Woodrush Star June 2013 | Page 30

STEM For 11 to 12 weeks Jessica, Dan, Aaron and Will (year 7), Stephanie, Shivarnih, Rosella and Jamie (from year 8), took part in an engineering challenge to hopefully gain half a qualification. This challenge consisted of a 1500 word dissertation explaining what you have made is about, an artefact (what you have made), some paper-work on what your product is and how it works, a log on everything you have done week-by-week, a presentation to people explaining about the product (on a presentation night open to the parents of the people, who made the products, and the teachers) and a lot of hard, hard work. Just writing this tires me out, so you can only imagine how hard it was to actually do the challenge! Overall it was amazing and so much fun and I hope a lot of people take this fantastic opportunity when it will hopefully happen in the future again. I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Ms Khatri, Mr Thompson, Mr Paget, Miss Colborne, Mr Hodgetts and Miss Harris. THANKYOU! By Rosella (year 8) European Union Day for Woodrush High THURSDAY 9th May was European Union day – it was 63 years ago to the day since the French Minister Robert Schuman had announced in a speech that French and German leaders should put their coal and steel industries together. The leaders of Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were also convinced about the idea and so the European Coal and Steel Community was set up. By 1957 these 6 countries were working so well together that they decided to share a common market to make it easier to trade together 30 and called themselves the European Economic Community. This got rid of all the border checks and customs duties and allowed the 6 countries to trade with one another as though they were all one single country. In the 1960’s other countries saw how the common market was making life easier for the people in those countries – they had more money to spend, more food to eat, and more varied things in the shops and so these other countries asked to join too. However it was not a simple process and it wasn’t until 1973, after years of discussion that the UK, Denmark and Ireland were allowed to join. Greece joined in 1981, followed by Portugal and Spain in 1986 and then Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. By 1992 the European Economic Community had extend its sharing across borders so much and had become so different to the original club that they decided to change its name to the European Union as we know it today. To celebrate European Union day Mrs Court’s year 9 maths group learnt about the history of the EU and then looked at the reflection and rotational symmetry of the EU flag. They then did calculations using the currency of the EU, the Euro, and converted amounts in sterling into Euro’s. Mrs Courts brought some Euro’s into school so the pupils could compare them with English pounds and pence.