School column: Rastrick High

Megan Martin, age 14 from Rastrick, has received the Diana Champion Volunteer Award in recognition of her voluntary work at the Brighouse Rest Centre every Saturday morning where she makes a difference with all of the residents, always making time to chat with them and ensure their needs are met.

She works very hard when she visits, making drinks, placing orders, cleaning up and has eagerly continued volunteering at the home even though her set commitment has be fulfilled.

Megan hopes to continue her work and perhaps embark on a career in working with elders once she has finished school.

Year 10 student leaders received the Diana Active Campaigner Award in recognition of their hard work on a traffic monitoring project.

After a fellow student narrowly missed being hit by a car outside of their school, this group of elected classmates worked together to write to their

Borough Council raising their concerns regarding student safety.

Together the students and council professionals devised a monitoring program to run throughout the school week.

The student leaders began to monitor traffic speed and recorded students’ difficulty crossing the road to school.

Not only did they present their research to the head of the school, they also fundraised to create an information leaflet and posters with details and advice for students and motorists.

This was presented to students at Rastrick High School and local primary schools, in total reaching over 3,000 young people in the Rastrick and Brighouse area.

Steve Evans, head teacher at Rastrick High School said: “We are extremely proud of both Megan and the Year 10 student leaders for their respective awards. They have all dedicated a great amount of their time to helping others which will hopefully encourage and inspire other youngsters to make a difference in their community.”

Since 1999, over 47,000 young people have been recognised with a Diana Award for making an outstanding difference in their communities’ across the globe and continuing Princess Diana’s legacy.

With the support of HRH Prince William and HRH Prince Harry, The Diana Award aims to inspire and recognise social action in young people by going beyond its Awards programme with youth led initiatives that empower young people to achieve their full potential and make adifference.

Tessy Ojo, CEO of the Diana Award, said: “The Diana Award is proud to recognise incredible young people, like Megan Martin who have the confidence and courage to stand up for what they believe. The Diana Award is presented to inspirational young people who work to improve the lives of others in their schools and communities. We are building a force of young people who are committed to taking action and improving the lives of others.”

Rastrick Martians take part in engineering contest

Ten Year 9 students from Rastrick High School’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Club recently took park in one of nine regional heats of the Tomorrow’s Engineers EEP Robotics Challenge, which see students involved in ‘space missions’.

The event took place at Yorkshire Air Museum which hosted 16 teams (160 students) competing for a place at the national finals.

The Tomorrow’s Engineers EEP Robotics Challenge introduces student teams to real-world engineering, technology, robotics and computing challenges.

The challenge aims to help students put their school learning into context and discover exciting new careers.

The Rastrick student team has learnt how to build, program and control these autonomous LEGO robots to complete a series of short, exciting space missions. They have also had to research, design, and plan and present their own solution to a contemporary scientific problem - developed by LEGO Education with NASA.

Francesca and Leah have loved every minute, saying: “We have had a lot of fun during this project. Together, as a team, we have worked hard to ensure the project was ready and finished on time.

“We separated the roles so that everyone could participate and contribute. These roles included building, programming and researching.

“First, we had to build the robot and then test programming it, using the different sensors, before making the obstacles for the seven different missions.

“This was quite difficult but we managed to build everything successfully and program the robot to do the different missions.

“Furthermore, we had to make a presentation on how to survive in space which we found very interesting and spent a lot of time finding the information we needed then making it presentable.

“We were really looking forward to the competition and hoped our team - Rastrick Martians - was successful.”

Jade and Jess explain more about the challenge on the day: “The competition consisted of several challenges including: the team work challenge, the presentation, the robot design and programming and missions on the mat.

“We had two attempts to complete all seven missions within the five minute time limit. Most of the missions were successful but one or two had their faults.

“As well as the robotics competitions, other events and activities were going on at the same time and five members of our team were allowed to go on the five-person bike with the driver being blindfolded, relying on the teams guidance to get to the end of the course.”

Unfortunately the team didn’t make it to the national final. However, they did come away with the prize for the best robot design and an insight into possible future careers in the STEM fields.