Viewing archives for Trips

From the history of powered flight to the physics of theme park rides, Year 9 pupils covered a lot of ground on their four-day Science trip to Paris.

Travelling by coach and ferry, the 43-strong group not only literally covered many miles, but also made great strides in their learning as they took in real-life examples of scientific principles in action.

Physics teacher and Academic Enrichment Tutor Gillian Deakin said: “The tightly packed programme had been planned to, on the one hand, showcase some of the interesting applications of Science from the classroom while, on the other, providing discussion points for future lessons.”

The first stopping-off point for the group was the National Air and Space Museum of France, at Paris’s historic Le Bourget, still a working airport for private flights. With nearly 20,000 exhibits, the museum features two Concordes among its 150 aeroplanes. The boys sampled the flight simulator and learned about the development of flight, from air balloons to the modern day.

Pupil Aarush Verma particularly enjoyed this visit: “I attend air cadets outside of school, so it was nice to see a variety of different aircraft, from the first planes to modern passenger planes, such as the A380.”

The rockets there were a highlight for his fellow pupil, Vignesh Rajiv:“I was very impressed by the scale and size of them.”

Later, at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, the biggest science museum in Europe, the group were able to see exhibitions on themes from genetics to energy. “I found the robotics section especially fascinating as visitors could control the robots,” said Aarush. “It linked up really nicely with my personal interests at School, where I’m active with VEX Robotics.”

Another highlight of the trip was a night tour of Montparnasse. “We watched the illumination of the Eiffel Tower at 8pm and got amazing views of Paris,” said Miss Deakin.

The following day the group headed off to Disneyland Paris where they sampled various attractions, from Hyperspace Mountain (a Star Wars-themed ride), to It’s a Small World, a water-based boat ride with audio-animatronic dolls.

“The boys have been studying energy transfers in Science, and the rides have furnished knowledge which they will now have the opportunity to discuss in the classroom,” said Miss Deakin.

“We also got to watch the parade, which included several childhood favourites, and there were some exciting pyrotechnics, which showcased yet more interesting applications of Science.”

The final day included a quick stopover at the Cité Europe shopping centre for lunch and souvenirs. Although the ferry home was delayed by over an hour and a half because of poor weather, a free meal provided the boys with compensation for the hold-up.

An industry-led event to promote degree apprenticeships proved popular with Year 12 boys, with the 15 available places soon snapped up.

The Young Professionals Industry Event, held at the South Bank’s IBM building, comprised a number of workshops with speakers from organisations including Ernst & Young, PwC, Capgemini UK and the RAF.

Degree apprenticeships, which were launched by the Government in 2015, combine higher education and vocational training, enabling university study and the on-the-job training. Training costs are co-funded by the government and the employer, while the apprentices are employed and paid throughout the course.

Head of Year 12, Helen Davies said: “The event offered boys an immersive experience of what it’s like to work in different sectors and to hear from current graduates, apprentices and business professionals.”

Established through a crowd-funding exercise in 2018 by a then-teenage entrepreneur, Dan Miller, Young Professionals aimed to fill a perceived gap in careers advice, making young people aware of “amazing opportunities… right on their doorstep”.

Young Professionals now has links with at least 35 global brands and has launched an app to help young people identify apprenticeships and work experience opportunities.

Miss Davies added: “The boys were interested to learn that the RAF, for example, offers degrees in a number of engineering disciplines and even medicine, alongside sporting opportunities for its staff.”

“Many of the top companies made it clear they expect their apprentices to move to the capital, which put our boys in a strong position as they are already in London.”

PwC representatives highlighted psychometric testing, some of which involves virtual reality headsets. Some of the tests aim to ascertain how candidates deal with frustration. “This was something again which the boys found interesting,” said Miss Davies.

“Overall, they clearly enjoyed the event and found the keynote lecture and workshop from Ernst & Young particularly engaging.”

Members of the cast for QE’s forthcoming 2020 School Play enjoyed the opportunity to see a critically acclaimed London production and to meet both an actor and a stage director.

Year 8’s Girish Adapa won the group’s trip to the sold-out production of Albion at the Almeida Theatre in Islington as the prize in a Christmas quiz in The Day, an online daily newspaper for teenagers.

Albion, by Mike Bartlett, is a play is about nostalgia and national identity. It has widely been seen as a Brexit allegory.

The actor who met the QE group after the performance was Helen Schlesinger, known for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In Albion, she plays a novelist who is the friend of the chief protagonist of the play, giving a performance described by the Telegraph’s theatre critic, Dominic Cavendish, as “brilliantly wafting”.

