Acta Grammatica

Summer 2015

It’s been an incredibly busy and enjoyable Summer Term. Sports Day, Murder-Mystery Day and the Summer Fete all show Boston Grammar School at its best. Pupils, staff, parents and other members of our school community working together to provide an outstanding, rounded education. Once again my thanks go to all of our pupils and the staff who have been magnificent in many respects throughout the last twelve months. The PTA has been very successful during this term, organising a ‘Bingo’ evening and a barbeque for Y6 pupils about to join the school in September. We are grateful to all of the parents who have helped so much with the PTA. The Old Bostonian Association dinner was a great occasion too. Over 170 ex-students and staff attended. The event was held in the school hall. The benches and display cabinet presented to the school by the OBA to mark the flood of December 2013 are now in use. We are all appreciative of the OBA’s on-going support and the hard work of all committee members, particularly Peter Sharman (OBA President). Recently the OBA agreed to sponsor Tyler Adkin (Y7) in his quest to compete in the World Kickboxing Championships, as

well as supporting Marcus Horry who is aiming to shoot on behalf of Great Britain at a future Olympics. Sports Day was held on the school field for the first time in twelve years. Our pupils put on a great show. It was wonderful to see them getting into the spirit of the event. All of the Houses (Gannock, Laughton, Muston and Parry) had successes during this highly competitive day. Thanks are due especially to Mr Hodgkin, Mr Ward and Mr Mountford. Sixth Form students, particularly the Prefects were an invaluable source of help. This was also true during the 11+ familiarisation sessions which took place on two consecutive Saturday mornings in July. Over 150 Y5 boys and their parents attended and I’m grateful to all of my colleagues who helped to make the sessions so useful and informative. ‘Murder-Mystery Day’ has been a lot of fun for all of the pupils and staff alike. Thanks are due to Miss Downie for the huge amount of time and hard work she put into this initiative. All of the pupils worked with their Tutor groups for the day on a cross-curriculum basis. They developed and enhanced their communication

and problem solving skills, as well as gaining superb experience of working as a team member. All of us thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of taking on a detective’s role for the day. It is a real privilege and honour to work with our pupils. Yet again, they’ve excelled this year. Some of the notable achievements include Mihir Rao becoming the Lincolnshire Young Physicist of the Year. The BGS Engineering Education Scheme Team (made up of Jason Barnes, Steen Bates, Nicholas Millington and Brandon Whittam) came second out of fifty two school teams in this national competition. Undoubtedly the students gained vital experience from working alongside our industry partners, Guttridge Engineering. The Arts Evening hosted by Mr Johnson and Miss Downie on 9th July was an excellent celebration of some of our students’ work in English and Art and was well attended by parents. The summer concert organised by Mrs Rich and Miss Bristow was also a great success. Our Summer Fete on Monday 20 July will be the result of a real team effort but special thanks are due to Mrs Rennie and Mrs Cooper. There have been more exciting developments on the international front too. Five teachers from

Boston Grammar School have been awarded an Erasmus+ European travel grant through the British Council. This enables them to spend time learning or improving their foreign language skills, followed by time spent at a partner school to shadow teachers abroad. Mr Poole, Mrs Collinson and Mrs Rich will be focussing on German and will be spending time with our partner school in Saarbrücken Germany. Miss Boularand will be working on her Spanish prior to working with colleagues in Spain, briefly. Mrs Downie will be spending a week in Finland learning about ICT in teaching and the Finnish educational system. The staff mobility project which is funded by the Erasmus+ Key Action 1 programme is called, ‘Learning languages and observing pedagogical techniques’. The Key Action 2 programme entails working in partnership with our partner school in Germany (Gymnasium am Rotenbuehl, Saarbruecken) and Pargas Svenska Gymnasium in Pargas, Finland. This project is called ‘Psychology goes to the movies’. Both projects will provide opportunities for our students. From September the school will be introducing Sims Learning Gateway so that parents can access information about their children from home. Initially this will be trialled with the parents of

