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Key Stage 2 Code Club Lego Centre Trip

This week a number of pupils in Y5 and 6 attended a fantastic Lego workshop at Newcastle-Under-Lyme College. They represented the Academy brilliantly and worked together to create an impressive range of robots. Well done to all those involved!

First Lego League Dual Launch Tornament Victory 29/04/2022

Congratulations to our outstanding Key Stage 3 pupils who competed in a unique pilot tournament at Newcastle-under-Lyme College.

Following our 4th place finish in the regionals and best innovation project award our continued this success with a tournament victory. After 5 rounds of games our students finished second with 325 points behind the leaders with 335 points. Both teams qualified for the final in which our pupils were victorious. Congratulations to all involved.

First Lego League Tournament 17/01/2022

This week, 8 talented pupils from Year 7 and 8 competed in the First Lego League Tournament. In the competition, teams from all over the world are challenged to create and program a robot to complete a variety of challenges. They must also create a solution to a problem in this field and present their ideas to a panel of expert judges.

For the first year since the pandemic, the team from Christ Church Academy were able to attend the regional tournament at Newcastle College. Around 30 schools with pupils aged 11-16 competed, either at the event or virtually, to gain a place at the national tournament.

Despite a Covid-inhibiting term and their comparatively young age, the pupils performed excellently and their smart mail box idea won the Best Project/Presentation Award. The team also secured fourth place in the Robot Games, narrowly missing out on spot at the national tournament by one place! It was an amazing performance by all CCA pupils, who were commended by staff from other schools for their excellent community spirit when meeting and supporting other teams. 

The Academy has already set its sights on a place in the 2023 tournament, giving even more pupils the experience of applying their curriculum knowledge in a competitive and challenging environment. 

No Screen Day - Alan Turing Project 25/02/2021

As we aware of the physical impact of constant screen time during home learning on the 25th February we had our first no screen day where all pupils had to complete tasks that did not involve computers.

The day before pupils were sent a document about the amazing yet tragic life of the father of computer science Alan Turing. Their task was to create a piece of art about his life using whatever they wanted.

Here are some of the amazing pieces of work.

                

And this fantastic poem was by one of our Year 8 pupils.

It was a bomb to silence all others, 

It was science over social scenario. 

 

What was acquired by grace of his cryptic art, 

Was what tore the opposition clear apart. 

The war effort came down to a mere office chair, 

But Alan chose to do more than his fair-share.  

 

It was a great challenge to the myth of mind, 

But he must seek the answer, 

And it he shall find. 

 

Due to thought and desire he was frowned upon, 

But the people did not know what they had done. 

Defined by a life choice was what it came down to, 

But this is what left him feeling so blue. 

 

He must have been filed with utter uncertainty, 

But his works shall be remembered forever and eternally. 

 

First Lego League 2020 Tournament 24/01/20

This week pupils from Year 7 and 8 visited Newcastle-under-Lyme College to compete in the regionals of the First Lego league. This was the culmination of 6 months hard work during break time and after schools. Pupils had to create and program Lego robots to solve a variety of challenges.

Pupils also had to create and deliver a presentation about how they would develop their local area. The performances of both teams were amazing but unfortunately were not quite high enough to qualify for the national tournament. We did however pick up the Coopertition Award (that is the correct spelling) for showing the Lego values of courtesy, friendliness, fair play and teamwork with other groups. Well done to all pupils involved and thank you to all staff and parents that supported us.

 

 

FLL 2020 Training 14/11/2019

Tonight pupils have been working on their First Lego League projects. Some pupils are creating and programming their robots while others are working on their presentations.  As we are a clay school some team members are working with Miss Fares to create goodwill tokens to give to rival teams and judges.

Year 8 Claymation Projects

  

This term pupils in Year 8 are creating their own claymation films using industry standard materials. Here is a selection of photos during the building stage.

Code Club Newcastle College Trip 22/05/19

           

Year 5 and 6 Code Club pupils today visited the NULC Lego Innovation Centre to learn about the use of colour sensors to solve problems. All staff at Christ Church Academy would like to give Andy, Megan and Lucy a massive thank you for making another wonderful day possible.

First Lego League 2019 Tournament ‘Into Orbit’ 23/01/19

After months of preparation our two teams ‘Voyagers’ and ‘Astrotech’ went to Newcastle-under-Lyme College to compete in the First Lego League regional heat. 12 pupils from Year 7 and 8 had spent months in after school clubs and lunchtimes creating and programming a Lego robot to complete a series of space themed tasks. The weather conditions tried their best to disrupt the day but the pupils were determined to succeed.

