On Wednesday 9th June, our Year 11 students took part in a fun and fast-paced Leadership Challenge Day in which they were required to work as a team to complete a project, under their own steam, by a deadline. From ‘Pop up Pâtisserie: Create a tasty menu in a day’ to ‘Back to the future: Put on a play in a day’, there was a wide variety of challenges from which to choose.
Here, we hear from some of our Year 11s about the challenges they signed up for and how the day went.
From Maria, who took part in the ‘Concert in a day’ challenge:
‘On Wednesday 9th, a group of Year 11 students, myself included, accepted the challenge of creating a concert in one day. This initially daunting task turned out to be full of excitement and very manageable thanks to some careful planning and productive music practice. Our group of eleven students juggled administrative tasks and music preparation throughout the day for the event after school.
By the end of the day, we had independently developed programmes, a whole group choir piece (Disney, of course) and an itinerary for the concert. The completion of these assignments in time was challenging to our organizational skills, leaving us with a real sense of accomplishment. We also found effective communication crucial when discussing our plans as they unfolded. We were especially pleased that we managed to incorporate such a wide variety of genres, from classical to indie to rock music, through singing, the piano, cello, guitar, timpani and drums.
The concert lasted approximately fifty minutes, including introductions to each song, attended optionally by our year group and teachers. Overall, I feel the ‘create a concert in a day’ challenge has left me with improved management and social skills and more experience of working in a small team against the clock. I am pleased that we were able to structure our day effectively, while still having fun and producing an event we feel proud of.’
From Hebe, who took part in the ‘Garden in a day’ challenge:
‘For our leadership challenge, a group of eight of us were tasked with planting a raised bed near the Ada Benson building to create a bee-friendly flower bed in one day. We started by clearing the raised bed, removing the weeds to leave a clear space for planting the new flowers and herbs. Next, we took an inventory of the plants we had available, did a little research about spacing, layout and aesthetics, and started planning.
Implementing a purple colour scheme, and taking into account the heights of the plants, we arrived at a final design and laid out the plant pots in the space to get a sense of where the plants would go, and tweaked our plan as necessary. Then, we began planting. For each plant, we had to first dig a suitable sized hole, using compost and water to help the plant integrate into the flowerbed, and break up the root ball at the bottom of the plant to encourage the roots to spread out. Lastly, we packed earth around the plant and watered it. It took us until afternoon break, but we successfully planted all of the herbs and flowers, and even included a shallow dish with some stones in it, so that bees would be able to perch on the pebbles and drink from the water without risk of drowning.
Overall, it was a tremendously enjoyable day, and a great opportunity to do something different that would benefit both wildlife and the school community.’
From Hazel, who took part in the ‘Magazine in a day’ challenge:
‘On Wednesday 9th June, myself and eleven other Year 11 pupils took part in the production of a magazine in one day. We were given the duration of one school day to produce a fully-fledged magazine that we could present to our fellow students. After some intensive brainstorming we decided on the title of ‘the guide to an OHS Summer’ and began distributing different sections of the final product to small groups. This allowed us to all show our distinctive creative flares and create our own individual aspects while simultaneously working together to produce an exclusive issue of the OHS Year 11 magazine. It was an incredibly fulfilling and enjoyable, yet very stressful towards the end, experience that left us all with a sense of relief and satisfaction.’
From Grace, who took part in the ‘Passion for Fashion: a collection in a day’ challenge:
On the Leadership Challenge Day, I participated in the ‘Passion for Fashion’ activity. Our task was to construct 2 outfits entirely out of recycled newspaper, magazines, masking tape, staples and glue! My team settled on the theme of ‘Camp’, as this enabled the eccentric materials to be more incorporated into the extravagant theme. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed working together in the design and construction of the pieces, it allowed us all to figure out the most effective team management strategies too, and was overall a really engaging and fascinating experience.
From Michaela, who took part in the ‘Design a KS2 science activity in a day’ challenge:
‘My group and I spent the day ‘designing KS2 science activities.’ As a part of this we were compiling worksheets and videos of simple science experiments for primary school students to watch and learn from. As soon as the fifteen of us walked into the science lab we were surprised with a KS2 science test. Although we all did very well, we were taken aback by the complexity of some of the questions. To try and help other children with this we designed a worksheet and educational video for two experiments. The first aimed to teach them how to use measuring equipment such as measuring cylinders and pipettes to mix primary colours to make secondary colours. The second was set up to observe the effects of gravity with an introduction to anomalous results. Overall, we were very happy with the results of the videos and some of us look forward to being able to conduct these experiments with local primary school children next year.’
From Tess and Steph, who took part in the ‘A business in a day’ challenge:
As part of the leadership day, our team learnt about the criteria needed to start a business and also the different environmental issues that we face in our unsustainable modern lifestyles. We started brainstorming various ideas, with the hope to find a product which both reduces waste that would otherwise end up in landfill and that also preserves marine life long term.
With Mr Gallacher’s guidance, we came up with the idea for a business that converts the waste products from beer into 6-pack rings which are edible for marine life, for example sea turtles. While researching further into this idea, we found that there was a substantial gap in the market within the UK for our product. We then composed a presentation outlining our initial plan and came up with our target market of environmentally conscious 18-30 year old beer drinkers.
At the end of the leadership day, our team presented our innovative product to our year group and discussed our aims for the future of the business. These plans included collaborating with local breweries and patenting the product idea, hopefully moving the product worldwide.