Clubs Galore, HELP Projects and Competition Time!

Welcome to the Second Year Blog!

This week you have all enjoyed getting stuck into your Summer Sport Options in the lovely Spring sunshine! Lots of you are also busy working on your HELP projects, and hopefully lots of you will be getting involved in the School Science Fair taking place next month.

MERITS

Well done to the following boys for reaching their merit milestones! Remember to let Mrs Owen know when you reach your next 10.

Tim Edwards – 10

Joseph Bakr – 20

Oliver Dugaric – 50

SUMMER SPORT

Tennis – by Elliot (2H)

Last Monday, the Hampton tennis season began. After having no summer sports last year, we were delighted to welcome back our former coach Navneet Maan. She will be running the tennis program including selecting boys to represent the school in the tennis team. Second Year tennis team training and selection will be at 1:00pm on Mondays. The hot, sunny weather on our first day of tennis was perfect to enjoy an afternoon of sport. Due to the popularity of tennis this year, some of us went and played badminton in the sports hall to free up court space. Different people will play in the sports hall each week.

Summer Rowing – by Theo (2L)

This week was the first week of summer sports, we were split into five sports: summer rowing, cricket, athletics, tennis and rock climbing. I picked rowing, this was the first year we have been able to do rowing and I was really excited as it was a brand new experience and is very different compared to other sports. We started by being split into three different groups with about 19 people in each. One group started by talking to one of the coaches asking any questions we might have had. Another group started doing some circuits in the North Gym but they weren’t very serious considering they were only for ten minutes. The final group went on rowing machines called ergos. We learned some techniques and I personally found it very fun.

LUNCHTIME ACTIVITIES

Here is the full list of lunchtime clubs and activities taking place this half term – this is also up in your Form Rooms, and we would encourage you all to try and do at last one co-curricular activity each week!

HELP PROJECTS

HELP (Hampton Extended Learning Project) is an initiative intended to provide an opportunity for you to extend your learning in a subject area of your choice. It is suggested that a Level One HELP project should take about 20 hours of work, and should be based on a topic genuinely outside the curriculum. The deadline for completion is Monday 7 June. HELP Level One was launched back in January and so lots of you will have been making good progress on your projects. Thank you to Eddie, Oli and Avi for sharing with us why they chose to do one, and what their project is on!

Eddie (2J)

Second Year has meant that there is an opportunity for all students to complete a HELP, short for Hampton Extended Learning Project, on a topic of your choice, to extend learning from a department. As we are only at level one, the aims are a lot simpler and focus on this being the start of extended learning at Hampton and a chance to broaden your horizons. Personally, I was drawn to doing a HELP project as it is a way to extend your learning without it feeling like mandatory schoolwork or homework, and more like a fun, personal project. My project is about the design of F1 cars, as it is a sport I enjoy watching in my spare time that ties in quite well with the Design Engineering department, and doing research into it was something that I enjoyed instead of it feeling like a chore, so if you want to do a HELP project next year, I would recommend picking a topic that you are willing to spend 20 hours on, without growing bored or frustrated.

Avi (2H)

My HELP project is all about the evolution of cars. This covers everything from some of the very first cars ever seen, all the way to now and the future. It is written as a timeline, and each stage in the timeline is written in large detail. Things in the timeline include the internal combustion engine at the very start, differentials, iconic cars and much more. All of the inventions in the timeline contain thorough explanations of how they work, so the idea is someone who reads my project will have a very good understanding of how cars work, and possibly see them in a different way from how they used to.

Oli (2B)

My help project is on “Could Nazi Germany have won WW2”. In it I look at whether or not Germany could have won the war they started in 1939, which I conclude that they couldn’t have done. I believe this for many reasons, but mainly as their Industry and manpower was inferior to their enemies, their lack of natural resources (especially oil) and their decision to start a multi-front war (in Africa, the USSR, and Britain/Western Europe) which meant they had to split their manpower. I choose to do this topic as WW2 still has massive effects on our lives today and was an immensely brutal conflict. Furthermore, it’s high stakes and the fact that it was a war between factions who had such different ideas for the future of the world, means that had the Nazis won, the world would undoubtedly look very different today (although any theoretical Nazi world order would have probably been toppled by now).

SCIENCE FAIR

Pupils in the First, Second and Third Year are invited to participate in the Lower School Science Fair. This is an opportunity for you to extend your interest in science through a project of your choice. Examples of past projects include: creating a small-scale water cycle in a bottle, researching the perfect free-throw in basketball, the feasibility of flying cars, and the use of brain waves to control LEDs. You may work on your own or in a small group. On the day of the fair, you or your group will have to give a short 3–5-minute presentation about your findings, ideally with a demonstration. The Second Year Science Fair will take place as follows:

Date: 12 May 2021

Time: 12:35 – 1:50pm

Location: Hammond Theatre

If you’d like to take part, please collect an entry form from outside the Physics Office and give it to Mr Cook by Wednesday 5 May. If you have any questions, please see Mr Cook in the Physics Office, or speak to your subject teacher in the subject that your project seems to fit most closely within. Entry forms can also be downloaded here.

So, get your thinking caps on!

COMPETITION

This term we will be running a two weekly year group competition. This week we challenge you to get creative and imagine yourself as an interior designer! You have a budget of £1000 to design the ultimate teenager’s bedroom. You will need to consider the cost of paint/wall paper, furniture, wall fixings etc. Send in your design, including costings to r.kugele@hamptonschool.org.uk.

TRIVIA

Have a go at our weekly trivia questions and send in your answers for a merit!

This week’s questions have been set by Trivikram (2P)

1. Which fruit has the highest fibre content?
2. What happens when a scientist’s expectations change how the results of an experiment are viewed?
3. What has Microsoft technology designed to allow an easy combination of HTML, scripts, and ActiveX?
4. What is a golfer said to have if he is entitled to tee off first?
5. What metropolitan area, not bordering a body of water, is the largest in the world?
6. This George Orwell novel begins with the words “It was a bright cold day in April”. What’s it called?
7. What is considered an average for an IQ Test?
8. What’s the country of origin of French Fries?
9. What is the fastest fish in the sea?
10. What is this a picture of?

Answers to the previous set of trivia questions!

1. What is the capital of Burkina Faso? Answer: Ouagadougou
2. How many football pitches are there at Hampton? Answer: 11
3. How many plastic bottles are bought every day? Answer: 1.5 billion
4. What is this a close-up picture of: Answer: Carbon Fibre
5. What is the 800 metre men’s running record (whole world)? Answer: 1:40.91

Have a great weekend!