‘new’ Y7 pupils and then rolled out to the whole school during the Autumn Term. There will be a different assessment system trialled with Y7 pupils too, as the levels we’ve previously used will be gradually replaced. GCSE and A-level courses are changing for some subjects too, with coursework and controlled assessments becoming less and less common. During the course of this academic year there has been more intervention with Years 11 to 13 than ever before. Subject areas have organised and delivered revision sessions and small group ‘clinics’ to provide plenty of tapered advice / guidance. Revision sessions held immediately before each examination were very well attended. Almost all Y11 students attended such sessions. It is hoped that the conscientious efforts of students and their teachers will reap the rewards in August on the results days. Y13 and Y12 students will be able to obtain their results from 9.30 am and 11am respectively on Thursday 13th August. Y11 students will be able to pick up their results from 8.30am on Thursday 20th August. On Thursday September 3rd Y7 and Y12 pupils (and some members of Y13) will be in school for their induction. All other pupils will return to school on Friday, 4th September. The Y7 cohort is set

to be the largest in many years and it is possible that Y12 will be large too, if all of those who’ve applied, enrol from August 20th (GCSE results day). There will be a number of staffing changes from September: Mr Graham retires at the end

of August. He will be missed for his excellent teaching of Biology and his recent leadership of the school’s Jazz Band, amongst other things. We wish him all the very best for the future!

Mrs Scott has been promoted to the post of Deputy Headteacher

Mr Johnson is now the permanent Assistant Headteacher with responsibility for Teaching & Learning.

Dr Amanda Jackson has been appointed as Second in Science (Biology).

Miss Pettefar is the new Second in English.

Mr Mountford becomes Head of Y7 / Transition.

Mr Richards is the new Head of Y8/9.

Mr Wilson (ex BGS student) joins the English Department.

Miss Stokes, Miss Halliday, Mr Blackman, Mr Herd and Mr Ullyatt-Sands join the school as Teaching Assistant Apprentices.

Mr Clough becomes IT Technician after serving a successful twelve months as

an apprentice. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing them every success in their new roles. I hope everyone has a restful, safe and enjoyable holiday.  Mr J McHenry

Term Dates 2015-16

The term dates for the next aca-demic year are as follows; Term 1 Thursday 3 September 2015 (year 7 & 12 only) Friday 4 September 2015 (all year groups) to Thursday 22 October 2015 Term 2 Monday 2 November 2015 to Thursday 17 December 2015 Term 3 Tuesday 5 January 2016 to Friday 12 February 2016 Term 4 Monday 22 February 2016 to Thursday 24 March 2016 Term 5 Tuesday 12 April 2016 to Friday 27 May 2016 Term 6 Monday 6 June 2016 to Thursday 21 July 2016

Personal Learning Records and

Unique Learner Numbers

All learners aged 13 and above have been allocated a Unique Learner Number by the Govern-ment, to enable everyone to build up a personal learning record (i.e. a central record of qualifications and achievements, equivalent to the old paper exam certificates). The new system is run by the Skills Funding Agency, and you should all be aware of their privacy notice when sharing your data with them. Below are the main points of that notice: Extended Privacy Notice for: pu-pils, students, learners and train-ees Some of the information you supply will be used by the Skills Funding Agency to fulfil its statutory func-tions, issue and/or verify your Unique Learner Number (ULN) and up-date and/or check your own Personal Learning Record(PLR). Your Personal Learning Record will include information about your qualifications, awards, training and learning achievements that you may collect throughout your lifetime – at all levels and also whilst you are working and learning. Your Personal Learning Record can be shared with organisations who have a responsibility for providing, funding and serving your education and training. If you are below the age of 16, you might wish to discuss this privacy

notice with your parent or legal guardian. The Skills Funding Agency is a public body that funds qualifica-tions and training that you may be receiving. It is responsible for main-taining ULNs and Personal Learn-ing Records on behalf of all individ-uals aged 13 and above in Eng-land, Wales and NI. Your Unique Learner Number (ULN) is a ten digit reference num-ber and is unique and individual to yourself for use within education. Please keep this number in a safe place you will need it to access your Personal Learning Record. The Skills Funding Agency may ob-tain and use third party reference data to assist when verifying your ULN and when checking that the data it holds about you is correct, in order to comply with the require-ments of the Data Protection Act to keep your details accurate and up to date. It is used to create and up-date your own Personal Learning Rec-ord (PLR), which will be conven-iently located online for you to ac-cess at www.learningrecordsservice.org.uk/products/learnerrecord � The Skills Funding Agency may use your information for manage-ment and statistical purposes and for monitoring the accuracy of the information it holds about you.”

