Council is a body of 12 students, two from every year group. We meet at least once every half term and talk about points that have been put forward by everyone.  Our answers to these questions and anything else that is discussed by the council is fed back  to the year councils, who then feed back to their form groups.”

“The sort of points we discuss are things like the bag-folder issue. I enjoy being on the School Council because it really makes me feel part of the school and I get to help change things people don’t like and discuss important issues.”