Triumph for Year 9 students at the Technology tournament

On Tuesday 9 February two teams, each with four of our Year 9 students, participated in the Rotary and STEM East Technology Tournament – and two teams triumphed! The girls were selected for the tournament for a number of reasons; some are STEM scholars, others stood out to our STEM Co-ordinator, Mrs Tessa Shercliff, as suitable candidates, while a couple are keen members of the Young Engineers club for Year 8 to Sixth Form students (and, subsequently, one of the participants has become the newest member of the club).

The competition is open to a number of Cambridgeshire schools, and all students arrive on the morning of the competition without any knowledge of the task that lies ahead. This year the students were asked to build bridges, bearing in mind a number of requirements, within a limited amount of time and using a limited selection of material and tools, which would need to stand up to the judging panel’s testing.

Congratulations to Team 1, made up of Mariana G.O., Anna C., Francesca H., and Annabelle B., who were awarded Winner of Best Portfolio for their excellently presented ideas, evidence of brainstorming, sketches, description of reasoning and problem solving during the project, and evidence of working as a team. They were deserving winners.

Team 2, made up of Lois T., Rebecca G., Athena L., and Rosie T. impressed the judges enough to be awarded Overall Winners of the competition, having fulfilled all of the design criteria, passed the weight, mechanism, height and structure tests, and impressing the judges with the way they worked as a group throughout the day. Mrs Shercliff is extremely proud of all the girls and delighted that after a number of years of participating and being awarded a range of prizes, a team from our school has been crowned Overall Winner for the first time.