� The Skills Funding Agency may share your ULN and Personal Learning Record information with other education related organisa-tions, such as your careers service, school, college, university, Govern-ment Departments and public bod-ies responsible for funding your ed-ucation. Please note that you can opt-out of the Skills Funding Agency shar-ing your Personal Learning Record. However, you cannot opt-out of the Skills Funding Agency storing your information. You can opt-out of sharing your participation and achievement data by contacting the LRS Customer Helpdesk on 0845 602 2589. You will be required to provide some personal details to confirm your identify, which may include your Unique Learner Number (ULN), if known. Further information on PLRs and ULNs can be found on the Learn-ing Records Service website at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/learning-records-service.

Year 9 Heartstart Training Hearstart is a British Heart Founda-tion initiative to teach people what to do in a life-threatening emergen-cy. The aim of the initiative is to save lives by providing opportuni-ties for people to learn Emergency Life Support (ELS) skills.

Mrs Scott and Mrs Ellis have been trained to deliver the Heartstart course in school. In June the Heartstart course was delivered to all of our Year 9 stu-dents. Students learnt when and how to act in a life-threatening emergency. The emphasis was on learning practical skills and the programme design provided maximum time for practice and hands-on learning us-ing resuscitation-training manikins. During their half day course stu-dents learnt to: Demonstrate safe approach

and assessment of danger Make a 999/112 call and ask if

an AED is available Open an airway Check for normal breathing Demonstrate the recovery po-

sition Perform Cardiopulmonary re-

suscitation (CPR) Demonstrate the management

of choking Know how to manage some-

one with a suspected heart at-tack

Know how to deal with serious bleeding

All of the students who participated in the course received a certificate and without exception everyone agreed that the course had been very useful and informative. Mrs S Scott

Unite Union Workshops in Busi-ness Studies and Economics

On Wednesday 4 March, David Condliffe from Unite Union ran three workshops for our students. These workshops covered how un-ions were formed, what they do and how they help people in the work place. Pupils worked on a number of ac-tivities throughout the one hour workshops demonstrating the work that the unions can do on behalf of their member.

Miss J Van Lier

Mathematics News

We have had an exceptionally busy year in Mathematics – here are just

a few highlights!

Annual Primary School Maths Quiz

On Tuesday 7 October we invited primary schools from the local area to take part in our Annual Primary School Mathematics Quiz. Over 12 teams took part and the enthusi-asm from all the teams was won-derful. After a number of rounds, including multi-choice, extended questions and speed rounds, we were very pleased to announce Wyberton Primary School as this year’s winners.

Congratulations to Wyberton Pri-mary School!

Senior Maths Challenge

The Senior Maths Challenge took place on Thursday 6 November. The results are as follows: Best in School: Nicholas Doddrell Best in Year 13: Nicholas Doddrell Best in Year 12: Mihir Rao Best in Year 11: Matthew Wearden Gold Certificate: Nicholas Doddrell Silver Certificates: Jack Taylor, Mei

-Lin Roberts, Edward Jacobs, James Buckley, Mihir Rao Bronze Certificates: Bilal Minhas, Isaac Charles, Rachel Sinha, Ja-son Barnes, Jeremy Lee, Matthew Wearden Nicholas Doddrell qualified for the Maths Olympiad and was invited to take part in Round 1. Around 1300 pupils from around the world are invited to participate and we are very proud of his achievements. Nicholas received a Certificate of Participation for his efforts. On Friday 14 November four boys entered the Senior Team Maths Challenge. Nicholas Doddrell and Jack Taylor from Year 13 were joined by Mihir Rao and Jeremy Lee from Year 12. They travelled to the Priory School in Lincoln for the competition. They completed rounds of questions against many of the top schools in the area. They placed 5th overall and are the high-est performing team in the Boston area. Well done.

