Spring 2018 SPRING 2018 | Page 2

ICT NEWS MATHS UKMT TEAM MATHS THE EUROPEAN ASTRO PI CHALLENGE On Thursday 8th March 2018 the following pupils competed in the regional finals of the UKMT Team Maths Challenge against teams from other local schools: We are extremely proud to share the fantastic news that students at Limehurst Academy have successfully reached Phase 3 of the Astro Pi challenge. Trong Vu (9WI) Salimah Hossain (9JO) Joshua Webster (8CA) Amelie Connors (8AC) Their code has been qualified to fly and run on the International Space Station (ISS) in collaboration with Raspberry Pi Foundation. Two years ago the team from Limehurst finished 5th, which was an excellent achievement for our first ever entry, then the year after Limehurst Academy finished in 4th place. This year we were not quite as successful finishing 20th out of 28 schools. All the pupils involved put in a lot of effort and enjoyed the day. We will go back again next year with the aim to finish within the top 10 schools from our region. The code will be uplinked to the ISS to run on their on board Astro Pi for two orbits of the Earth. The collected data will then be downlinked to Earth and sent back to our students who will then analyse the data collected and write a report on their findings – like real space scientists! Mrs A Khodiara Teacher of ICT Mr C Allum Teacher of Maths TRANSFORMATION TRUST - DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY A group of Year 8 and 9 students had the opportunity to attend a workshop at De Montfort University. The workshop was organised and facilitated by the Transformation Trust in conjunction with Dell. During the day Students were given a tour of De Montfort University to get an insight into university life. And also an opportunity to experience using Virtual Reality (VR) Headsets, to try various different tasks. WORLD BOOK DAY To celebrate World Book Day a Librarian from Creative Learning came to do a book talking session with Year 7 pupils. She talked about and read excerpts from a large selection of books. The books were then available for pupils to borrow. During the workshop students worked in groups to think of an ICT solution to solve a social issue of their choice. They had to consider current solutions that were already available and be innovative and creative in creating new solutions using technology. They then had to present their ideas to everyone at the workshop. One of our groups in Year 9 chose to look at Social Anxiety, and developed an ICT based solution using Virtual Reality technology to help people overcome this. This creative and original idea coupled with the group’s confident and professional presentation style made them the overall winners of the day! Mrs K Gavriel 2 Achievement in a Caring Environment Achievement in a Caring Environment 3