The 2012 BETT Show, London Olympia

This year’s BETT Show was held between 11th/14th January and we were on Stand T9. Our first visitor arrived on Wednesday just 5 minutes after the Show had opened and the last visitor left us on Saturday at 4:35……half an hour after the Show had closed! As Wednesday morning came and went it was soon apparent that because we had something that students actually DO (rather than something that checked what they or their teachers had DONE) we were going to be in for a very busy four days.

We gave over 200 demonstrations at the Show to teachers from both the UK and around the world and it was great fun seeing the software being demonstrated in so many different languages! It was lovely meeting like minded teachers……all looking for something to engage and motivate and it was a pleasure not to disappoint them!




Christmas Race Winners

The dust is now settling and we are getting nearer to 2,000 hits on our YouTube site each day. Here are the team from All Saints Primary School, Bury, who achieved the fastest winning time out of all the entries submitted and an account that they sent to us. Well done to you all!

In early September 8 of us year 5s were given the opportunity to do Maths in Motion with Mrs Ekkel. Once a week we worked on the programme; measuring tracks, categorising features, choosing car liveries and race car helmets, making workshop adjustments, calculating safe speeds, checking the weather forecasts for tires and pit stops. At the end of November we were finally given a chance to put our new found skills to the test against teams from year 6, they paid off and we won our school race for a place in the National Christmas Fun Race.

On Monday 12th December, the whole school watched the race on YouTube. There were teams from all over the country in the race. 170 pupils and staff crammed into the school hall. The noise was deafening and went all the way to the Heads office, who was in a meeting, and she was so upset that she heard all this noise and missed it. Suddenly, it all went silent as we dropped to 7th place. We knew we had gone into the pits so we were not too worried. We quickly gained six places to take the lead with ten laps to go. It took an age for the final lap to come. It was so nerve-wracking, counting down the features, everything went into slow motion until at last, it was there – Feature 17! We had done it; we had won the Christmas Fun Run. What a brilliant experience we had.

Daniel, James, Mia and Madeleine.


Our Age Range 2 Winner was the team from The Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School, Ramsgate. Here they are wearing their shirts! Well done boys!

Fynn and Nathan sporting their prizes!

 




Stratstone of Perth Gets Decorated by Hillside Primary, Dundee

Shawn Rushby, the Dealer Principal at Stratstone, Perth, Jaguar’s largest group of car dealers in the UK, recently asked the pupils at Hillside Primary School, Dundee, if they would like to decorate the company’s Showroom tree for Christmas. Their teacher, Ruth Mitchell, then swung into action and not only organised the young drivers to deliver the goods for Stratstone’s, she also got them to design their own themed based race circuits – the theme being ‘Winter’, as a spin off (no pun intended!) to the whole project.

Ruth told us “This is a wonderful opportunity for our kids to work realistically with an outside company that obviously cares about children in the same way as we do. We designed and made decorations for the tree and Shawn also asked us if we would make something to sit on the salesmen’s desks. As the Jaguar colours are silver and black we went for that theme. We made, wreaths from old jigsaw puzzles and made the berries from very small red Jaguar Car pictures, we made gift boxes, J ‘s from hamma beads, doilies with Jag pictures on them, baubles that we hand drew black Jaguar cats on and wrote the word ‘Jaguar’ on the other side. We attempted wheels(not quite as great as the materials we had planned to use we could not get hold of in time!). They made Christmas Trees for the desks. Kanza and Morven put a huge effort into designing and making a tree topper in the shape of a Jaguar car. They made it 3D and were really pleased with the outcome. We had lots of fun doing this – it was focussed and relevant and I think the tree looks great, but then I am biased as it’s my kids work!”

The tree now stands proudly in the Showroom and the winning circuit design was based on a snowman. Stratstone very kindly sponsored a prize of a remote control model of a Jaguar XK and one of the pictures below shows the winner with the Head of Hillside Primary, Jackie Campbell. The other pictures show the various decorations that the children made – click on them to enlarge.

As Mrs. Campbell said, “This just shows what can be achieved with ‘Cars Maths in Motion’ – it just needs a little bit of thought and planning to get so much relevant work out of the children. I would also like to thank Stratstone’s for their support too – it has meant so much to the pupils involved in the project.”

Well done all of you for showing such brilliant innovation and well done to Shawn and Miss Mitchell for giving them the opportunity in the first place.

P.S. from Brian at Challenge HQ. You will hear more about that ‘Snowman’ track in the New Year – just watch this space!!

 




National Champions 2011 Visit Jaguar

Our 2011 Overall Champions, Bankfoot Primary School from Bradford, visited Castle Bromwich today as part of their prize for winning this year’s National Final. We saw the XK production line and it was MIND-BLOWING! Thank you Jaguar and thank you to our guides!




What the young racers have to say about the Challenge..

We have just received an envelope full of letters from the children at Tullynessle Primary School and they contain some very interesting comments about the Challenge. Thanks to Jane Craik for giving us permission to reproduce some extracts from them and A MASSIVE BIG THANK YOU to those of you who actually wrote the letters to us!

“Thank you for all the help you gave us. We couldn’t have done it without you! It has been so much fun doing Cars, it was much better than writing! I learnt a lot that day” – Molly

“Cars Maths was really really fun and my group did not use any calculators to see what the bends and straights were. I thought the whole day of Cars Maths was excellent.” – Ellena

“Thank you for coming such a long way to help us. I learned so much when I already thought I knew about it. We all benefitted hugely from your visit and it was great fun. We all loved it and I wish we could do it all the time.” – Dylan

“My family were really jealous when I showed them the cap you gave me. Cars Maths has helped me in how to put kilometres into metres and how to measure angles. I learned lots thank you.” – Sarah

“It was really cool. You showed me that you can’t have 3 straights together otherise it would just be one big straight!.” – Connor

“I felt really happy when we won the kids race. You gave us some useful tips and it was extremely good fun. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help you teach the teachers in the evening. I really did enjoy it all.” – Tom

“I didn’t understand how to do the fuel but now I do so I can now do pit stops properly and that really helps us in the race.” – Harry

and finally………

“If you hadn’t made the software we would be stuck doing jotter work so you saved us thank you! I really enjoyed the day you were here with us and we have all got new tips and tricks. Awesome!” – Owen




CPD Training in Scotland

Last week saw Brian and Wendy running teacher training sessions for around 40 teachers in Aberdeenshire and Dundee. We had enlisted the help of four ‘junior engineers’ at each event and they had been provided for us by the ‘works teams’ at Tulleynessle Primary School and Hillside Primary School respectively. In real life, they were actually Primary 6 and Primary 7 students from each school but every one of them displayed a maturity and a knowledge of the software beyond their years!

Our thanks must go to Jane Craik and her staff at Tullynessle and to Jackie Campbell and Ruth Mitchell at Hillside for all the help you gave us. Thanks also has to go to Mike from Stratstones in Aberdeen for bringing out the Jaguar XK and letting 34 budding drivers clamber all over it in their muddy wellington boots!

Here are some of the pictures we took (click on them to enlarge):-