Year 8 Leadership Day

Year 8 Bike Building Leadership Day

The Year 8 cohort started our day in Form and were instructed to meet each other at the old Design and Technology steps. We met with our instructor who worked at Total Team Building. He placed us into teams; the blue team, yellow, pink, teal and red team and we were split up evenly. We had Year 10 leaders to help us throughout each challenge. Our main instructor told us to complete various challenges like a game where we all got a paddle and had to hit a ball around the group without the ball hitting the ground. After a few practice rounds the real challenge began, which meant performing in front of all the opposing teams cheering for the downfall of your group. The winner of the competition received bonus points towards the final bike build challenge.

Next, we started with the rope challenge, where we got into pairs and were instructed to feed the ropes together and put them on our wrists. We were there for many minutes trying our hardest, some groups were jumping through the rope to untangle it but to no avail. Some groups were working with their hands to get out, Ethan G and Ben H were the first to get undone but when faced with telling their group how they did it - they had forgotten. So, they had to restart. Not long after Stuart and Isaac solved the challenge. Stuart had figured out that they needed to feed the rope through the other handhole and put his hand through. His group quickly scurried off to copy the answer. The whole group ran along to get the next challenge, whilst other groups were begging for the answer. The next challenge was to receive a set of numbers up to nine and you had to place them in a table, so that they all reached the sum of 15. The table was 3x3 and the 15 had to be across, down and diagonal. Whilst they struggled, the other groups had caught up and started the next challenge. Arya’s group blitzed through the challenge and were already onto the next challenge, taking the lead.

The next challenge was to unjumble words involving bike parts which the groups had to figure out. The people who knew the most about bikes took charge because that was their strength. After a few minutes, other groups had completed the next challenge, then there was a word sleuth we had to complete. All the groups completed that as quickly as possible, and then we tackled the bikes. The pink team got an early lead, but this wasn’t a race as the main task was to build the bike as correctly and safely as we possibly could. Travis’ team asked Travis to lead the group and he did that. Their team scored 19/20, the second group was Luke’s group with 17/20. The last three didn’t come close with a tied last and a third very close to the last groups with 14/20.

We carried on our day with a recap of the day to complete reflections of the work. After lunch we went into the library to discuss house and year competitions, and we decided on a shield that we put the winners of the year for the house. Afterwards the Year 10’s took us outside to play Capture the Flag with a final score of 5/5 but the game ended due to rain. Everyone thought it was a day well spent and really enjoyed it.

Tom M

Year 8 House Leader