Issue 10 July 2020
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2 ∞ & Beyond!
“Our vision is to be the school of choice for our local community, developing successful young people with high aspirations, who show respect for all and endeavour to become the very best that they can be.”
Welcome It’s been quite a strange year. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that we would have spent the last four months of school learning from home. It takes a different mind set, a different set of skills to be successful at home learning. I want to thank all of our students for their hard work. School was closed very suddenly with no time to prepare how we will work during lockdown. I am very proud of how our students adapted to this new way of learning. I want to thank the parents as well for supporting their learning. It's not easy being a parent and then suddenly trying to be a teacher too. Without your support, our job to continue educating your children would have been very difficult! Despite the lockdown, we have worked to continue the curriculum. We know that it is very difficult to learn new content on your own but given that we are now in the 14th school week of lockdown, we believe it was the right thing to do. Your education continued despite the difficulties and did not come to a halt. We do recognise that even with the best intentions, your learning may still have gaps. We will spend time revisiting and expanding upon these topics on your return in September. Thank you for all of the students who logged into TT Rockstars and the students who took part in the UKMT Junior Maths Challenge. Thank you to the students who attended online sessions and for all who have continued to communicate with us through email or Google Classroom. Thank you for all the completed assignments and for all the work attempted. The perseverance and resilience demonstrated was simply outstanding and we are in awe of the quality of work produced by many of you. Whilst we had to work in this way out of necessity, we hope that many of the new skills you picked up stays with you. I want to thank the Maths team as well. Thank you for adapting in the way you have despite all the difficulties. Setting high quality work, delivering lessons online, communicating with students to give support and encouragement through Google Classroom, email or phone. Teachers have had to get to grips with using video technology to record instructions and live lessons for students without all the tech support that would have been available to them before lockdown. This has taken a huge amount of time and effort to get this right, it would’ve been easier if school was still open! This year has not been defined by the lockdown. Throughout this year we have had many highlights. In November, Roding Valley took part in the UKMT Senior Team Maths Challenge. The team included Saskia Cushings, Mashrur Khondokar, Billy Roberts and Stan Shute. They performed exceptionally and finished sixth overall out of 31 schools and were the top team from our local area. In February, the Maths team had their annual trip to Disneyland Paris. It was a great success with over fifty students having a fantastic time in the park and enjoying all the rides. The magical fireworks’ display with the Disney castle in the background was a highlight for many of the students. A special thank you to Ms Hollis and Ms
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Larkin for supporting the Maths team on the trip. In these uncertain times, we are hoping that the trip next year will go ahead as normal. In March, the school was represented by Joseph James, Louis James, Jensen Margetts and Skye Salek-Haddadi in the UKMT Team Maths Challenge. Not only was it the first time we had siblings in the team (Joseph and Louis are brothers!) but we also had our best result ever finishing second place! It was a fiercely fought competition with 29 schools taking part and our team came ahead of many grammar and fee paying schools including the host school! As the year comes to an end, we will be saying farewell to Mrs Vermaak. Mrs Vermaak will be moving on to another school in September. She has been with us from the beginning of our sixth form and I am grateful for all her work in her role as the A-level Maths Co-ordinator at Roding Valley and for her support in running numeracy activities for the whole school. I know lots of students will miss her and will have fond memories of her as their teacher. We wish her all the best in her new school. As we say goodbye to Mrs Vermaak, we also welcome Miss Harbutt and Ms Nisar to the Maths team. Some of you will have met them as they both spent time training at Roding Valley this year. We have been very pleased with how they fit in with the team and I am looking forward to working with them. Thank you all, once again, for your support and I hope you have a restful break and come back in September revitalised and ready for the new academic year. Things will be different but we are looking forward to meeting you all again, learning again in the way we are supposed to, in the classroom! Mr Edeko, Head of Mathematics
Student Work Excellent work this week from Enru Li in Year 7, Bobbi Sawby in Year 7, Iman Shahzad and Hannah Clemens in Year 8 and Jessica Tee in Year 9. Well done!
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TT Rockstars Well done to everybody for taking part. Should you appear on the top 3 leader board each week for your class, you now have the bonus of earning your house some house points! So please make sure you are competing. TT Rock Stars is also a great way to practice your times tables proficiency and improve your recall speed. A very well done to our top three TT Rockstars users this week: 1. John Harper 2. Bethany Cooper 3. Jack Tredgett A special mention goes to Pedro Buburuzan who has the most combined points of any student in school! Whilst he might not have made the top three this week, his consistent playing has put him at the top of our all-time leaderboard. Well done Pedro.
Chess Corner Dear Chess aficionados. I'm sure you share our mixed feelings as this year draws to a close. Mostly in particular because you haven't been able to play chess with your friends for a very long time! With the current uncertainties, chess club may not be in its current form. It is likely that at least for the early part of the year there will not be a chess club. This does not mean the chess club is dead, on the contrary I have great plans for online tournaments as well as online chess puzzles and other activities. It will just stop being the best place in school to avoid having to go outside at lunch! Goodbye everyone – make sure you use the summer holidays constructively by playing lots and lots of chess! Today I give you with a crushingly difficult chess puzzle that may take all summer to solve. Here is a Mate in 3, Black to move first. Can you find the series of moves that allows Black to guarantee checkmate in 3 moves?
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Puzzling Puzzles 2-
Your goal is to fill in the whole grid with numbers making sure no number is repeated in any row or column.
6×
1-
2÷
Try solving this puzzle using the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. You can use them multiple times but only once in each row or column. The answer will be in the next Maths bulletin when school reopens!
7+
4
1
2÷
Last week’s solution:
You can find more puzzles to solve on www.kenkenpuzzle.com
Grooving Graphs
Our A Level Maths students should recognise many of these graphs! In GCSE, we will study some of them. How many do you recognise!
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