Welcome to the First Year Blog!
As our First Years enter the final week of their first term at Hampton, it’s feeling very festive in the corridors around School. Lucas ST reports from the front lines:
This time of year, is the most festive and magical time…. Of course, it’s December and Christmas time! All of us will be celebrating this wonderful occasion and Hampton is no exception! We are celebrating Twelve Days of Christmas, where on each different day we have a different activity to do. For most, we donate to the Feltham Food Bank so people who don’t have as much can enjoy Christmas also. Hope you have a great Christmas!
TUTOR PROFILES WITH AADI K
The best way to learn is through asking questions.
This week I interviewed Ms Czumaj 1F’s Form Tutor and Maths Teacher:
Maths is the only place where beauty and truth mean the same thing
Where did you graduate from?
I graduated from Imperial College and I studied Maths there.
What are your key strengths as a teacher?
I am very enthusiastic. I am very excited about Maths.
How would you prepare your pupils to solve a difficult word problem?
I would make the children read the question on their own and tell them to recognise key words as well as draw a diagram if needed.
Give an example of a time when you made Maths fun for your pupils?
Well, I let them do a lot of Dr Frost Maths which my pupils enjoy a lot as they love competing with each other.
What do you enjoy most about being a teacher?
Personally, I love being with pupils. I like meeting different personalities. I also like lesson planning a lot.
What aspect of teaching is the hardest?
I think the hardest part is to create questions for pupils because the questions need to be exciting which is very time consuming.
What is your favourite topic in Maths?
I adore algebra because it’s so interesting. It follows a set of rules and it’s very satisfying when you get a very difficult equation right.
What are some random fun facts about you?
Some random fun facts about me are I have a chinchilla as a pet, I am vegetarian which I have been for the past three years for environmental and animal welfare. Lastly, I can speak three languages: English, German and Polish.
What is something you want to learn so you become a better person?
I would like to learn more about politics because there is a lot of chat and debate nowadays. Learning about politics for me would be important as we are in an interesting political climate.
Time for some jokes
What did one Maths book say to the other?
I’ve got too many problems of my own.
What is a Maths teacher’s favourite snake?
Python.
WONDERFUL WORLD
Looking at the world around us Advait B will be exploring the wonders of our wonderful world.
Today, getting to space is like trying to go up a mountain on a unicycle with a heavy backpack full of explosives. Incredibly slow, difficult and dangerous. Rockets today are 100 tonnes fuel and 1 tonne payload. Throughout history, using infrastructure, humans have made it easy to travel. Roads for cars, rails for trains, ports for ships, and much more. So, is there an easier way to get to space, with less fuel and more payload? Turns out there is. With a cable and a weight. This is known as a tether. The concept is so simple, it seems impossible. If we have a long cable (tens of thousands of kilometres long) and a counterweight on the end, we can make spacecraft use it to climb to higher altitudes and gain speed and fuel. The bottom of the tether must be around 60 kilometres above the surface of the Earth to stop air friction burning it up. For reference, a common passenger plane reaches a cruising altitude of approximately 15 kilometres high, and the ISS is approximately 410 kilometres high. This works even better if it is rotating. When it is near the Earth’s surface, the rotating tether slows down its hook that latches onto spacecraft, refuelling them, and speeds it up when the hook is further away from Earth, giving spacecraft a boost equal to twice the tether’s rotation velocity.
There is a problem, however. If we keep taking spacecraft from Earth and sending them into space, the tether will slow down, crashing into the Earth. So, if we take in ships coming back to Earth, we can make the tether replace the lost rotational energy. If this is hard to understand, then imagine the tether as a sort of battery. If there was a set of tethers, one around Mars and one around Earth, it would be easier to transport goods between the planets. Tethers could shorten the journey between the two planets from nine months with a conventional spacecraft, to five or even three months with tethers. Tethers are very cheap and can be made today. The tether around Mars could help us get to the asteroid belt, where we can mine asteroids for their resources. But let’s not stop there. The moons of Mars are relatively closer to their planet than most other moons in the solar system. Phobos is only 6,000 kilometres from Mars. This may seem like a long distance, but it is only half the diameter of Earth. If we make a super-tether using Phobos as a counterweight, we could get to Jupiter and Saturn much cheaper and easier than if we use a normal rocket. Tethers may be so cheap, that we can invest in passenger comfort and have space holidays. Tethers are the transport of the future, so why wait to build them?