The boys asked her questions about: acting techniques; the career progression of an actor; managing rejection and stress; the relative merits of stage and screen work; working with directors and other actors. and getting into character.

The trip was organised by Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter and Gavin Molloy, from QE’s external drama partners, RM Drama.

The boys, many of whom will be involved in this year’s School production of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on 25th and 26th March, were also given the opportunity to meet Almeida’s Stage Manager, Linsey Hall, who answered their technical questions on how long it took to build the set, the practicalities of using real plants on the stage, and how they drained water from the grass.

Head of English Robert Hyland, who accompanied the QE pupils, along with Head of Library Services Surya Bowyer, said: “The boys thoroughly enjoyed the trip – it was a valuable experience to see a professional play of this calibre. I found the production intensely powerful: it’s a play which resonates with the ‘now’ of British society in a rich, thought-provoking, and emotionally moving way.

“I know that many of our boys were taken aback by the force of the performance, and the complexity of the message behind it,” added Mr Hyland. “It’s a really rare opportunity for them to be able to see a play with such high production values, and even rarer to be able to meet members of the cast and production team after the show. The questions asked by students were probing and reflective, both from the perspective of performance and stagecraft, and from the perspective of meaning and metaphor.”

Girish, whose quizzing skills led directly to the outing, agreed with Mr Hyland’s assessment, saying the play was “very moving”.

A visit to a critically acclaimed exhibition on Troy at the British Museum helped bring the city’s ancient legends to life for GCSE Latin students.

The 33 Year 11 boys taking Latin GCSE – the highest number since the subject was reintroduced at QE as a curriculum subject in 2012 – have been studying Troy as part of their set texts.

The story of Troy has endured for over 3,000 years and captured the imagination of countless generations with its tale of a ten-year war fought over the abduction of a beautiful woman, Helen of Troy, and of enemies infiltrating into the great city in a wooden horse.

Assistant Head of Languages (Classics) Dilprit Kaur said: “The boys loved how the story was told in a multi-sensory way. Using voices to tell the story and projecting elements of it on to the wall really brought the literature to life for them. It also made them appreciate how many versions and adaptations of the story there are.”

The exhibition, Troy: Myth and Reality, showcased art related to Troy and also examined the archaeological evidence demonstrating conclusively that the city actually existed.

“The boys don’t often get a chance to draw upon artefacts as part of the syllabus,” said Ms Kaur.

“They relished the way in which the story was presented in different media, encompassing sculpture, pottery and modern art.”

The boys were accompanied on their visit by Crispin Bonham-Carter, Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement), who teaches Latin, and English teacher, Tom Foster.

The exhibition has secured highly positive reviews from the BBC’s Arts Editor Will Gompertz and from publications including The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Time Out. It runs until 8th March 2020.

In the afternoon, the group also toured the galleries at the British Museum to enhance further their appreciation of mythology and of the Roman Empire.

Ninety-nine Year 12 boys were entertained, amazed and inspired at a special series of lectures on the application of Mathematics.

Fifty of the sixth-formers went to one set of lectures, while the remaining 49 went on a later day to hear a second set. The Maths in Action lectures were organised by The Training Partnership (the UK’s leading provider of educational study days) at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “Each lecture was inspiring in its own way and has encouraged the boys to delve deeper into the topics they found most engaging. These lectures are a very good way of introducing branches of Mathematics and ways of mathematical thinking which are not covered as part of the A-level syllabus, and of showing the range of applications to which the subject can be applied.”

Both groups heard lectures on statistics. On the first day, Michael Blastland, creator of BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme, spoke on Bad Stats: what they don’t tell you on the news. The second group heard from economist and journalist Tim Harford. He counselled that if used well, statistics can help people learn about the world and he emphasised the paramount importance of using statistics in a responsible way.

Pupil Sachin Sarin said: “Tim Harford’s thorough explanation of how statistical findings were being used by politicians and firms to manipulate the general public into believing certain ideologies allowed us to gain a deeper understanding as to how powerful statistics are when trying to persuade or argue a point. I learnt that statistics can often be cherry-picked and even distorted by these individuals to achieve their motive.”

Beker Shah enjoyed Michael Blastland’s talk, in which he similarly demonstrated “how manipulating data could serve a political agenda or purpose, as shown by the increase in cancer deaths and the increased pregnancy rate”.

Common to both days was a lecture by author and broadcaster Simon Singh on Fermat’s Last Theorem, which he began by introducing 17th century French mathematician Fermat and the concept of a mathematical proof. In Fermat’s spare time, he would find mathematical statements and see if he could prove whether they were true or not. Over time, mathematicians proved all of Fermat’s theorems except one, which hence became known as ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’. Simon took the audience through the inspiring story which culminated in its proof in 1993.

