Page 6 - Spring Newsletter 2015

Parents’ Page — Forum Update
This term the Parents’ Forum meeting The Parent Portal on the website, to ask a question or raise an issue.
was held on 22nd January. The meeting currently open to all Yr 7 parents, Every member of staff has their email
discussed progress made so far on continues to be developed. Some time address listed on our website, so if you
improvements to communication and was spent discussing the importance of have a question you can contact your
put forward even more suggestions for parents being able to access this type child’s form tutor or subject teacher
the future. of information on attendance and direct.
behaviour, and also what additional
Recent improvements include the new information should be provided to new We hope that the glossary in our last
App now available for intake parents when they attend their newsletter helped you understand
smart phone users which welcome meetings. some of our jargon, but if you are still
sends information straight confused over any issues please let us
to their device. If you The twitter feed and regular blogs know how we can help.
continue to give a flavour of what is Invitations and the agenda for the next
haven’t already tried it, please going on daily at school and we hope meeting will be distributed as soon as
download it free of charge from the that you enjoy seeing regular photos of we have a precise date. We are grateful
major App stores and give it a go. various activities. to those parents who have attended in
Search under Clayton Hall to find it. the past and hope to welcome even
more at the next meeting.
Mr Morgan held an open community Something it was felt parents needed
surgery before Christmas at Clayton to be reminded of, is that all of our
Library, which was a great success and staff welcome your comments. You
will be repeated after Easter. don’t have to wait for Parent’s Evening

KMF Young Engineer of the Year Finalists

At the start of this academic year, KMF set up a competition for Yr10 pupils from schools in
Staffordshire which consisted of teams creating a brand new product, ready to be 3D printed.
This competition really interested us, so we decided to take part!

We started off in September working with our engineering teacher, Mr. Hopkins, to come up with
new ideas and potential products to produce with the 3D printer. We realised that we wanted to
go into the food and leisure sector of the market, but we still wanted our product to benefit
people in ways that could improve their quality of life, even if it was just a small effect.

At first, we designed a burrito making machine which we drew out and worked out the system for. However, we decided that we could adapt
this idea to target it to a wider variety of buyers as it only had one use and didn’t seem very economical or user friendly. This was due to its
bulky size which would have been difficult to transport; therefore it wouldn’t attract many customers.

After we’d chosen to adapt our idea, we worked with Mr. Hopkins on its design and use. Through this we came to our final design of a
‘Lumos Hot Box’. This keeps your food hot by using a small water system that is heated by hot packs and pumped around the box. We

created a better, sleeker design to make it more aesthetically pleasing and shaped it to the curve
of the spine to make it more ergonomic if it was to be carried in a backpack. We were able to use
Mr. Hopkins’ expertise in ‘Pro Desktop’ to create our product on a 3D program; making it possible
for it to be 3D printed. Also, we are thankful to our sponsors ‘Tri Tech 3D’ as they were able to
print our product fully sized and in multiple colours. This was a big advantage on the competition
day to have a full sized prototype for our product. This meant people who visited our stand were
able to visualise our product a lot more easily.

Even though our product was fully designed, we still had a lot of work to do in order to be able to
present it to ‘the dragons’ at the big event in Britannia Stadium. We designed boards to show the development of our product, the use and
target market. This helped the dragons and visitors to see what our product did and this intrigued lots of people!

The big day:

On the 12th March 2015, two teams from our federation travelled to Britannia Stadium to pitch our ideas to the dragons, along with 50 other
teams from multiple schools. We set up our stand and attempted to attract as many people as possible! Before we had to enter the den, we
checked out the competition amongst which were cups with colour change technology to indicate the presence of date rape drugs, tracker
technology for keys and pets and even an accessory to enable amputees to use game console controllers. At 11am, we entered the den to
pitch our idea to two dragons. One of which was a manager from Jaguar Land Rover and the other was a councillor from Staffordshire
council. We worked together to market our product and answer all their questions about the Lumos hot box. We were very happy with how
our pitch went, but had to wait till 3pm to see if we’d made it through to the final!

Throughout the whole day, we spoke to a range of people yet we didn’t realise that one of the visitors was a secret
dragon. He’d been speaking to all of the different groups to see their products and how they worked. He then announced
his winner of the day in the afternoon, and it was us! The Lumos hot box won! We were very excited and received our
prizes up on the stage which really boosted our confidence into entering the final.

When we reached 3pm, the finalists were announced and we were pleased to hear our names in the list. We thought
everybody’s products were amazing and over all the day was really enjoyable.

We are now getting ready for the final in June to improve and develop our product. We have really enjoyed creating this
product and are very thankful for all the help from Mr. Hopkins and our sponsors Tri Tech 3D.

By Lydia Fitzmaurice-James and Alice Houldcroft

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