Session 2 - November 22nd - Maths Around the World

Miss Hampson led a brilliant session on maths around the world.  The girls learnt the Chinese and Japanese method of multiplication, which proved to be fantastic multiplication strategies.  They then used these strategies to complete a 2 digit multiplication twirling top. 

After juice and the very popular cookies the girls enjoyed creating a variety of Chinese tangrams.  Miss Burns became very frustrated at not being able to create a cat, so Julieann stepped in to help! 

The girls also got creative designing Islamic Symmetrical patterns.  It was great fun to try different maths activities and to learn different methods of working out multiplications.  

Session 1 - November 8th - Murder in the Amazon Rainforest

The girls were given the task of discovering who killed Chico Mendez, a rubber tapper from Brazil who was asassinated on 22nd December, the girls had to establish motive and sift through a variety of information to make their decision.  To help them understand why Chico was in danger, Mrs Hames explained where Tropical Rainforests are located and what the climate is like.  The girls discussed why the Amazon Rainforest is important and discovered many facts, including: 

Rainforests contribute about 50% of the oxygen in the atmosphere

About 25% of the world's freshwater is stored in the Amazon rainforest.

Drugs used to treat leukaemia and other cancers come from rainforest plants, as do medicines for heart ailments and arthritis.

All the information learnt helped the girls to decide who had the most motive to kill Chico.  Most of the girls discounted Ovido Roberto who was a dam builder, they felt that even though Chico publicised the negative affects the dam would have on the rainforest, this was not a strong enough reason to kill him.  The other suspects were Darley Alves - a cattle rancher, Luis Franco - a construction worker, Aldebio da Silva - owner of a logging company, Jose Fernandez - Minister for Brazil's economy and Fernando Cavalera - the owner of a plantation.

3 groups picked Luis Franco as the murderer, the rationale being that Luis has just got a new job building roads through the rainforest, he was concerned that he could lose his job as Chico was arguing that the road destroyed too much forest.  Luis had 6 children and could not afford to pay medical bills, so he definitely could not afford to lose his job.

1 group chose Jose Fernandez who wanted to exploit the rainforest, allowing industry into the forest which would make money for the Government, Chico was opposed to this.

The last group went with Aldebio who was concerned that Chico might find out about his illegal logging of mahogany wood.

All the groups had excellent ideas and could describe why they felt their suspect had the strongest motive.

We found out that the murderer was Darley Alves, who had been prevented from deforesting areas to graze his cattle on.  He was very angry that Chico was behind this and so paid his son to kill him.  Darley and his son were both caught and sentenced to 19 years in jail.

This was a brilliant session and the girls enjoyed working together to solve the mystery.  Thank you to mrs Hames for a fun morning.

SHINE Launch

On Wednesday 5th November we welcomed 25 girls to the launch of the new SHINE Programme.  Miss Ladbrook spoke to the girls and the staff from their primary schools to explain why they had been chosen and told them a little about the activities they would be participating in during the 15 sessions.  The children's author Kate Maryon attended and read the girls a chapter of her book 'Shine' The girls enjoyed it very much and were very excited to receive a signed copy from Kate herself.  It was a lovely afternoon getting to know everyone and Mrs Ladbrook, Miss Burns and Mrs Coughlan hope the girls are looking forward to the first session as much as much as they are.