year 8 community challenge
by Mrs E Perrin
24 March 2011
On Thursday, 24 March the Buckinghamshire Education Business Partnership came in to run a Year 8 Community Challenge on the 2012 Olympics/Paralympics Games. Students were divided into Teams of between 8-10 and had to decide on roles within their teams ie Manager, Marketing and Design Team, Publicity and Promotion Team, Finance Team, Webpage Team and Presentation Team.
Students were given the challenge of coming up with a range of ideas of events and activities that could be offered during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. Their ideas had to be interesting to a wide range of people and ages.
Their activities had to include a range of prices which would enable people with different budgets to get involved. For any new activities, they had to identify potential local venues where the activity could be run and these could be either indoors or outdoors. Consideration had also to be given to the length of time each activity would run for ie during the period of the games, before or after.
Each company had to work out appropriate costs for activities, ensuring that they provided an income for Aylesbury, whilst remaining affordable to most families.
Students worked very hard throughout the day and in the afternoon, six companies were chosen to present to their peers with a Runner-Up and Winner being chose from these six.
The Runners-Up were a company called "Olympic Originals", whose team members were: Julia Lumor, Hannah Mayor, Jessica Nappo, Ceri-Ann Short, Colette Spoard, Declan Rhodes, Lucas St John Campbell, Maria Sutherland and Connor Vaughn.
The Winners were a company called "Golden Glory", whose team members were: Clive Davies, Shanade Hopcroft, Geraldine Johnson, Adam Mason, Blake Pitwell, Jameika Roberts, Hakaan Saleem, Luigi Schembri, Hassan Shah and Salmaa Taybah. All ideas from all of the companies will now go to Bucks County Council who will look at them to see if they can be used.
A Students Perspective - by Colette Spoard
On Thursday 24th March, year 8 took part in a Community Challenge hosted by the BEBP (Buckinghamshire Education and Business Partnership). It took place from periods 1 - 6 in the main hall. Our challenge was to come up with ideas to attract people to Aylesbury during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.
My team came up with the idea of an open top bus, touring around Aylesbury and the surrounding area and finishing at Dorney lake. We were given support by staff from the BEBP and we were judged on our ideas at the end of the day. There were lots of good ideas from the other teams and many innovative ways of promoting Aylesbury to people who may not know the town.
I enjoyed the day, I found it interesting working with students who weren't in my regular classes. It was more like real work, working with people I didn't know to achieve a common aim - we had to all work together to come up with ideas to make our team successful. I was given the job of web designer. My team came second overall, and we were all very proud of our achievement.
I will be watching events over the next year to see if any of Aylesbury Vale Academy's ideas are adopted by the team promoting the Olympics and Paralympics in England.