Simon Singh was, said Zidane Akbar, “a great speaker”, while Janujan Satchi added: “Learning about the story of [British mathematician] Andrew Wiles and how his perseverance led him to prove Fermat’s last theorem was really interesting.”

Cambridge mathematician Matthew Scroggs’ lecture on the Mathematics of Video Games impressed Charan Kumararuban, who said: “I was particularly amazed by his demonstration of using Mathematics in order to predict the shortest possible routes to complete a game of Pacman in the shortest possible time.”

Oxford University’s David Acheson brought some musical moments to the day with his talk, From Euclid to the Electric Guitar. Ayushman Mukherjee said: “I liked the humour, practical demonstrations and guitar solo!”

The other speakers were:

• Sara Jabbari, from the University of Birmingham, on Fighting disease with Mathematics, who looked at how differential equations are used to understand antibiotic resistance, track the dynamics of bacterial infections and even develop new drugs to tackle disease.
• Ed Southall, author of several books on geometry puzzles and a lecturer at the University of Huddersfield, who led a hands-on session on how problems could be solved in multiple ways. For example, he set students the task of cutting 2D and 3D shapes into pieces of equal area using only a set number of straight lines.
• Award-winning teacher Jamie Frost on How to prepare for exams;
• Jackie Bell, from Imperial College London on Maths in a Space Suit, in which she recounted her journey from Mathematics graduate, to particle physicist and finally to trainee astronaut.

Afterwards, pupil Manas Gaur reflected on the value of the day: “I enjoyed being able to link Mathematics to other fields and seeing how it connects with other subjects.”

Judges in the prestigious Empire Mock Trial competition held in New York praised a nine-strong QE team for their performance in courtroom battles against leading American and Chinese schools.

Despite having to grapple with a legal system that can be very different from the English system, the Sixth Form team competed strongly, gaining both votes and plaudits from the adjudicators, reports their coach, Jack Robertson, Head of Philosophy, Religion and Society.

One of the team, Dharrshan Viramuthu, of Year 12, reflected afterwards on a “fantastic, unforgettable experience. Dharrshan said: “Visiting a city like New York was amazing, as was the opportunity to compete against the best Mock Trial teams in the US and across the world.”

Saifullah Shah, of Year 13, added: “Beyond its academic rigour, the entire Empire experience was unforgettable, largely due to the remarkable kindness of our fellow competitors. Numerous friendships were made both amongst our own team as well as with our opponents.”

The weekend event was held at Southern District Courthouse in downtown New York. Mr Robertson and his fellow coach, Chemistry teacher Charani Dharmawardhane, travelled with the team.

“The Empire Mock Trial follows the US legal system, so students had to learn a lot about how it works,” he said. “They had to familiarise themselves with, and then be able to apply, a range of case law, as well as adapt to various procedural aspects of being in a US court room. In particular, adapting to the use of objections was a challenge, but one the team rose to well.”

Their appearance in the competition centred on a fictional legal case between the Tam family and a company, Castle Construction. The construction company owned a luxury apartment block on the fictional island of Empirion. The block had some affordable housing units, one of which was occupied by the Tam family. Evelyn Tam, who was one of the occupants, became pregnant. Her child, Timothy Tam, developed dilated cardio-myopathy in vitro, and was given five years to live. It was then discovered that a chemical trichloroethane was present at the apartment block and that this could potentially cause heart defects. The Tam family subsequently brought a civil suit against Castle Construction, accusing the company of negligence.

Although the QE boys were not among the overall winners, the trip was a great success, said Mr Robertson.

“Judges and observers were impressed with the professional manner in which they conducted themselves, the persuasive force and clarity of their speeches, and the incisive manner of their examinations. They won the ballots of several judges in some hard-fought contests against schools from the US and China.”

In addition to taking part in the competition, the boys had the opportunity to:

• Visit the Met, the United States’ biggest art museum
• Take in the spectacular views of New York from the top of the Rockefeller building
• Sample the food at a famous kosher deli on the Upper East Side
• Go for a walk through Central Park
• Enjoy the atmosphere of Times Square at night.

The team comprised: Rivu Chowdhury, Aditya Mukhopadhyay, Saifullah Shah, Qaizaar Bharmal, Manas Madan, and Tobi Durojaiye from Year 13, along with Aadam Choudhary, Dharrshan Viramuthu, and Yuvan Vasanthakumaran from Year 12.