Chess and Electronics Workshops

Bob Wildig (volunteer chess tutor and youth coordinator at Rugby's Chess Club) carried out a chess workshop to help enable the students discover the moves of the chess pieces and how to play chess.  For more information open the Rugby Chess Club link.

Raj (volunteer science tutor) also helped to enable the student's skills involved with creating programmable electronic circuits - for example an electronic device that would behave like a mini - traffic light system (using small red, yellow and green lights).

Watch the videos and enjoy!

Chess Workshop - Interview Recorded by Craig (volunteer coordinator and tutor)

Electronics Workshop - Interview Recorded by Dionne

Pictures and Video of Project Management-Based Activity

Students were enhancing their project management skills by discovering how to recognise and improve their communication and construction techniques.

This task is called Jelly Spaghetti and students were given £1500 (monopoly money) to buy materials and also asked team players to help them build the tallest tower possible.

Robbi and Raj (volunteer tutors) helped student team leaders to discover their own confidence in communicating ideas to their team.  This is before they start creating their own style of towers.

All tutors were very pleased by the way the students expressed their creative abilities in this task as both the towers produced were taller than the provided structures.

Students had to choose whether to copy the structures available or to discover alternative ways to produce the highest tower.

Have a look at the pictures and video and enjoy!

Robbi (Volunteer Tutor) with Omar's (Team Leader)Tower  (Omar not in picture)

Raj (volunteer tutor), Jodhveer (team leader and his tower) and Omar

Abigail's Recorded Interview of Project Management Group

Pictures and Video of Art-Based Activity

Students were introduced to creating electronic art using Sketch Book Pro.

Ray (volunteer art tutor) produced template pictures for the students to copy so as to help them identify what tools are available on the software.  This is before they start creating their own style of electronic art.

All tutors very pleased by the way the students expressed their creative abilities as these pictures were produced after just one workshop! They focused really well.

On some computers if you click on a picture then you view them on a slide show.

Have a look at the pictures and video and enjoy!

Picture Template (Raymond - Volunteer Art Tutor)

Abigail's Finished Picture

Darian's Finished Picture

Dionne's Finished Picture

Abigail's Recorded Interview of the Art Group

Pictures of Children and Young People During Activities

These are pictures of the students while they were 'creating and discovering!'

Our volunteer tutors were helping them to touch their imaginations to produce inspirational finished products.

Additionally the computer, chess, art and science tutors were very pleased with the efforts and concentration the students put into completing these tasks - so well done and keep up the hard work!

Project Management Task - Raj (Volunteer Tutor), Jodhveer (Team Leader) and Omar

Art Activity - Darian

Art Task - Abigail

Jodhveer and Dionne

Importance of Good Communication in Group Tasks

After speaking with my friends and colleagues I am to show how the Project Management task on the video clips is relevant to good communication skills to children and young people in Rugby.

Harry Maxwell was the first student from a school in Rugby to successfully be accepted onto the BBC Young Apprentice with Lord Alan Sugar.  Lord Sugar was offering a prize of £25,000 to the most successful candidate.  For further information on Harry open the Young Apprentice Link.

Harry was sixteen years old (16) when he applied for the place.  He represented Rugby, Warwickshire.

From the video clips:-
Team Cool Runnings - Jacob (10), Coby (10), and Devante (11 and Team Leader)
Team Illusion - Xavier (10 and Team Leader), Immogen (14) and Tiana (9)
Team RTC - Rhianna (9), Tristen (13 and Team Leader) and Charlie (15)

You can notice that these students are not that much younger than Harry Maxwell so if they keep practicing they too could get a chance to represent Rugby and try and win £25,000 towards their own business!  Harry had good communication skills. Watch the video below.

I was extremely pleased with all their efforts so please join me in congratulating these talented children and young people!  Well done students and keep up your hard work.

Additionally watch the video below of the Young Apprentice team leaders - Lewis Roman (16) and ; Gbemi Okunlola (16) in the BBC series and observe how well they communicated their ideas in their pitches to the retailers - times 9min.15secs and 10min.15secs are their first pitches.

Rugby West Indian Association - Promotion Event

Create and Discover promoted 2 of the activities we can provide during the Rugby West Indian Association's (RWIA) Jamaica Independence Family Day.  So a big thank you to Lorna and everyone else at RWIA for the support as it is much appreciated.

Even though we had a heavy down pour of rain and hailstones 3 teams took part in our Project Management competition - Jelly Spaghetti.  The prize was £12 and each team had to be made up of 3 students aged 7 to 16 years.  Have a look of the 2 videos below.

Once the consent forms were completed as we were to record videos and real prize money was available each team had 10 minutes to build the tallest tower with the £1500 budget (monopoly money) and materials available.

The 3 teams were:-

A) Team Cool Runnings - Jacob, Coby and Devante (Team Leader)
B) Team Illusion - Xavier (Team Leader), Immogen and Tiana
C) Team RTC - Rhianna, Tristen (Team Leader) and Charlie.

Congratulations to Team Cool Runnings!  They completed the task and built the tallest tower.  The team leader worked really hard and also shared out the prize money with his team mates.  So great effort team Cool Runnings!

Also teams Illusion and RTC did exceptionally well as they did communicate their ideas during this task although Cool Runnings had slightly more communication during the building of the towers.

All 3 teams are more than welcome to improve their Project Management, art or science skills at our Create and Discover sessions at Benn Partnership Centre.

Watch these 2 video clips of the competition below and enjoy!

Third Session - 4th August

Today the students continued developing their chess skills with Bob.

After this they continued to develop their computer animations.

Following lunch they took part in the Project management activity (Jelly Spaghetti).  As this was their first time completing this activity they did very well building towers out of the materials available, using a budget of £1500 and in 15 minutes.

Well done students - keep up the hard work!

Second Session - 28th July

We had another great session at Benn Partnership centre on Saturday.

We continued on following Bob Wildig's chess activity and the students completes chess using the chess boards (kindly donated by Rugby Chess Club) and chess on the internet (www.chess.com).

Following this the student's started their workshop for creating their own computer animations! They picked up the techniques after a short time so well done students!

After lunch we continued with the business activity (Monopoly) - with 2 teams, teams lightning and thunder!  Team lightning did well as they made a profit of £500 as a group and individually they made £210 and £290.

Overall it was a great session - great work students! Well done.