Intermediate Maths Challenge

The popular Intermediate Maths challenge for pupils in Years 9 to 11 took place on Thursday 5 February. As usual we had some fantastic re-sults with the award winners listed below. Best in School: Ryan Skinner Best in Year 11: Matthew Wearden Best in Year 10: Ryan Skinner Best in Year 9: Dominic Wilson

Gold Certificates: Ryan Skinner, Neelay Sant, Matthew Wearden Silver Certificates: Bradley Knight, Joseph Dean, James Worthington, Dominic Wilson, Joshua Clarke, Seth Greeves, Dawid Przytula, Oli-ver Riley, Luke Borland, Tyler Row-ney, James Banks Bronze Certificates: George Lilley, Travis Higgins, William Balsom, William Nuttell, Bradley White, Alex Burman, Jack Timby, Shahzad Sanjrani, Ryan Garner, Nathan Derby, Oskar Grabowski Congratulations to all students on their fabulous achievements. Ryan Skinner qualified for the Hamilton paper – 500 of the high-est achieving students from the In-termediate challenge are invited to take part in the Hamilton paper. Ryan has performed exceptionally well and we are proud of his efforts in achieving a Certificate of Merit. Neelay Sant and Matthew Wearden qualified for the Pink Kangaroo. We are very proud of their achieve-ments, both achieving Certificates of Participation.

Ryan makes it to Summer School

Ryan was so successful in the two Maths Challenges that he has been invited to the UKMT Summer School. Only 40 pupils from across the UK are invited and this is an in-

credible achievement. Ryan will be travelling to Woodhouse Grove School in Leeds to spend a week looking at different aspects of Mathematics. We are all so very proud of Ryan’s achievements – well done!

Year 10 Maths Team Challenge On Wednesday 18 March two teams of four Year 10 students travelled to Cherry Willingham Community College to take part in the Year 10 Maths Feast organised by the Further Maths Support Pro-gramme. The event was attended by many schools from the area including QEGS in Horncastle, The Minster School, QEGS Alford and the Pri-ory LSST amongst others. There were six rounds all based around different courses of a meal. The boys worked hard together on all the rounds and performed in-credibly well throughout the whole competition. Team A performed exceptionally

well winning two of the rounds and were crowned overall winners! Team B performed well too placing eighth overall. Congratulations to all involved – we continue to be Year 10 champions for the Boston area and look for-ward to a possible regional final be-ing organised at Loughborough University.

Team A: (Back) Harry Stainfield, Ryan Skinner (Front) James Worthington, Neelay Sant

Team B: (Back) Shahzad Sanjrani, James Banks (Front) Aaron Bradshaw, Joel Da-vidson

Junior Maths Team Challenge

The Junior Team Challenge took place on Friday 20 March at the Priory City of Lincoln Academy in Lincoln. Twenty four schools at-tended and the competition was very demanding. The competition comprised of four rounds; the Group round, the Shuttle, the Crossnumber and the Relay. The boys worked hard to complete as much as they could and finished in a very respectable twelfth position. Well done boys!

Team : (Back) Dawid Pryztula, Zain Asif (Front) Mursaleen Asif, Dominic Wilson

Junior Maths Challenge

Best in School: Harry Hopkins Best in Year 8: Harry Hopkins Best in Year 7: Cavan Chambers Gold Certificates: Harry Hopkins, Finley Roberts, Cavan Chambers, Pierce Murray, Matthew Millington Silver Certificates: Matthew Hoyle,

Zain Asif, William Pettitt, Joel Wil-son, Mursaleen Asif, Thomas Scuff-ham, Shahmeer Khan, Andrew Sugg, Thomas Winter Bronze Certificates: Matthew Leachman, Ben Pocklington, James Dawson, James Pauly, Jo-seph Woods, Matthew Hardstaff, Cameron Lynn, Nathan Stopper, Ben Mepham, Cade Cantala, Jim-my Lattimore, Alex Sharp, Bilal Yahya, Connor Sargeant Congratulations to all students on their fabulous achievements. Harry Hopkins qualified for the Jun-ior Olympiad paper – 1200 of the highest achieving students from the Junior challenge are invited to take part in the Olympiad paper. Harry has performed exceptionally well and we are proud of his efforts in achieving a Certificate of Merit. Finley Roberts also performed ex-ceptionally well and was invited to take part in the Pink Kangaroo. A few thousand pupils from across the Junior Challenge are invited to take part and Finley achieved a Certificate of Qualification. An ex-cellent achievement – well done! Mrs J Cooper

