News
Lest We Forget
At 11:00am on the 11th November, Alpha remembered the Fallen from all wars past and present. Thank you to everyone who donated to our Poppy Appeal to raise donations for the Royal British Legion.
They're Creepy and They're Kooky
Here is a selection of the weird and wonderful masks received for our Alpha Parents Association Halloween Competition…well done to all for such amazing creations!
More International Success for Alpha!
Recently, Ibraheem (Year 5) entered the 8th International Scratch Creative Programming Olympiad 2024. Candidates were asked to build a game where the avatar had to clean a range of litter and rubbish from the city and the oceans. Mr Fahy, Mr Gonsalves and Mr Kanvar tried out the game Ibraheem created, but they could not beat, or even come close to, Ibraheem’s score! When the results of the competition were announced, Ibraheem was the only participant from the UK who managed to reach a position in the Top 10! What a super achievement – well done!
Ampleforth College History Essays
A number of our Year 6s have been successful in the Ampleforth College National Junior History Competition for which the children had the choice as to whether or not they would enter formal essays of their own choice of title….nine children in Year 6 entered the competition with essays exploring such topics as:
The religious significance of mummification in Ancient Egypt
A consideration of cures and remedies with a comparison between the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Death
An exploration of the rule of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the 12th Century
An exploration of the effects the British Empire had on peoples around the world
The Space Race of the 1950s and 1960s
There were well over 200 entries from around the Kingdom and I am delighted to say that all nine children who participated in the competition achieved Highly Commended or Very Highly Commended recognition…to put this into context, in the written words of the Headmaster of Ampleforth College…”The standard for Highly Commended is a standard comparable to GCSE Grade 8 or 9, anyone achieving Very Highly Commended are approaching A-Level Standard.
BIEA International Success
As part of the British International Education Association annual international STEM competition, children from around the world were invited to enter this year’s competition to design a solution to being both fashionable and sustainable - by producing billions of clothes every year, the fast fashion industry is releasing waste and chemicals into our world, polluting and driving species to the brink of extinction.
All children in Year 6 took part, creating an informative report and passing a rigorous interview stage to be invited to the final showcase at the new UCL Marshgate Campus in East London.
Amazingly, all five teams, every student in Year 6 were invited to the final in July and they presented their ideas to the judges. The final was truly international with children flying in from America, China, Azerbaijan and Turkey to present their ideas in the final showcase to the judges, including the ambassadors for China and Turkey.
With such fierce competition, we were completely taken back when all five teams were called up on to the stage with:
One team achieving a third place award.
One team achieving a second place award and
Three teams achieving the winning Emerging Impact Award.
WOW - WELL DONE, ALPHA!
NATIONAL CODING SUCCESS
We received some exciting news recently from Discovery Education that one of our pupils had won their National Coding Competition!
Pupils throughout the school were invited to take part in a ‘National Coding Week’ competition. From the many many entrants we received from our talented children, we had
to choose just one piece of animation from Key Stage 1 (Year 1 and Year 2) and one piece from Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) for submission.
At the close of the competition, Discovery Education contacted us to inform us that our chosen Key Stage 1 entry had won…and that entry was from Daaris in Year 1!
Daaris created an animation of the solar system and he really impressed the judges who thought the idea was novel and that it had been executed well. They commented,
'We loved how this pupil represented planets orbiting each other - they showed a lot of coding potential!'
In addition to Daaris winning the National Coding Week Competition, Daaris has also won a whole year’s free coding for the all the children at Alpha which can be
accessed either at home or at school. He also received a Botley Coding Robot and he is thrilled with it. Daaris has told us that he is very excited to continue his coding
journey by programming Botley.
Daaris has also appeared on Discovery Education's website and news feed - he also appeared in the local Harrow news...Student from Harrow wins national coding competition - Harrow Online
This is an amazing achievement, Daaris – congratulations and well done!
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