The competition was fierce with pupils competing against teams of College and High School students from all over the Midlands. The competition was judged on 4 areas; robot challenges, robot design interview, a space travel pupil presentation and a teamwork puzzle.

Our pupils competed admirably and showed excellent teamwork values but unfortunately did not qualify for the national tournament at Bristol. Although disappointed and exhausted our pupils thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. This first taste of the event will aid them throughout next year’s competition.

We would like to thank all the parents, staff and PTA from Christ Church Academy for their constant support and Andy, Megan and Lucy from the Lego Innovation Centre who have made everything possible.

First Lego League Team Visit to the Lego Innovation Centre 22/11/18

Today our FLL team pupils visited the Lego Innovation Centre at Stafford College for a skills boosting session. Our pupils provided some outstanding and innovative solutions to the various challenges presented. Our pupils were visited by members of Lego Education UK and were described as 'wonderful pupils'.

As well as programming and engineering skills pupils also used Maths skills to overcome problems. Pupils calculated circumference, distance estimation, rotations, algebra and used trial and error.

Thank you again to all the amazing staff at the centre for providing such an inspirational and informative session. Pupils were that excited that on their return to school they spent a further two hours building.

First Lego League Training

This year Key Stage 3 pupils will compete in the national First Lego League tournament. To prepare for the regional competition pupils have been learning various STEM techniques to improve their designs. Each week they have been learning about models with a different engineering focus. Week 1 was levers, 2 was gears and 3 was using pieces to move objects in a desired direction.

Next step is Stafford College for a days robotics problem solving.

Code Club Rewards

After another amazing year of Code Club, Tim Chapman rewarded all members with a goodie bag of gadgets and sweets. Thank you Tim for everything this year and we are looking forward to next years projects.

Claymation Modelling

To complete their Computing education at Christ Church Academy, Year 8 pupils used industry standard materials and techniques to create their own claymation films. Here are a selection of excellent designs.

Designing the New CCA App 04/05/2018

Today 20 pupils from Year 6 and 8 worked with the team from Studentnomic to plan and create a prototype of the new CCA app. The pupils showed outstanding teamwork and innovation to create an exciting first draft. Studentnomic will now develop all designs to create the finished product. Thank you to Tim Collins and Ben Harland for a very productive day.

Year 5 Computing Trip to the Lego Innovation Centre at Stafford College 19/04/2018

Today 30 Year 5 pupils visited Stafford College to create and program their own Lego robots to complete a series of challenges. Thank you to all staff from CCA and Stafford College who helped to make such a wonderful day possible.

Year 8 Instagram - Living a Lie? 16/04/2018

This week Year 8 pupils have been learning about the effects of unrealistic celebrity images on social media and points to remember when taking our own images. Pupils will then improve their own celebrity images to show that we cannot believe everything we see.

Year 6 Stop Motion Animation 01/12/17

This term Year 6 pupils have been learning about different animation techniques. To finish the unit they have been using Zu3D to create animated films of their own toys. They sourced mp3 files to add music and sound effects to their films.

Year 6 Stafford College Lego Innivation Studio Trip 29/11/17

Year 6 pupils today were asked to attend Stafford College Lego Innovation Studio for two programming sessions during a visit to the college by Professor Brian Cox.

All pupils excelled themselves building robots with a forklift arm and completing a variety of space themed challenges. Professor Cox then visited to chat, build and have photographs with the pupils.

Thank you again to Andy Snape, Megan Clayton and Lucy Hancock for organising another wonderful day.

Microbots

Year 7 E-leaders have today been building Microbots that they will be able to program. These pupils will then mentor other pupils to build their own at Code Club.

 

Year 7 Stafford College Lego Innivation Studio Trip 05/10/17

Year 7 pupils today had the honour of opening the new Lego Innovation Studio at Stafford College. 30 pupils spent the day creating Lego 'Tank' robots and then programmed them to complete a series of increasingly difficult challenges. The pupils were then treated to a demonstartion of the latest in robotic technology.

Thank you to Andy Snape, Megan Clayton and Lucy Hancock for organising a wonderful event.

Code Club Certificates 21/07/17

After a very succesful first term of Code Club (the biggest in Staffordshire) all pupils were presented with a certificate and goodie bag at the awards assemblies. Tim Chapman provided each pupil with a goodie bag containing headphones, USB adaptors, pen and lanyard.

Thank you to both Tim and Fujitsu for everything this year.

Next year Code Club will be for years 5, 6 and 7.

