We ended 2020 on a high here at Chipping Campden Sixth Form with two highly successful charity events.
One of our Year 12 tutor groups organised a ‘Reverse Advent Calendar’. Students and staff within the Sixth Form were asked to donate food items for a food bank run by Evesham based charity ‘Caring Hands in the Vale’. It was a huge success and a whole car boot of donations was collected.
Our Sixth Formers also took part in Christmas Jumper Day 2020; overall Chipping Campden School raised £1176.50 for ‘Save the Children’ and ‘The Children’s Society’.
The New Year brought news of another lockdown but also positive news for us as our brand new Sixth Form Website was launched! We are thrilled with the results and hope all our visitors to the website have enjoyed watching the videos and finding out more about life at CCS Sixth Form.
History
In January, a few Year 13 Historians joined Mrs Kingswood (Head of History) in a virtual lecture hosted by the Historical Association and presented by Professor Rana Mitter OBE FHA. He discussed the subject of his latest book ‘China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism’.
Rana Mitter is a Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford and Vice-President-elect (Communications) at the British Academy.
The students even managed to get Chipping Campden School a mention by Professor Mitter; the interviewer was criticising the lack of coverage of Asian History in British schools, so they added in the chat box that CCS does an entire A-Level topic on Modern Chinese History. Professor Mitter was very impressed! It was a very interesting lecture and fit in perfectly with their study of the impact of the Second World War on China.
(If students are interested in ANY topic in History, we have a school subscription to the Historical Association and encourage ANY students to have a look.
http://Student/Historical Association (history.org.uk)
Username: 13316
Password: chipping123)
STEM
Climate Ambassadors
One fantastic opportunity that we offer here at Chipping Campden Sixth Form is the chance to be a Student Ambassador; every year Sixth Form students are able to work with The Royal Institution to prepare a series of masterclasses for primary aged pupils. This year the topic has been the science of climate change, and we currently have ten Year 12 ‘Climate Ambassadors’. Along with Mrs Flaherty (Director of STEM and Teaching & Learning Lead for The Ogden Trust) our students have been working hard delivering online sessions to primary pupils from a school in Yorkshire. To find out more please click on the link below:
https://www.ogdentrust.com/about-us/news/climate-champions
We are very proud of two of our Climate Ambassadors, Ben (Jensen) and Aaron (Syme). At the beginning of February Ben and Aaron had an article they had written about their team’s climate projects published in Catalyst magazine. Catalyst is aimed at young people and educators and aims to bring news about cutting edge STEM research that sparks learning, teaching and debate. You can read Ben and Aaron’s article here: https://catalyst-magazine.org/articles/calling-all-climate-champions/
IRIS
At CCS, we have sought to enhance the curriculum by getting involved in live research projects with the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS). The charity links schools with leading institutions and universities, giving students from all backgrounds the opportunity to participate in authentic research. Their programmes span everything from Cosmic Mining, where students learn to examine and classify stars, to the Treezilla project, where young people learn to collect vital data about trees and contribute to an ambitious project to map all of Britain’s trees while getting up and personal to the impact of climate change on the ecosystem.
Despite hours of online learning over the past three months, a handful of students have continued to move forward with extra curricular research projects. Year 12 students Kate Aston and Rosie Morris have found the time to delve into some background reading to prepare them for their Earth Observation Project. IRIS offer our students access to Sentinel Hub which provides analysis of satellite imagery. Kate and Rosie have been learning how to use Sentinel Hub and have found themselves getting to grips with the data and images on offer. They have completed a variety of training activities and so the next step is to decide which direction they would like their research project to take. Ideas so far have been monitoring animal migration patterns or maybe changes in snow and ice coverage; a tricky decision when the world (or at least images of the world) is literally at their fingertips!
Chemistry Olympiad
Congratulations were in order for some of our Year 13 Chemists. They all received certificates (9 Bronze and 4 Silver) after entering the 53rd Chemistry Olympiad through the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSOC). Esme (one of the Silver award winners) wrote the following about the experience.
Recently, we were lucky enough to participate in the 53rd Chemistry Olympiad. The annual competition was designed to challenge, yet inspire young Chemistry students like those at Chipping Campden. Everyone participated and 13 students received certificates for their outstanding performance. It was an amazing opportunity which has really motivated us within our studies! By Esme Clark Year 13
Applicant Interviews
In February we started to interview Sixth Form applicants who had applied from other schools. In normal circumstances we would run face-to-face interview/taster mornings for all our external applicants; not to be defeated by the lockdown restrictions we set up virtual interviews instead. It has been a pleasure to meet with all the students over the last couple of months, and we are looking forward to (hopefully) meeting them in person during our Induction Days in July.
Government & Politics
During lockdown, two of our Year 12 students (Florence Johnson and Isabel Trinkle) took part in the South England Regional Youth Parliament; their involvement has now led to them being chosen to participate in the national level of the European Youth Parliament later this year. Florence has written a report on the experience:
“After hearing about the opportunity through Mr Banwell, we decided to sign up for the South England Regional Youth Parliament. We were asked to choose from a number of different topics and were sorted into committees of around 10 other pupils from all over the South of England. I was put into the committee whose focus was the effect of online learning and the disparities this emphasised, Izzy was put into a committee whose topic was the discussion of revenge porn. It was a two-day event and on the first day, we spent time getting to know the other people in our committees and focusing on coming up with solutions to the problems that our individual topics presented. Our proposals were finalised and published in a document that evening. The next day we had the task of introducing our topics and trying to convince the other committees to vote in favour of our proposals, we had to debate and answer any questions that people had.
After this everyone had the opportunity to vote either for or against our committee’s proposals. During this debate time, we were all individually assessed on our participation and how we responded to people’s criticisms, on top of this the outcome of the votes also influenced whether we would get through to the next round. Both of our proposals had strong support and we were lucky enough to get confirmation that we have been chosen to participate in the national level of the European Youth Parliament, which will take place this August. It will follow a similar format, however, the people who are participating will only be the top candidates from each region; the selected topic will be ‘Sustainability and the Environment in Europe’.” By Florence Johnson Year 12
Media Studies
It’s been a busy few months in Media! Two of our Media students have written about opportunities they have taken part in during this term; Year 13 student Sophia took part in the BBC Young Reporter and Year 12 student Isabelle attended an Online Masterclass.
Taking part in the BBC Young Reporter was brilliant, there were 5 different people that touched on different aspects of the media industry. I gained so much from this experience, the focus was on sports broadcasting. It had a diverse panel and they gave us tips to help us get into the industry. All of them had different stories on how they did this, ranging from internships to just applying for every available job possible. They then spoke about what they take part in on a day to day basis, and their favourite aspects of the job. Afterwards there was time for a question and answer, this was also really helpful in knowing what to study after Sixth Form. This was a brilliant experience and I would encourage everyone to take every opportunity like this. By Sophia Lykova-Jones Year 13
I attended the Online Masterclass with Esther May Campbell. It took place on the 14th of March and was a talk about Esther May Campbell’s award winning film ‘September’ and her extensive career in TV. I found it very useful and insightful into the different options within the film industry. Many different things were discussed such as the different paths to get into the film industry and the different roles. We also learned how Esther May Campbell tried to be environmentally friendly on the film sets she has worked on, and how, after shooting was done her and her team would work on putting it all back how it was found. Finally, she also discussed how she got her ideas from everyday things we see in nature and how these inspired her, she then gave us tips on how to use these ideas. Overall I feel it was very informative and interesting, and has helped me see the many different pathways into the film industry. By Isabelle Elliott Year 12
