A group of twelve students were selected to represent Sydney Russell school and take part in a STEM challenge day based in Havering Sixth Form college. Students had an opportunity to experience the campus and the facilities that the college offers.
Our students were amongst a host of other schools: The Albany; Sacred Heart School; Coopers and Coborn School; The Royal Liberty School; Gable Hall school and Redden Court School. Students were organised into mixed groups to promote integration and team work with other people. Within these groups students took part in a series of four different challenges. For each challenge session, there were between 5 and 6 groups.
Students participated in an engineering challenge where they had to build a moving car using various components and trying to increase the amount of torque that the car produced. This helped the students to achieve the fastest time in the race at the end of the session. Two of our students, Charlie and Chantelle were successful in winning in this challenge overall in achieving the fastest time which the other groups were unable to beat and due to their superb teamwork skills. These students were presented an award from the former police commissioner of Essex.
Students also took part in an e-fit challenge where students had to recall the features of a known suspect (the teachers) from memory. Students really had to test their memory and their communication skills to produce an image that had a good likeness to the suspect. Again, our students were leading the way in winning the challenge in the first round.
Students also took part in a robotics challenge where students had to programme a robot to follow a series of instructions in order to navigate a map. This included coding the robot to identify a selection of different colours as well as an infrared sensor to detect proximity. During the first round, our students came first and second place, however this lead had diminished as the day had progressed.
Finally, students took part in a medical challenge where they were given a series of symptoms and had to diagnose the illness. Students looked at x-rays and analysed urine samples. Again, our students were highly successful in this region with Michelle and winning the overall challenge in this area.
Our students worked very well and represented the school well. They ensured that they valued the opinions of others and contributed to all discussions.