Civitas Magazine - Summer 2014

The Official Magazine of Ark Academy

# 12 - Summer 2014

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Reflections on Summer 2 Dear All This is a very visual “Civitas” as this half term has had so many special moments we have a wonderful array of photographs.

We lead with the Fun Run as the day was really special and demonstrated how the whole Ark community came together united in our common purpose and, of course, we love to run. We are still counting the money from this one afternoon but so far (and I hope money keeps rolling in) it is in the excess of £13,000! I know for some students the sixth form seems a long way off, but it really isn’t and the sixth form is very important as it creates a very special feel which will benefit everyone!

Our community spirit was also exemplified by our wonderful International Day, also a feature of this edition of Civitas. So this term we have had fun as well as completing very serious things such as end of year exams. I believe it is vital to work hard but also have fun (and of course be nice).

I am looking forward to reading about the great progress that our students have made over the year. I am sure all parents/carers are waiting in anticipation for the outcome of the year’s work. Our fourth year open as Ark Academy (secondary) and sixth year as Ark Academy (primary) has been memorable in so many ways. Next year, of course, is really the BIG ONE, as our Year 5 and Year 10 move into Year 6 and Year 11 and undertake some pretty important assessments!

I hope one and all have a great break and remember KEEP READING. Delia Smith Principal

L-R Anithya, Faith, Dawid, Sharlicia, Jai and Haider. The Prefects ensured International Day was a great success. They thank you for reading their articles over the past academic year and look forward to returning next term!

Colourful chaos as Primary hit their stride....

A sunny June day was the setting for our amazing Fun Run at Wembley Stadium, with the entire school taking part to raise money for our 6th Form Building. The students had been hard at work securing sponsorship and to encourage some healthy competition, there were 5,000 House Points up for grabs for the House that raised the highest amount of money and 1,000 for the student who individually raised the most. The excitement was palpable as each house stepped up to the start line and some couldn’t wait for the countdown before shooting off!

The atmosphere on the day was unbelievable, as Mrs Smith put it: ‘It was like a carnival’ and you could taste the enthusiasm. We are especially pleased at the Civitas displayed by all of our students and the way they spurred each other on to continue, even when they were clearly tired and sweating buckets!

Elation at the finish line!

We were pleased to welcome the Mayor of Brent Cllr Naveerathan to our event along with Cllr Butt and Cllr Pavey. The Mayor said: “It was wonderful to attend this Fun Run event for such an important community venture as a 6th Form Building. I was very impressed by the students’ participation and their enthusiasm on the day.”

ASDA Wembley took care of all our hydration needs, donating 1500 bottles of water to our thirsty runners and livening up the start line with a screeching horn!

Mr Ding took Mrs Smith’s statement: ‘You can run as a banana if you like’ quite literally!

All Newtonites to the fore!

Miss Shute brings the purple power to the occasion.

Ms Lemon maintained her momentum with a multicoloured mohawk!

Year 10 student Ciara Barrett said: ‘I ran 11 laps which I’m really proud of. I really liked doing it in Wembley Stadium because you could see the view of everything around you. You could run under the arch, so it’s amazing to say we did that. It was a great experience.’

Primary push for a premier place…..

Above: Jubilant staff leaping after lots of laps!

Year 10 student Dawid Soltystik said: The Fun Run was great - I enjoyed myself and ran 10 laps, something I never thought I would achieve!’

Above: Year 7s Rhea Patel and Maria Alaswad bravely did the Fun Run as a three-legged pair, completing their laps tied together!

Year 10 student Jai Stewart said: ‘I thought the Fun Run was a very good way to raise money for our school’s Sixth Form. Even the people who at first acted as though they thought it was stupid soon changed their minds and joined in.’

Socrates start in style!

Painted faces for pounding the pavement!

Edited by The Prefects

DT Week

Brains, drains and water pains!

The Geometric task: Miss Johnson finds an ingenious way to get Curie in one place!

All hands on deck as every House desperately tries to keep spillages to a minimum!

The Geodesic Dome was loads of fun too! All four houses participated outside the school gates. Not only did the participants have to build the dome, but they had to deconstruct it first too! Students repeatedly said ‘It’s challenging, and fun.’

The water task was wet, but you already expected that, didn’t you? Not only was it pretty wet, but there were ‘many more holes than I was expecting’ said a Year 8 student. Mrs Hicks did mention in the DT Face Time assembly that ‘The only trouble is that my pipes have a few holes in them, but I’m sure you’ll manage it!’ Well, seems like the pipes had a few too many holes and many of the participants ended up drenched! It was all good fun of course and well done to Plato House who won the challenge and 500 points. The 6th Form Building Design Challenge got the creative juices flowing – Year 7 ‘s Dema Abdul-Jabber created the winning model structure (see back page) and a special mention must go to Year 9’s Krystian Kolbuszeweski for his fantastic and incredibly detailed Computer Aided Design.

