The Mosslands & Weatherhead Year 6 Gifted and Talented Challenge
On Saturday 18th October Mosslands School was pleased to welcome 40 Year 6 Gifted & Talented pupils from local primary schools to take part in the first of a two session event run.
The Mosslands & Weatherhead Year 6 Gifted & Talented Challenge Saturdays events
On Saturday 18th October Mosslands School was pleased to welcome 40 Year 6 Gifted & Talented pupils from local primary schools to take part in the first of a two session event run jointly with Weatherhead High School.
The pupils took part in three interactive challenges throughout the morning including Maths, Science and Computer Science, with prizes awarded to the top performers.
Maths Gifted & Talented session:
The Maths session involved students being asked to crack some very challenging sequences and predict the next five terms having been given the first five. The sequences included square, triangle, cube and prime numbers before finishing with the Fibonacci sequence.
The Fibonacci sequence is generated by the previous two terms of the sequence being added to give the subsequent term.
It starts 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 and so on.
Students were then shown a video that gave examples of where the Fibonacci sequence is found in nature, including how the nautilus shell is formed.
They were then challenged to construct "the golden spiral" using squares based around the Fibonacci sequence and compasses.
The work proved very challenging to some students who had not really used compasses before, but most were able to produce at least part of the spiral, with some able to complete the construction fully.
Computer Science Gifted & Talented session:
The Computer Science session involved students creating a Keepy-uppy style football game using the Scratch programming software. The first part of the session involved selecting their own character and some debugging to fix some broken code.
Once students had their games up and running we used our “Makey-Makey” kits to turn everyday items into game controllers. Pupils were allowed to explore their creative side and turned everything from jelly babies, fruit and veg, pencil and paper, staplers, rings, items of clothing and even each other into game controllers to move their characters about the screen; it was great fun!
Science Gifted & Talented session
The Science session involved an introduction to the importance of laboratory safety, and a discussion of possible dangers and the steps that every good scientist takes to work safely. Following this, the children viewed and took part in a number of science demonstrations which included:-
- Igniting methane bubbles
- Screaming jelly baby deomostration (a combustion reaction in a test tube)
- Making elephant toothpaste through the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide which produced piles of foam
Pupil Comments:-
‘ I enjoyed everything and would love to do it all again.’
‘ I really enjoyed the experiments in science and using the Makey Makey kits in Computer Science’
Well done to all who took part on Saturday, and congratulations to prize winners – Sangavaj Punnyaseelan, Evie Scroggie, Zoe Carless, Thomas McGlynn and Isabelle Cassidy.