Rivers of the World Project

In early 2014, Boston Grammar School submitted an application to be involved in a project called ‘Rivers of the World’. The project is organised by the British Council and Thames Festival Trust and en-courages young people to learn about rivers in their own locality as well as further afield. It is also an opportunity for pupils to work with different materials and investigate issues that are important to them. BGS was extremely pleased to learn, that out of a huge number of schools that had applied, we were one of only 16 schools outside of London that had been successful with our application. 13 pupils in KS3 took part in the project, which became a collabora-tive venture between Geography and Art focusing on Boston’s rivers. The boys involved were Jensen Barkworth, Eirron Pagaduan, Mat-thew Hardstaff, Thomas Smith, Ben Limb, Adam Watkins, Daniel Whit-ing, Sebastian Steers, Ashley Beebakee, Miles Chan, Jude Hoyles, Danny Wilson and Todd Grooby. They spent two days work-ing off-timetable which enabled them to thoroughly research the river Witham and Haven, find out about the 2013 floods and finally create a piece of art work. The completed art work was based around ideas that the pupils have gathered about the flood event from different people’s perspec-tives. The piece will be displayed in London during the Thames Festival in September, where pupils will

take a trip to see their work. The boys also visited different locations along both the Witham and Haven to compare various stages of rivers’ journeys. Below are accounts of the day from pupils involved. Day 1 ‘On Thursday 11 June, Miss Druce and Mrs Whittaker came in and told us about the 2013 floods from their point of view. Also, a man from the flood relief committee explained how the floods affected hundreds of people and what had to be done to get everyone back on their feet. Although there was huge relief ef-forts, people today are still strug-gling to cope with the amount of damage. There were also lots of psychological effects’. Danny Wil-son, Year 9 Day 2

‘On the Friday 12 June, we made clay and glass models that we will use to represent our theme of re-sourceful river. First, we drew our design on paper and after we en-sured that it was acceptable to make out of clay, we started to make it properly. We used clay for

the base and walls of the design and had to make sure that it would have no bubbles; otherwise it would explode in the kiln. We then poured shards of coloured glass into the gaps between the walls ready to be baked in the kiln. After the models were cooled, photo-graphs were taken of them so that they could be put into the final col-lage ready for London’. Jude Hoyles, Year 9 Day 2, continued The great thing about this project is that as well as our school being in-volved, we are also paired with a school in the Philippines called In-dustrial Valley Elementary School who are creating their own piece of artwork. When we have finished, we will compare our work with theirs and start to find out more about what rivers mean to people in the Philippines. We are hoping that this will turn into a long-term partnership to learn more about their culture and traditions’. Todd Grooby, Year 9

The project so far has been ex-tremely exciting and we will update you with our progress when the fi-

nal piece is ready. We hope that this will be the start of a fantastic journey with our partner school in the Philippines and that more pu-pils will be able to get involved in the next stages. Thanks to Mr James and Mr Vere for their help with Photoshop technical issues! Mrs S Collinson & Miss E Downie

French partnership On Friday 10 July, we will have the pleasure to host our French part-ner, Mr F Loisel, who will meet our current and new pen friends. The Year 7 pupils who have signed up to the exchange and correspond-ence project with the school La Providence in France, will take part in a one-hour workshop that will prepare for our partnership. Some carefully selected (current) pen pals from Year 8 will also be invited along. Miss G Boularand

Charity club

In response to the questionnaire presented by the charity club, we are pleased to announce that we will now publish a newsletter once a term to let you know about the events that we will organise and in-form you of the amount of money we raised in support of which chari-ty. Miss G Boularand

Science News As part of the BGS commitment to developing links with our feeder pri-mary schools and wider community the science team have been work-ing with their Primary colleagues to enthuse the next generation of sci-entists. St George’s Preparatory came in for a science afternoon at BGS with Mrs Winter, they investigated Acids and Alkalis, experienced Science in a Science Lab and set fire to their teachers! They were then taken on a tour of the school and enjoyed a visit to the Library and Museum and were given a brief history of the school from Mrs Ellis. Three members of the science team went to present workshops and a wow show to Year 6 at Tower Road – the students participated in secret writing, Chromatography, making and using indicators and did a hand wash test using a UV light. Mr Purvis presented a wow

show to each key stage, lots of co-la and mentos and ‘wows’ from the staff and students – check out the photos on twitter @science_BGS Year 10 have been thinking cross curricular Science, Art, PE, Life-skills making displays on ‘think be-fore you drink’ how much sugar is in your drink, and photographing chemical reactions to see the art in science and the science in art. The think before you drink display prompted much discussion from students and staff, and the science art collaboration has given lots of discussion to what is art, what is science and of course the fact that science is in everything much to Mrs Winters delight.