Measuring oh so carefully!

What made it extra exciting is that the DT Department and its ambassadors had face-timed all the DT teachers in order to find out more about the activities. ‘It was odd to have an assembly like this!’ said Ronnie Warren from Y10.

Sharlicia rocking the catwalk

Here’s one they made earlier…

The particularly impressive competitions came in the form of the Bake Off and Fashion Show with many students thinking the light hearted House battles were ‘fun and challenging’. The Bake Off was won by Newton with runners up Socrates, Curie and Plato. This year’s theme was the ‘Fifa 2014 World Cup’- all students who participated had 60 minutes to make and decorate the cake as well as clean up. Although cakes do look nice with extra condiments, Newton has proven to us that you don’t need expensive stuff to make a marvellous cup cake. The Fashion Show was run by the Mega Fashion Crew Reloaded and turned out to be ‘incredibly fun’ according to Shyheim Clement Powell from Year 10. Everyone enjoyed themselves as the fashion show progressed with all the models ‘strutting their stuff!’ Congratulations to Year 9s Tia Brogan who won the show and 500 House points for Curie.

Edited by Dawid Soltysik

ARK Network Debating Competition

The Ark Debating Championship shield gets to stay in our trophy cabinet for another year!

Anithya in full flow during the debate on monitoring the internet communications of children.

Our defending champions kicked off the day of 3 debates against different schools, by debating for the motion ‘Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport’. Cullen Holas secured a win with an excellent summarising speech that knocked the other team’s arguments out of the park! We were forced to work particularly hard this year since a new type of debating was used, giving us a lot to learn.

Anithya Balachandran described the new experience as ‘An interesting and unexpected way to debate.’

ASDAN INTERNATIONAL BREAKFAST

In the final debate we were up against our old opponents from last year’s final – Charter Academy. The motion was ‘This house would allow parents to monitor their children’s internet and mobile phone communications’. We were led to victory by an excellent opening speech from Kassia Tavares, our very confident and quick-thinking second speaker, Anithya, and Jai Stewart’s fabulous summation speech. When asked why they had won the final, Kassia said: ‘The opposition didn’t define the motion clearly, so we had lots to pick holes in.’ Anithya said: ‘The motions were interesting and original. There was also a nice atmosphere because our opponents were friendly.’ Kassia comented on the verdict : ‘It was so satisfying and overwhelming to win.

They said ‘The winners are the opposition’ and it took us a moment to realise they were talking about us!’ Haider Moosa said: ‘It was exciting to challenge students from other schools.’ We are proud of our achievement and hope we will continue to collect the shield many more times in the future.

Miss Geary, Mr Barnes & Miss Ozeke enjoy the hospitality!

Miss Hanna was expertly attended to by Jordan McKay.

A special selection of staff experienced an early morning treat when the ASDAN team hosted an International Breakfast for them. The Year 10 boys each invited a teacher or LSA, with an array of food provided from around the world. Miss Addison said: ‘Osman Hassan greeted me and was amazingly polite, offered me a drink and got me a plate and cutlery. He waited to eat with me until after I did my line up duty, it was very sweet.’

Student Jordan McKay, said: ‘Everything went to plan but it was even better than we thought because we organised everything on time; we got good comments from all the teachers, they said it was a great morning.’

The smiles that say ‘We were dealt a good hand!’

Bow tie? Check. Waistcoat? Check. Let’s croupier!

House Maths Competition - ‘21’

The Maths House Competition started with a challenge that was tied in with the Year 8 fertile question on probability ‘What are the chances of winning 21?’ The students were then asked to discover: ‘What are the chances of your House winning 21?’ The rules stated there are 10 players on each table which includes one student from each form and up to 2 teachers. Ashley from Year 7 was playing for Newton and said: ‘Rahan and I kept getting 21 which was great!’ However he still took away an important message ‘I learnt that you have to be lucky or don’t bet for money!’ Devante had a less successful experience: ‘The odds were stacked against me the whole time – I had low cards at the start and high cards at the end – just the same as last year!’ His solution for next time: ‘I will bring something lucky!’ In the end, Miss Ozeke’s prediction was right and all the houses ended up spectacularly losing money, with Newton house ‘winning’ the challenge by losing the least money, followed

by Plato, Socrates and Curie.

