The team from Blackheath High School Juniors in Lewisham will soon find out what ‘a long day at the office’ means when they take their places at the forthcoming National Final. The whole of their Y6 will be on school journey in France during the week in which the Final takes place. However, their teacher, James Collinson is not one to give easily and neither is his team! He said, “We hold this Challenge, and what it achieves, in high esteem so much so that on the Wednesday morning (the day of the Final) the four team members and myself will be getting up at about 5:30am to travel to Paris CDG airport for a flight to Birmingham. From there we will get a taxi to the museum (hopefully arriving in plenty of time!). The girls will then compete in the Final and after the prize giving we will head back to Birmingham to fly back to Paris to arrive at the centre in time for bed so that we can be up bright and early the next day to sample the delights of a nearby market and then head in to Paris for some sightseeing! Hopefully we will have some extra luggage to check on to the flight home!

Phew! I feel tired just thinking about it! (Brian R)

The team from Woodley C Of E Primary Primary School in Wokingham have made it through to the final and have written to the BBC as well as the local press to tell everyone all about it. Their Headteacher, Ann Dee, said, “To make it through in our first year is a wonderful achievement. All of the children have worked so hard to learn how to prepare their cars for the challenge races. I am sure that Force Cheese will make us proud at the National Finals.”

Force Cheese commented, “Amazingly, against all the odds, we got through to the national finals. We’ve worked really hard but love coming to the Cars Maths in Motion Challenge club. We think we could pull off a win at the national finals. To represent our school at the prestigious event is such an honour. We are going to continue to rely on the tactics that we have used so far: Max’s ‘trust me’ tactic. It has proved itself…well, most of the time.”

The pupils at Bawdsey CEVCP School in Suffolk thought that their luck was in when they got the opportunity to get up close to a REAL Jaguar. Following their success in the semi-final, one of their parents treated them all to a personal ‘test drive’ as a big ‘Well Done’ to them all! David Sealy, their teacher, said “Jaguar’s innovative ‘Cars Maths in Motion’ challenge has been an inspiration to our children. Their enthusiasm, motivation and achievement proves that maths can be great fun, and the challenge itself has undoubtedly had a positive impact on raising standards. They are absolutely delighted to be taking part in the National Finals”. We can’t help but agree – see you all on 27th June!

Yesterday saw the start of the Newham ‘Cars Maths in Motion’ project and teachers from eight secondary schools put themselves through a training course. Fear and trepidation turned into delight and by the end of the day everyone went away ready to start working with their pupils. As is customary, we had a race between the eight of them and this race was won by Lauren Murphy, who was just a handful of seconds in front of Zakiyyah Suleman. Judge for yourselves how happy they were!

Lauren and Zakiyyah

We were invited by Hanne Uddling recently to go to Balsta (west of Stockholm) to train a group of teachers on how to use ‘Cars Maths in Motion’ in their schools. Having accepted the invitation, we spent yesterday racing around the Monaco circuit! The teachers had to set up and race over 43 laps and there was a great deal of concentration (as you can see from the pictures below) in the room once we had told everyone that there were prizes at stake!

We were delighted when Hanne told us that the software would ‘fit’ the Swedish education system and we are now hoping that some of the schools will work with us on setting up a small Challenge of their own. Thanks go to everyone we met in Sweden for making us so welcome – it was a pleasure working with you.

Here’s some really great news for the ’13 and Overs’ taking part in the 2011/12 challenge. We are delighted to report that Silverstone Circuit has officially become a Challenge Sponsor. Apart from supporting what we are all trying to do (they have Cars Maths in Motion installed on their computers), at the 2012 National Final they will be presenting each of the top 2 pupils, they have to be aged 13 or over, with a ‘Rookie Driver’ Experience (date to be agreed). The experience is based over two hours or so and takes place under the personal instruction of one of Silverstone’s driving instructors. They will be driving in a Renault Megane ST (which is pretty cool), driving on the great expanse of one of Silverstone’s massive car parks! Mum and Dad can park up and watch the whole thing with lots of photo opportunities etc. etc.!

The Silverstone Study Centre seeks to harness the learning opportunities offered by motorsport to enhance the educational outcomes and life chances of young people.
It offers schools:
- ‘Race to Success’ a key programme to raise standards in Maths, English and ICT.
- ‘Silverstone Science’ to boost pupil engagement in science and engineering.
- ‘MathZtone’ raising practical confidence in Mathematics.
- ‘Multi-media Workshop’ introducing young people to animation and broadcasting.
- ‘Marketing Masterclass’ offering AS level students the opportunity to transfer knowledge learned in the classroom to a real life setting.