Science are having a refurbishment in 2 of the science labs and the in-ternal corridors – heavy machinery arriving and clearing out the labs has prompted discussions on engi-neering, building works and the his-tory of the science block, we look forward to returning in September to a freshly painted and restored

building. The science team are saying fare-well to Mr Graham, the Science Team would like to thank Mr Gra-ham for everything he has done for not only the department but more importantly the students and the school as a whole and wish him well on his retirement. The team are delighted to welcome Dr Jack-son in September as the new biolo-gist and second in charge of the science department.

Schools Physicist of the year

It was with great delight that on Monday 6 July Mihir Rao a Year 12 Physics student at BGS was awarded Lincolnshire school physi-cist of the year 2014/2015.

The evening was hosted by the new School of Mathematics and Physics at Lincoln University and sponsored by the Ogden trust, a charitable trust that exists to pro-mote the teaching and learning of physics. This was a well-deserved achievement for a talented and gift-ed young student. Miss E Winter

BGS Year 8 STEM Day On Wednesday 8 July 2015 the Year 8 students took part in our an-nual BGS STEM Day. Students took part in a Mathematical Sky-scrapers workshop delivered by Ar-chitecture Workshops from Cam-bridge. Students were challenged to de-sign and build the tallest and most interesting skyscraper structure that they could without it collapsing. The workshop was a design and make assignment focused on in-vestigation, disassembly and eval-uation. The workshop used design technology, maths and science to stimulate student’s imagination, in-terpretative and visual problem solving skills and to develop their higher order thinking skills. A winning team was chosen from each of the year 8 groups based upon their work throughout the ses-sion and the design, height and stability of their skyscraper.

The day was a great success and the students were unanimous in their opinion that this should contin-ue to be a yearly event for year 8.

Mrs S Scott

STEM Thursday 9 July saw 12 year 9 stu-dent compete in the Lincolnshire Schools Stem day at Lincoln Col-lege. Within mixed-school teams, they undertook practical applied-science / technology related chal-lenges led by a team of students recruited from leading universities, Each team of 4 comprising of 2 BGS boys and 2 students from an-other school took part in 3 of the following activities. Robot Challenge Using the latest Lego Mind-

storm EV3 kit, stu-dents design and build robots. They were then asked to pro-gramme the infrared and light sensors to avoid a series of obstacles on a track.

E-Fit Challenge A short sketch was acted out

in which someone’s wallet was stolen. The students were then asked to use commercial E-FIT software to generate an image of the ‘thief’. The ‘thief’ returned at the end, so that their appearance could be compared with the students images.

Electric Car Challenge Using plastic kit pieces, stu-

dents designed and then built a battery powered vehicle. At the end the vehicles were raced against each other. Stu-dents were encouraged to in-vestigate how design effects the speed and ‘power’ of their vehicle.

Construction Challenge A short presentation about dif-

ferent types of bridges was shown. The students were then asked to design and build a bridge, which would best support the greatest load. At the end each bridge was test-ed to destruction.

Each team of 4 was graded on planning, teamwork, and final prod-uct for each challenge. BGS had students in the winning team for every challenge and Will

Balsom and Christo Cherian were half of the winning team overall on the day and are through to the Na-tional finals to be held in January 2016. Miss E Winter