‘Celebrity Death Match’

A jubilant Rares wins his round, leaving Leanne dejected in defeat...

What a line-up! We wouldn’t fancy our chances against these formidable foes!

Each student selected a fictional literary character for the library competition and were then tested on their personal qualities, strengths, weaknesses and their ability to use their powers for good or evil. Mr Moloney proved to be an animated Master of Ceremonies and certainly kept the audience entertained.

In the end, after spirited duels including Voldemort vs Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen vs Matilda, - it came down to the Final Four, and a lightning round saw Katniss Everdeen (Azaina Eugene), Harry Potter (Emil Gania), Slenderman (Rares Maglan) and Orichumaro (Lemuel Ukwesa) battling to be champion. After a difficult deliberation between the judges, Harry Potter was crowned the ultimate winner.

Edited by Jai Stewart

NLC Action Day 2 NLC Team and Miss Haslam with the newest Safe Haven convert, Warren Pfenegar of TFL. The NLC students met with Warren Pfenegar, the station manager to explain what safety means to them and why Wembley Park station would be a great location. Warren said: ‘It sounds like an ace idea and I would be very open to helping you feel safe and ensure you always feel comfortable speaking with the staff here.’ Clement Owusu said: ‘To convince them we had to make them truly understand street safety should be a big priority, as many young people don’t feel safe on the streets.’ Anish Chauhan said: ‘I think CitySafe is important because we need to start protecting the younger generation and stop thinking that they are just trouble makers.’

On our 2nd NLC day of the year, our budding activists went on a dual mission – convince Wembley Park Station to become a City Safe Haven and partake in a ‘Community Walk’ to offer further training to shops that are already Havens. The students renewed their relationships with the Havens and learned about their progress.

Samir Hussain said: ‘Building relationships with other people in the community will make it safer and it will continue to grow and flourish.’

With the manager of our local dry cleaners, Dappers.

The Maths House competition of this half term was definitely an exciting one! The task was to log onto the Manga High website and do as many challenges as you can for medals. In addition, the school was entered into a competition for the whole country and after a fighting battle Ark Academy came out on top! We won a year long membership to Manga High. What we’re all really interested in is who won the House contest so well done to Curie for getting the most points. There was also class rivalry; special mention goes to Mr Higson’s 7 Yellow who scored 69.9 points on average EACH. Manga High proved to be a big hit with everyone as it “helps us to revise and understand certain questions.” And of course it’s nice to win gold medals!

Manga High – Fun, exciting & challenging!

Edited by Faith Agyemang - Lorainey

Nursery Trip to the Farm

Above: Neel bravely wears a snake as a necklace.

Right: Oliver gets close to a blue tongued lizard This term the Nursery children went to visit a farm in the countryside. There were lots of farm animals to see from cows and sheep to snakes and spiders! The girls said: ‘We fed goats and pigs – they eat rocks!’ The children even saw a pig race where “the pigs were so fast”. When they ate lunch, even then they had to watch out for the hungry chickens – apparently they tried to eat ‘2 buns and 10 biscuits’ . Everyone’s favourite animal seemed to be the chickens, but no - one liked the spiders as they were ‘too creepy’ while one boy didn’t like the frog as it was ‘too bouncy’. Another boy told us: “I didn’t like the bad chicken.” When asked why it was bad he said: ‘He was a dirty chicken!’ A baby sheep followed them around all day & they wanted to take it home but sadly weren’t allowed!

QYear

2 Trip to Southend

Year 2 have been learning about the seaside, so travelled to Southend. It was a day of competitions; Simeon dug the biggest hole & Victoria’s team won the sandcastle contest. The students discovered the rock pools were freezing cold with Faraday saying: ‘My feet turned to ice and you think ‘Why aren’t my feet moving?!’

Faraday’s team found the biggest seashell

Edited by Ciara Barrett

The Easter Holidays saw 12 of our MFL students take a trip to Valencia and stay with host families in order to soak up the culture and practice their Spanish. The first two days they attended the Toronhas school, which was decorated with extreme scenery and had a real test of their language skills as the students all spoke their mother tongue constantly. Darshan said: ‘We were really immersed, it was quite a big challenge for us as there wasn’t much chance to speak English.’ The school also had a Chef teach them how to make traditional Spanish food before a Paella party in the evening.

Their favourite moments included a tour of the old town and tackling the 200 steps up to the top of the church ‘El Miguelete’. Joyce said: ‘It was very tiring and we got halfway but couldn’t turn back – the only way was up! But it was worth it because the view was beautiful.’ Miss Castillo said: ‘I am so glad they got to experience the culture and witness the way of life in Spain because you don’t get that opportunity in the classroom.’

