Year 5 Caeser Shifts...

Congratulations to Y5 for making such fantastic code wheels today, and decrytping such wonderful work.

Don't forget to bring your code wheels with you to open evening.

Feel free to reply to the following message in the comments for this blog...

the only clue I will give you is gT....

ZL SNIBEVGR OVG NOBHG BHE QNL NG WBUA ORAGYRL JNF

Comments will be published once moderated.

See you Thursday!

Year 8 Enigma Challenge Day

10 intrepid year 8 came on a maths trip across to chippenham for a gifted and talented event looking at codes, code breaking and problem solving.

There were 5 sessions, a lecture from a very enthusiastic cambridge profesor, with a real working 2nd world war enigma machine, followed by 4 sessions that covered more code breaking, mystery solving, a celtic knot investigation, and problem solving games and puzzles.

Many thanks to Miss Wenban for organising the trip

Here's what some of the students thought.

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A group of year 8 travelled to Sheldon School to take part in the Enigma Maths Challenge which consists of puzzles, breaking codes, mysteries and solving problems.

The day started in the hall, we joined the other schools that were already there. A mathematician from Cambridge University came in with an enigma machine which was used in World War 2 to make and break codes. We all got the chance to see how the machine worked and it is the only one that is not in a museum.

The mathematician talked to us about his job and what we would be doing during the day. He talked to us that there are jobs that are just breaking codes and solving problems. Some of the best code breakers were used during the war to solve any codes that the Germans sent. After a while a machine was built so that the English could find out what the message said before the German officers knew what it said.

We learnt a lot about the enigma machine and how it worked at what different things mathematicians do as a job. The talk was very helpful and inspiring.

Kayleigh Roberts

[click here for a virtual enigma machine!]

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We did a lesson on code breaking with a mathematician from Cambridge University. He showed us lots of different methods to decipher codes for example very famous codes such as the caesar code. He gave us lots of different codes for us to work them out and decipher them. As we went along we got better and could handle more difficult ones so we definately learnt new skills and we will take them back to JBS. Overall the lesson and the whole day was very good and we had a great time!
Caoimhe Kelly

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Celtic Knots

Practical Puzzles

Year 7 PSHEE Day - Design a theme park

Year 7 have been very busy today, designing their very own theme parks, and seeing who could make the most money.

Hre are some of the facts and figures they were given... (and yes that is me and my family in the first picture!)

Competition was fierce, with students desperately trying to keep within the £500,000 build

budget, and keeping their daily running costs down.

After an early 3 day press viewing to test numbers, designs were tweaked, car parks improved, and rides added. Team also scored each others designs in a trade fair to increase advertising and therefor getting more paying customers through the door.

In the afternoon gates opened at the parks, with the number of visitors dependent on numbers of rides, cost, car park size, and how visually fabulous the designs were!

Congratulations to the following teams for winning in their respective houses...

Kerry B - Pure Adrenelin - £80630

Kerry J - Cheeky Monkeys - £71414

Shelbourne B - Treasure Tower - £80150

Shelbourne J - Awesome Land - £70541

Lansdowne B - A step in time - £83845

Lansdowne J - Spotty Fish 31 - £83577

Fitzmaurice B - MCL - 79894

Fitzmaurice J - CTF 75795

The Winning Design

Kerry B Average - £50426

Kerry J average - £61428

Kerry Overall Average - £55927

Shelbourne B - £57825

Shelbourne J - £61320

Shelbourne Average - £59573

Lansdowne B - £58142

Lansdowne J - £57375

Lansdowne Average - £57758

Fitzmaurice B - £57026

Fitzmaurice J - £58932

Fitzmaurice Average - £57979

The overall winning team was A Step in Time with £83,845 profit over 7 days.

The winning house was Shelbourne with an average profit per team of £59,573

Well done to all who took part, espcially our winning teams.

If you are in Y7 we would love to get feedback - what was the best bit of the day, what did you enjoy the most. Which bit of the day would you change - feel free to leave comments below.

Here are some pics - a random few. We'll add more over the next couple of days.

Year 6 Day - Factor Caterpillars

Corridor Display

Can you spot yours?

Here are some Factor Caterpillars that year 6 made today on their visit to the school.

Max

unknown!

Sophie

Charlotte
Kirsty

Lauren

Millie

Cerys

Ben

Millie

Bethany

Nick

Owain

Connor

Victoria

Y11 Exam (part 2)

Here is a link to the list of topics and what we think may still come up.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1nQtMRottYtSa9ayaNHr1O1Jv6ZzSGssxWXWHB0lZeRk

It is not a guarenteed list.

See you for maths on Wednesday P1, or through email / twitter.

Otherwise, see you Friday for the exam!

Year 11 Exam

Year 11,

Well done on your exam today. We've worked out what was missing, but are not allowed to share until tomorrow, so best bet is to come into the lesson, or come back to this blog tomorrow.

Hopefully we'll see you in class (Tuesday P1 and Wednesday P1), but failing that 9 o'clock Friday for the CALCULATOR paper.

Opinion polls. Be careful

I did a poll through twitter before the referendum in May 2011.

In it, 72% of the 61 respondants said they would vote 'yes' to av. In the actual referendum only 39% actually responded with a yes vote.

Why the massive discrepency? I asked an almost identical question to the actual referendum, and was very careful to not push my own opinions in tweets I sent out when trying to get responses. If sent a tweet out with a link, I tagged it with either both #tags - #yes2av and #no2av, or with neither tag.

A very similar thing happenned in the 1930's in the USA, on a much larger scale, during a presidential election.
You only need to know that there are two main parties - the Democrats and the Republicans.

A polling company did a MASSIVE phone vote as part of the pre election process. All of these polls showed an overwhelming majority for the Republicans.

When the actual election came around, it turned out to be a Democrat landslide. Why?

A bit of history into 1930's America may help you to find the answer, and then you can try to work out how that relates to my own little poll above.

Answers, comments and ideas are, of course, always welcome.