Code Club

Thursday nights 3:30 - 4:30 Tim Chapman from Fujitsu visits to deliver a series of coding challenges using the Scratch website. All children are welcome but places are limited to 30. Our club is currently the biggest Code Club in Staffordshire.

Year 4 Transition 13/06/17 - 15/06/17

This week pupils from all our feeder schools came to sample middle school life. Pupils took part in robot programming on the Hour of Code website. Pupils completed a series of challenges based on the film series to enhance their logical thinking.

Year 8 Claymation

Pupils in Year 8 are currently making claymation cartoons. Pupils will use Zu3D to create professional standard short films with wire skeleton figures.

Here is a selection of characters from 8D.

Christ Church Academy Monopoly Game

To learn graphic design skills pupils in Computing created a personalised Monopoly board based on our school. 5A pupils did a cross-curricular project and in DT lessons created a board and laser cut ther piece designs. Well done 5A.

Fake News

Following Tim Berners-Lee's (the founder of the modern internet) warning about fake news, pupils in Year 6 and 8 will be completing a unit on how to identify stereo-typing, extremist views and fake news in the media. They will discuss how to remove fake news and how groups use fake news to promote their views.

Remember not everything you read on the internet is true. Challenge the information;

• Who is the author? Are they biased? Are they knowledgeable about the subject?

• Does it sound realistic?

• Has it got lot's of facts or evidence? Is it full of opinion?

• Do any images look photoshopped?

• Is the web address a professional sounding address?

• Does the website look professional? You are less likely to spend a lot of money on nonsense.

• The most important way of checking is to check it on other sites. If the information is different on other sites, someone is wrong.

Pseudo Code Programmers

Year 5 pupils enjoyed the first sunshine of the year to learn how to be better programmers. Pupils were set the challenge of witing code to send their group from one chair to the other by following the commands without deviation or improvisation. Pupils wrote their first pseudo code and tested it on the yard. All groups showed an excellent growth-mindset and debugged their code until it was perfect.

 

Safer Internet Day 2017

Christ Church Academy took a new approach to celebrating Safer Internet Day 2017. Instead of teachers showing pupils videos and internet safety rules, this year pupils shared tips and rules that they had found useful. The best were then chosen to educate adults and older teenagers using Twitter.

Featured here with their Tweets are Year 5 pupils; Liberty Bradford, Ashton Williams, Amelia Heath, Molly Thompson, Keelan Hope, Danny Watson, Freddie Hutchison-Perry, Lyla Partridge and Jacob Lovatt.

Please view and share our pupils ideas from our Twitter feed @CCAStone.

British Historical Figures Facebook

To learn about social media in a safe environment Year 7 pupils are using the Fakebook site to create a profile page for a British historical figure. Choices ranged from Harold Hardrada through to Tudor monarchs and even modern history with Amy Winehouse and Diana Spencer

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The Microbit Has Landed

As part of a BBC initiative to get British children programming, Christ Church Academy has ordered a BBC Microbit mini computer for all Year 8 pupils.

All pupils will be using this exciting technology in Computing and DT lessons. Pupils will be using the device to program games, music, animations and text.

Year 6 Newcastle-under-Lyme Lego Innovation Centre Trips 2016

Following the success of last years’ gifted and talented trip to the state of the art Lego Innovation Centre, this year all Year 6 visited the centre to build a variety of fantastic robots.

Christ Church Academy pupils used the WeDo sets and online instructions to create a Leo crocodile. They then used motion sensors to program the crocodile to bite any stray fingers.

Pupils then used the Mindstorm Education sets to build and program a vehicle to navigate a variety of tracks. These tasks utilised technology, maths and computing skills to complete.

For the second year in a row all Christ Church Academy pupils were a credit to themselves and the school. Lecturers at the college were continuously astounded with the pupils computational problem solving abilities and resilience. Well done Year 6.

Thank you to Lucy Hancock and Andy Snape from Newcastle-under-Lyme College for making this outstanding trip possible.

The Diana Award 2016

This year our e-Leaders entered the prestigious ‘Diana Award’ competition. To enter pupils had to research, plan and deliver an online safety lesson with the theme of being strong online.

Jack Caswell, Molly Foster, Lara Tuckwell, Ruby Johnston, Claudia Asprey and Tara Povey used their excellent knowledge to educate Year 5 pupils who aspire to be e-Leaders in 2016/17. They adapted the suggested material to create their own interactive lesson covering: mean ‘Tweets’, being an upstander not a bystander and even a kinaesthetic movement task asking what would you do if?

Well done Year 6, excellent work!

Year 5’s who took part in the lesson were Jack Batchelor, Will Dally, Wiliam Brookes, Ryan Franks and Tom Smith.