Twelve Days of Christmas
1L have been very busy perfecting their festive performance of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Sriyan tells us all about it:
Currently we are in an environment where we’re restricted from doing most fun things, but we can still celebrate the festive season with some jolly singing! The Twelve Days of Christmas ties in nicely with what we are doing at Hampton, making Christmas this year just that much better and pleasant. The whole class was thrilled and the hats were hilarious. It was a great experience overall.
Well done boys!
SPECIAL SHOUT OUTS!
A huge congratulations to Boris D (1B) for achieving his Grade 7 Piano and Grade 6 French Horn this term. Passing both with Distinction! A fantastic achievement Boris, well done!
We love to hear about what you have been getting up to outside of School. Please do send any information about any of your achievements through to Mrs Halford.
12 days of Christmas
With our traditional Christmas community and charity events unable to take place this term, the School has been running Hampton’s 12 Days of Christmas to encourage Hamptonians to show their generosity of spirit and kindness during the festive season. Between 1 December – 12 December, pupils will be encouraged to think of others and carry out acts of giving and kindness.
The First Year boys have already been demonstrating their charitable natures by donating tinned items, rice, pasta and chocolate to local food banks this week, as well as showing their appreciation for their fantastic friendships that have been fostered through the close-knit Hampton community.
Thanks to you all for your fantastic contributions so far this week – a brilliant effort by everyone!
Day 2 of Hampton’s 12 Days of Christmas was all about Friendship – let’s find out what Hamptonians think makes a good friend:
This weekend, we’re asking the boys to focus on doing a good deed and also showing their gratitude to a friend or family member.
Saturday 5 December: Good Deed – Boys and Staff encouraged to exhibit kindness and complete a good deed
- Cook dinner for your family
- Take out the recycling
- Walk your dog
Sunday 6 December: Gratitude – Write a thank you card to a friend or a family member
Monday 7 December: Giving – support the Form Charity Quiz & The Big Give
Tuesday 8 December: Foodbank Collection – Shampoo, shower-gel, toothpaste
Wednesday 9 December: Christmas Wish – Hang your wish on the Christmas Tree
Thursday 10 December: Foodbank Collection – UHT Milk
Friday 11 December: Christmas Spirit – Mufti Day in aid of Form Charity (wear your Christmas Jumpers & Hats etc.)
Saturday 12 December: Commitment – Commit to doing a good deed during the holiday
The Big Give Christmas Challenge
The Fitzwygram Foundation is well on the way to achieving its Big Give Christmas Challenge target of £25,000. All funds raised will enable us to increase the number of completely free places at Hampton for boys whose families cannot afford any School fees.
If you would like to join in and donate, please visit the link here.
FIRST YEAR 5 QUESTIONS
A few questions for you to have a go at yourself or challenge people at home if they know the answer. Merits are awarded for everyone who has a go! Just click on the link below and enter your answers and points for the Inter-Form Competition will be awarded to the form with the most entries every week.
- In which year was Shakespeare born?
- What is the term used to describe a group of unicorns?
- How many sunflowers were there in Van Gough’s third version of the painting ‘Sunflowers’?
- How many hearts does an octopus have?
- What is the doll Barbie’s full name?
Why don’t you have a go and enter your answers here.
Remember to write your name in the form so you can be credited with merits!
We had an impressive 32 entries for the 5 questions last week, 1J are in the lead with 8 submissions! Well done to the following boys (make sure to add your merits in the back of your homework diaries and to collect your merit certificates when you reach 10!):
1B: Adam M, Jathun J, Boris D, Advait B, Jack Y, Aditya K
1F: Charlie H, Patrick M, Fraser K
1H: Alessandro C, Prabodha A, Arun S, Alex C, Louis H
1J: Nathaniel C, Freddie T, Tom B, Maxwell G, Ben B, Caspar S, Daniel T, Joshua R
1L: Aadi K, Sriyan S, Jude LS, Gregory M, Agalyan S
1P: Raif D, Elamaran R, Arish K
1W: Leander KB, Oliver A
And here are the answers to last week’s 5 questions:
- What is the name of the band with the following members: John Deacon, Brian May, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor? – Queen
- What is Sir Alex Ferguson’s middle name? Chapman
- Which artist painted ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ in 1899? Claude Monet
- How many Bond films did Roger Moore appear as 007? 7 Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, and A View to a Kill
- Can you name the six suspects in the board game Cluedo? Miss Scarlett, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Reverend Green, Mrs. Peacock and Professor Plum