The Silverstone Study Centre is an established Quiss centre and can be contacted as follows:
email: Trevor.Wadham@silverstone.co.uk
Tel: 01327 320401

http://silverstonestudycentre.org

http://www.silverstone.co.uk

We have visited the Centre and, as you would expect, the facilities are first class. If you are interested in taking some of your pupils to the Centre, just call Trevor Wadham, or one of his team, and I’m sure that they will be able to help you put together a very worthwhile experience for your pupils.

This year’s BETT Show was held between 11th/14th January and we were on Stand T9. Our first visitor arrived on Wednesday just 5 minutes after the Show had opened and the last visitor left us on Saturday at 4:35……half an hour after the Show had closed! As Wednesday morning came and went it was soon apparent that because we had something that students actually DO (rather than something that checked what they or their teachers had DONE) we were going to be in for a very busy four days.

We gave over 200 demonstrations at the Show to teachers from both the UK and around the world and it was great fun seeing the software being demonstrated in so many different languages! It was lovely meeting like minded teachers……all looking for something to engage and motivate and it was a pleasure not to disappoint them!

The dust is now settling and we are getting nearer to 2,000 hits on our YouTube site each day. Here are the team from All Saints Primary School, Bury, who achieved the fastest winning time out of all the entries submitted and an account that they sent to us. Well done to you all!

In early September 8 of us year 5s were given the opportunity to do Maths in Motion with Mrs Ekkel. Once a week we worked on the programme; measuring tracks, categorising features, choosing car liveries and race car helmets, making workshop adjustments, calculating safe speeds, checking the weather forecasts for tires and pit stops. At the end of November we were finally given a chance to put our new found skills to the test against teams from year 6, they paid off and we won our school race for a place in the National Christmas Fun Race.

On Monday 12^th December, the whole school watched the race on YouTube. There were teams from all over the country in the race. 170 pupils and staff crammed into the school hall. The noise was deafening and went all the way to the Heads office, who was in a meeting, and she was so upset that she heard all this noise and missed it. Suddenly, it all went silent as we dropped to 7^th place. We knew we had gone into the pits so we were not too worried. We quickly gained six places to take the lead with ten laps to go. It took an age for the final lap to come. It was so nerve-wracking, counting down the features, everything went into slow motion until at last, it was there – Feature 17! We had done it; we had won the Christmas Fun Run. What a brilliant experience we had.

Daniel, James, Mia and Madeleine.

Our Age Range 2 Winner was the team from The Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School, Ramsgate. Here they are wearing their shirts! Well done boys!

Fynn and Nathan sporting their prizes!

We have just received an envelope full of letters from the children at Tullynessle Primary School and they contain some very interesting comments about the Challenge. Thanks to Jane Craik for giving us permission to reproduce some extracts from them and A MASSIVE BIG THANK YOU to those of you who actually wrote the letters to us!

“Thank you for all the help you gave us. We couldn’t have done it without you! It has been so much fun doing Cars, it was much better than writing! I learnt a lot that day” – Molly

“Cars Maths was really really fun and my group did not use any calculators to see what the bends and straights were. I thought the whole day of Cars Maths was excellent.” – Ellena

“Thank you for coming such a long way to help us. I learned so much when I already thought I knew about it. We all benefitted hugely from your visit and it was great fun. We all loved it and I wish we could do it all the time.” – Dylan

“My family were really jealous when I showed them the cap you gave me. Cars Maths has helped me in how to put kilometres into metres and how to measure angles. I learned lots thank you.” – Sarah

“It was really cool. You showed me that you can’t have 3 straights together otherise it would just be one big straight!.” – Connor

“I felt really happy when we won the kids race. You gave us some useful tips and it was extremely good fun. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help you teach the teachers in the evening. I really did enjoy it all.” – Tom

“I didn’t understand how to do the fuel but now I do so I can now do pit stops properly and that really helps us in the race.” – Harry

and finally………

“If you hadn’t made the software we would be stuck doing jotter work so you saved us thank you! I really enjoyed the day you were here with us and we have all got new tips and tricks. Awesome!” – Owen