Why are trips like this important? Miss Giannarou said: ‘They foster independence –the students become immersed in the culture, understand a different way of life, how Spanish people think and what they like and don’t like.’ Fabian Taitt said he enjoyed the school the most: ‘You don’t know you are learning Spanish because you are having too much fun!’

Edited by Sharlicia Blake

Studying on the beach – nice work if you can get it!

Here are some student views about their trip: Ana Afonso: “I loved sharing a room with my friends and the learning bit wasn’t too stressful as we got a lot of free time as well.”

Jai Stewart said: “We experienced something new from walking across fields to walking along a beach observing our surroundings and collecting data. However, the chicken on the first day for dinner….let’s not even go there!”

Staying upright in the river…..just about!

Ayushi Amin: “The trip made me adventurous.

On the second day I was willing to venture around the estate and feeding the animals on the farm was really fun!”

Well when we first heard that we were going to Wales for a research trip on coastal defence we all asked “Why can’t we go abroad?!”. The teachers laughed and assured us we would have fun however, we weren’t convinced. But we soon changed our minds when our research centre was set amidst 650 acres of paradise in the beautiful backdrop of typical Welsh countryside. It didn’t feel like a research trip at all….it felt like we were on a holiday, but geographical knowledge was being fed to us at the same time. Cullen Holas said: “The trip was really good, especially Edited by Anithya researching on the beach all day which was lots of fun!”

Balachandran

Flags galore and maybe some haggling going on as Mr Doswell buys himself a drink!

Mocktail Madness…

Fun in the Picture Me studio!

Primary sing & dance their hearts out…

No rest on the Oreo stall!

We have been running International Day for 3 years now and this was another hit year! The My Bank project helped Year 10 students set up their own businesses and then sell their merchandise on their own stalls. Each team was given a £40 loan to start their own ‘company’ and progress their idea. The teams’ initiative was showcased to full effect; from a stall that only sold Oreo milkshakes (I assure you the line was never ending) to our very own Mocktail bar (emphasis on the word mock!) with the exotic sounding drinks proving a very popular choice among the customers. Picture Me was the photography studio where you can dress up in wigs, feather boas and other props and have your image juxtaposed onto a famous background, become Royalty or pose with a celebrity. Not only did this experience enhance their entrepreneurship skills it also helped raise money for the 6th Form Fund.

Along with the participating students we must give a big thank you to the teachers who helped out a great deal - especially Mr Barnes, who made impressive sales at the plant stall.

Basketball Another successful event that took place this term was Girls Basketball.

Many Tuesdays I spotted the Year 8 & Year 9 girls training very hard under the supervision of Mr Addison.

It seems to have paid off as the Ark Year 8 girls gained a victory against CCA.

Left: Year 9 basketballer Summer Bywater on the attack…

Inset: Year 7’s Khadijah Pemberton chases down the ball.

Below: Te’Rique Dover-Lloyd shoots for a Handball goal.......

This year’s Brent Athletic Championships saw our students being pushed to the limit. Antwayne Plummer managed to achieve 2nd place even when running on a wet, slippery track. He described the event as “exhilarating and a battle of endurance”. Sheriyah LewisWaithe admitted that she was “nervous at first but remained persistent” and earned a huge cheer for her outstanding 9.28m vault. themselves winning a medal.

Spoilt by their previous accolades, a silver medal just wasn’t good enough for certain students.

In the words of Shaakeelah Greenland, “I’m upset with coming 2nd as last year I came 1st”.

Left: Shanel Edwards winning the 800m

Year 9 Girls with their shield

Year 9 Boys with their shield

Handball

Year 10 girls and Ugne made it to the final round of the national contest and finished 3rd overall . The competition was fierce for the boys and unfortunately they didn't make it through the first round. John Seraphin-Whyte said "Although we lost some matches I still felt glad to be part of this team because we tried our best and that's all we could do."

Oh how right you are John!

THANK YOU! Thank you to the sponsors of our Fun Run: ASDA, Pizza Express and Maxprint and of course to all at Wembley Stadium for hosting the day. A big thank you to all students, parents and staff for your magnificent contributions. The 6th Form building is being planned as we write and will be ready for 2015!

L-R: Tracey from ASDA Wembley, the Mayor, Delia Smith, Principal of Ark Academy, Cllr Butt & Cllr Pavey

The winner of the DT competition for the 6th Form Building model by Year 7 student Dema Abdul-Jabber. We love the helipad – perhaps we should start raising more money! ď Š