Design &Technology News

Engineering Education Scheme Outstanding performance by Bos-ton Grammar School in the Engi-neering Education Scheme Senior staff from Guttridge, who are based in Spalding, were de-lighted to watch a confident and in-spiring presentation from Boston Grammar School. This was the cul-mination of the Engineering Educa-tion Scheme. The students had de-signed and manufactured an im-pressive, fully functioning chain conveyor to a brief supplied by Guttridge. This presentation was the official handing over of the con-veyor to Guttridge. The students received, deservedly so, a lot of very positive feedback from Gut-tridge staff for all the hard work and engineering expertise that the pro-ject demanded. At the recent EES celebration and assessment day, the Boston Gram-mar Guttridge team were voted 2nd best out of 52 schools in the stu-dent vote, a brilliant achievement and thoroughly deserved. The project description was “To de-sign and build a short chain con-

veyor section, to test the impact of flight design and machine inclina-tion on efficiency and to provide a test bed for future component test-ing.” Stand Design As well as designing the conveyor itself, the students were required to design the stand that could be dis-mantled for easy transportation and would support the heavy machine, ensuring that it would be possible to change the inclination in a safe, efficient and reliable manner. They achieved this using a simple but very effective design, meaning that the effectiveness of different flights could be measured at different con-veyor inclinations from 0 to 15°. Project Report As part of the project, the students had to produce a comprehensive report explaining the issues that they came up against and how the-se were resolved as well as the re-sults and conclusions of their tests. This report made really interesting reading, with an enlightening and honest outline of the project. Project Challenges The students agreed that the big-gest challenge they had to over-come was learning how to use Au-todesk Inventor, the design soft-ware used by Guttridge. They needed to learn how to operate this very quickly so they did not fall be-hind on the strict schedule that the project demanded. They found the most helpful parts

of working with Guttridge were the weekly meetings with the Guttridge design engineer, who kept the pro-ject pro-active and ensured that they stayed focused on what was coming up next in the work plan so that they could plan ahead. Student comments Jason Barnes, a member of the student team, commented “I feel like the project went well, we all bonded as a team and I feel like I have achieved something along with the completion of the project.” Nicholas Millington, another team member added “I loved putting the conveyor together as it was all our hard work finally being put togeth-er.”

Benefits to company participants Simon Hooper, Guttridge Engineer-ing Manager, an enthusiastic par-ticipant in the EES, having worked with Boston Grammar School for the last three years, stated “We en-joy working with the students and find it a very valuable experience. Not only are they supplying us with useful data that we will use in the design of our conveying equip-ment, but they also provide super-visory experience to our staff and a fresh way of looking at things. The

enthusiasm of the youngsters is contagious and this year the group have really excelled themselves. The conveyor they have designed and built is outstanding and the amount that they have achieved in the given time period is quite ex-ceptional. They thoroughly de-serve to be voted second in the student vote.”

STEM Club -Technology The Design and Technology aspect of STEM club is going well with a few of the students finishing their projects and already getting to grips with some new ones. We are offering different projects for you to get involved in, targeted mainly at years 7-9 simply because years 10-13 have plenty of coursework to do! There have been some great projects going on, if you’d like to be involved come and have a look at the projects that are available as a starting point, however, if you have your own project that you wish to make then please come and see us, I’m sure you could make some great presents for mothers/father day, brothers/sisters etc!

Wood Turning

Wood Turning lessons have fin-ished now for this year but we will look to start again in September. Fantastic work this year produced by Nathan Dunford, and John Bowden. http://www.clemansell-woodturner.moonfruit.com/ HTTPS://www.facebook.com/clemansellwoodturner?fref=ts If you are interested in your son taking part and learning this skill please contact me john.james@bostongrammarschool.co.uk

Raspberry Pi MK1 Raspberry Pi Buggies are now on the road. Designed, Built and programmed by club mem-bers, 4 buggies are now up and running.

With designs ranging from pre-programmed models that carry out a set of desired moves, through keyboard controlled buggies that can be driven by wire, to APP con-trolled wireless units that can be controlled through Android touchscreen devices. This is just the beginning, with members now in a position to ex-pand on their designs to create tru-ly unique robot vehicles. Open to all year groups, if you are a gamer who wants to break free of the screen, of a keen problem solv-er with an interest in computers – come along and find out what it is all about.

Year 9 STEM Trip - RAF Scampton July 2015

The school was invited to the

second RAF Scampton STEM day, which focused on high-lighting careers within the STEM subjets. A group of Year 9 students, all interested in the STEM subjects were selected by the Design and Technology Department. The event start-

ed with speeches by TV pre-senter Jason Bradbury and the fastest man on earth Andy Green who is working on the Bloodhound project.

