Challenge and Potential activities

Check our Challenge and Potential website !

Below you can find some events and courses that our students might be interested in this month to challenge and develop their thinking, improve their skill set and broaden their horizons.

Virtual Maths Retreat Week (11-13) with James Grime and Katie Steckles

Maths teachers may have already got you excited about this opportunity! The Virtual Maths Retreat is aimed at teenagers who are excited about maths and want a chance to meet others with similar interests.
The course will be given online via Zoom and explore the topics of graph theory (mathematical networks of points and lines), and geometry & topology (studying shapes in different numbers of dimensions).
The sessions will include breaks, opportunities to chat and work with the other participants, and activities to do between the sessions.

Find out more and book your place here 

JACOB COLLIER “Jazz Music’s new messiah” - The Guardian

“The British musician Jacob Collier, who is twenty-six and has the exuberance of an even younger man, lives with his mother and two sisters in North London, in the house where he grew up. In August, he released “Djesse Vol. 3,” which, like his three previous albums, he recorded, mixed, and produced in a music room on the first floor. “This is where I learned to walk,” Collier said recently, on a Zoom call. It’s also where he learned that he had been nominated for three 2021 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year.”

Link here for a recent performance
Link here for New Yorker Article

The Havel Channel

The Havel Channel is an audiovisual project of the Václav Havel Library, which aims to spread the intellectual, literary and political legacy of Václav Havel, regardless of distance, geographical boundaries or emergencies. Its backbone consists of debates, educational projects and interviews. A large space is also devoted to conferences, author readings, recordings of theatre productions and concerts.

The audiovisual project of the Václav Havel Library Havel Channel has realized thanks to the kind support of the Karel Komárek Family Foundation.

Get cosy in these winter months and listen to a good Podcast:

BBC's How they Made Us Doubt Everything
From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series will explore how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change.
With the help of once-secret internal memos, Peter Pomerantsev takes us behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything.


Science museum - Climate talks
Throughout 2021, the Science Museum Group is hosting a series of Climate Talks – panel discussions, Q&As and events connecting you with leaders, experts, activists and campaigners as they discuss how to tackle the problems facing our communities due to climate change.
Go here for the talk on ‘Climate Change: Why Should We Care?’: Science broadcaster Dr Hannah Fry is joined by a panel of experts—including famed conservationist Dr Jane Goodall—to explore the big question: how will climate change affect our future?

More literacy

Time Literary Supplement:
- The spruced up and revised TLS is a great place for challenging and insightful content on contemporary and classic literature.

Ghost in the Shell, cut no. 477, by Hiromasa Ogura; from Virtual Cities|© 1995 Shirow Masamune/KODANSHA

Take part in a writing competition:
This is a list of some competitions happening but any search online will find a plethora of opportunities. (Always carefully check the entry requirements and get permission from a parent).

Crosswords
Take on one of the Guardian newspaper's crosswords to see if your vocabulary matches up!

Make your way through Mr Burcher's curated list of must-read world literature.
Join the English Speaking Board and take your oracy to the next level! Every Monday lunchtime OR after school.