Category: Latest News

Churston wins at the MADE project

The MADE project is a Torbay wide project where secondary schools are partnered with a local high tech company.  The company, for CFGS this year it is Spirent Communications, who design and manufacture GNSS testing equipment, act as a client and provide feedback on the design and make task undertaken by the students.  This year was the first year that a KS4 competition has been held and the team from CFGS won against stiff competition from TBGS in particular.  Their product was designed as an interactive game that represented the complexity of global satellite navigation.  Spirent wanted a product of this nature for science fairs such as the Big Bang.  The students developed and prototyped their design in record time and presented it very professionally at the final event held at the Riviera International Centre.

Chemistry Success for Year 12 Students

Churston students Charley Warren, Tom Nuttall and Tara Fielden-Carter were recently placed 2^nd in the South-West of England in a competition run by the Royal Society of Chemistry – Charley describes their experience:

On Tuesday 22nd of January, Tara, Tom and I travelled to Plymouth University for the Schools’ Analyst Competition.  We had completed a number of training sessions with Dr Hall, but once we arrived at the Laboratories we were on our own.

We were faced with two practical assessments, which we thought were to be completed in the first session of 2 hours.  Our first task was to find the purity of citric acid in a sample through various titrations and calculations.  We then moved on to the second experiment in just under an hour, giving us a good amount of time to finish before lunch.

The aim of the second task was to establish the concentration of orthophosphate in some samples of river water and involved many more steps than the first experiment.  We had to add a reagent sachet to each sample, shake for 30 seconds and then leave each one to stand for exactly 3 minutes – an intense blue colour was revealed if phosphate was present.  I had the role of preparing and timing all the solutions, whilst Tara used the Spectrophotometer to measure the absorbance of each sample and Tom prepared the graph. We then used the graph to calculate the concentrations.  With less than 30 minutes before lunch, it soon became obvious that we would not finish in the available time.  We then discovered that a second session was available after lunch to complete the challenge.  After just 35 minutes of the second session we were finished; we checked and double checked everything then cleared up our bench and equipment.

Once the session was over, we were re-united with our teachers to wait for the results.  The professors announced that two teams were tied in the practical assessment and were only separated by 1 point in other observations.  When we were awarded 2^nd place, to say we were shocked would be an understatement.  We received our certificates and had a photo before last year’s National Champions, Truro College, were announced as the winners.  Upon reflection, the one point that separated us was rather irritating; however, at the start of the day, we did not for one second think we would come so close to becoming Regional Champions!

Charley Warren Year 12 

GCSE Drama students visited the Theatre Royal in Plymouth

Year 9, 10 and 11 GCSE Drama students visited the Theatre Royal in Plymouth to watch Matilda the Musical in preparation for their written exams.  All 92 students thoroughly enjoyed the performance and were a credit to the school.  The production was fantastic and well worth a visit to watch it!

Churston’s Poets Published!

Last term six students from Churston entered a national poetry competition led by ‘Young Writers’. ‘Poetry Escape’ was created to encourage students to get lost in creativity by writing about a ‘pathway’ such as: a writing constraint; a theme; current affairs; the future or inner feelings. The competition had over 8000 applicants and we were lucky enough to have every one of ours selected! Not only are they into the next stage of this national competition to win £100 and £1000 for the school, but their work has now been published!

Congratulations to: Maddy Vasey, Scarlett Howard, Ayesha Silva, Adrienne Knight, Stefan Chirita, Erin Bazeley.

Year 7 Self Esteem Day

In November the Year 7 students took part in a PSHE Enrichment Day entitled ‘Self Esteem ’. The entire year group came off timetable and followed a carousel of workshops relating to the theme of Self Esteem.
The aim was to provide students with an opportunity to learn about and explore a variety of aspects surrounding self esteem and intended as an integral part of developing self awareness and well-being. In addition to this, the students watched a short presentation about healthy and unhealthy relationships and online protection delivered by a project worker from The Children’s Society.

The day started with an assembly which addressed the question ‘What is Self Esteem?’ Students learned that it could mean many things but included:

The beliefs you have about yourself
What you think about the type of person you are
Your abilities
The positive and negative things about you and what you expect for your future.

Two ‘Relationships’ workshops , entitled ‘Who am I’ and ‘Building Self Esteem’ introduced students to the concept of self esteem . Students looked at what high and low self esteem looks like and the importance of personal positive self esteem. The sessions also encouraged students to celebrate the individual in who they are and what they can achieve.

Workshops included ‘Food and Mood’ where students looked at different food types, diet and how it affects us both physically and mentally.
Body image describes our idea of how our body looks and how we think it is perceived by others. The workshop ‘Body Image and the Media’ explored the methods used by the media to influence perceptions, fashions and products. Students looked at ways of dealing with social media pressures and how to build body confidence.
The workshop ‘Confi- Dance’ gave students the opportunity to explore a healthy mindset through movement and they were also able to develop their team skills and confidence through a drama workshop entitled ’Helping to build Self Esteem’.

The students had an enjoyable, yet valuable and rewarding day which will hopefully prove beneficial to them both now and in the future.

Lisa Byford
PSHE Co-Ordinator

U18 Girls Netball – Third in Devon!

The U18 netball girls competed in the National Schools tournament on the 13th of November at Exeter University. Charlotte Haigh, Team Coach, hugely supported the team; advising positions and set plays. The team was selected based on consistent and impressive ability in netball and regular attendance to training. This was a group event in which 7 other teams from all parts of Devon who qualified for tournament, played.

In review, the whole team played incredibly well especially considering we only had 8 players. Great support from the defensive players all the way up court and huge versatility shown by Beth Thomas, Fran Andrews and Charley Warren. Excellent feeding from the centre court players and some superb interceptions and turnovers all round congrats to Lina Okihara and Emily Criddle for showing versatility and consistency throughout. Lastly, brilliant movement from the shooters Phoebe de Selincourt and Lucy Criddle alongside very consistent shots to goal! A very positive day ending 3rd in Devon, narrowly missing out on qualification by one point!

Adrienne is a guest Clarinettist

On the 12th and 13th December, Year 11 student, Adrienne Knight was the guest solo clarinettist at the Quay Harmony, (a ladies choir from Brixham) Christmas concert.

Playing music is something that Adrienne practices in her own time and Mrs Anderson-Brown had invited her to take part in the concert that she was organising.

Adrienne said, “I took part because I knew how nice the place I would be playing was, and it was a great opportunity for me due to the amount of time I had to play and freedom I had to choose my pieces. I genuinely enjoyed the concert, and got some really lovely comments from the audience”

Well done Adrienne!

Elf Success

The Churston Ferrers Grammar School production of ‘Elf’ had a hugely successful run of three nights. The cast and crew were professional throughout and well received by the audience. Enjoy some photos of the event below.