The topics covered how the STEM subjects will play an im-portant role in our futures, ei-ther as part of our jobs and / or our leisure activities. During the day the students undertook various activities exploring the components of space and were shown how to make a meteor, Dr D did some science experiments highlighting how everyday objects, the RAF ex-plained how their early warn-ing radar relies on mathemat-ics and everyone had the op-portunity to sit in a Red Arrow plane!

During lunch the students watched a performance by the Red Arrows.

In the afternoon students were ‘free’ to visit stalls they had not seen in the morning. Big hits with the students were the lat-est cars from Jaguar and As-ton Martin. As well as the ac-tivities students got to meet and talk to ‘celebrities’ and the Red Arrow pilots.

Thanks to everyone for their contin-ual support. Mr James, Mr Richards & Mr Coldwell

Physical Education News

Cricket The U12’s have made an encour-aging start to their cricketing ca-reers at BGS. They got to the semi-final of the county cup after both Middlecott and Skegness Grammar conceded. In the semi-finals they met a very strong Lincoln Minster side and came up a little short. There were many god performanc-es particularly with the ball which is encouraging for the future. Well done to all those that have attend-ed practices all year. The U13’s won through to the semi-finals of the county cup defeating Haven High, Middlecott and Caistor Grammar who they bowled out for 13. They finally tasted defeat to Spalding in a very tight semi-final. The U14’s won through to the quar-ter finals of the county cup defeat-ing University Academy Holbeach and QEGS Horncastle before los-ing to a very strong Spalding GS side. They have defeated all the lo-cal teams very convincingly and I am sure they have a promising fu-ture ahead of them. The U15’s entered both the Lindum Shield and the County Cup and

performed well in both. In the Lin-dum they were knocked out on the last ball of the game against Carres in what was a keenly contested game. In the County Cup they reached the semi-final before meeting an outstanding William Farr team dominated by some of the County’s best players. It has been pleasing to see many boys playing for local club sides at both junior and senior level taking wickets and scoring runs against quality opposition.

Swimming Huge congratulations to William Swain who has qualified for the English Nationals in the 100 and 200 freestyle at Ponds Forge in Au-gust. This is an outstanding achievement and we wish him all the best for this meet.

Tennis Year 8 and under tennis team Jake Sherrick, Luca East, Lowinn Hashim and Matthew Dickens nar-rowly missed out on winning the Lincolnshire Aegon Tennis Compe-tition by two points. They beat QEGS Horncastle, Kings Gran-tham, Kings Priory Academy and Spalding Grammar School. The finally lost in the shootout against Stamford and lost on a tie break 10-8. Year 10 and under team, Thomas Cozens, Robert Hayes, Jack Sill

and Nicholas Hart also had a good season beating Horncastle, Spal-ding and Grantham Priory Acade-my. Many thanks to Mrs Ellis who has looked after the team all year I know the boys and the PE depart-ment would like to thank her for all her help and expertise.

Athletics We took a much smaller team to the District Championships this year although not lacking on quality as over half of the athletes we took qualified to represent the District at the County Championships. Matthew Millington (800m), Luke Hackett (300m), Nathan Stevens (1500m), Thomas Johnson (Javelin), Ben Lawrence (800m), William Swain (800m) and Blake Garwell (1500m) all qualified to represent South Lincolnshire in the County Championships. The Coun-ty championships formed the basis for selection for the Regional event competing against other counties. We had two athletes make it into the next stage. William Swain (800m) and Thomas Johnson (Javelin) both qualified to represent Lincolnshire at the Regional Cham-pionships. This is a huge achieve-ment for both students and they should be congratulated for their achievement and they both per-formed admirably at the Regional Championships.

Mr M Hodgkin

World Rules Pool Ex pupil Stuart Whitaker was amongst the England team com-peting in the European Champion-ships in Malta. The EPA sent a party of 92 people to the European Championships in Malta from 14th – 21st February 2015, players and managers spon-sored by the EPA plus a large con-tingent of friends and family who financed themselves. All had a great time and the Teams justified the faith and finance that the EPA members placed upon them.

Congratulations to the EPA players and Managers for their efforts and their magnificent results during the recent European Championships held in Malta. Taking four of the seven team titles and all of the singles titles. Mrs M Whitaker