HOUSE: Engineering Event
Tomorrow’s Engineers Week was held on the 4th-8th November. At Presdales we celebrated the week with visiting Engineers and the House Competition ‘The Egg Challenge’.
On Tuesday lunchtime, three engineers, Daniella, Sally and Chai, from Volker Fitzpatrick, came to talk to students. They described the different routes into Engineering. Daniella, who is currently studying Civil Engineering at University and undertaking her work placement with VolkerFitzpatrick, shared her experiences with the girls.
Sally and Chai talked about projects that VolkerFitzpatrick have worked on including the upgrade of Tottenham Hale Railway station.
Wednesday was ‘Egg Challenge’ day. Teams from Years 7 to 9 launched eggs from the top of the mansion staircase. They had been given the task to design a vehicle to transport an egg safely from the top of the staircase to the ground (photos above). 
A massive thank you to Tess and Mike Engineers from WSP who came into school to Judge the Competition.
Well done to the Winners:
Year 7 – Sophie Burch, Amelia Mekni, Shanelle Bryant-McCormack and Tiffany Martin-Cox
Year 8 – Tierney Gaines
Year 9 – Charlotte Payne and Stephanie Moor
Results:
On Thursday lunchtime, ex-Presdales student, Ruth Wilson, came and talked about her experiences as a Civil Engineer. During her career, she has had plenty of opportunities to travel, managing projects such as the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town and Lu Sail Motor racetrack in Qatar.
On Friday Sue and Su Corrin (Ex-Presdales student) visited Year 8 Assembly. Su works for the FA and leads Health and Safety. Her role is very diverse; she is responsible for the safety of everyone who enters Wembley Stadium and St George’s Park, also the safety of all 28 National Football teams.
On Thursday the 7th November, Year 12 Sociology students visited the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green to learn more about our theme of childhood and how it has developed over time. We were fortunate enough to have a private session with one of the museum’s curators. We were able to see portraits of children in the 17th century before and after the boys had been breached (dressed in trousers for the first time from around the age of 6). We also looked at when gender neutral toys and clothes were first introduced to society.
On last week’s sociology trip to Bethnal Green – The Museum of Childhood – we were given an interesting talk by the curator of the museum, about the evolution of childhood toys and how they are stereotypical. We learnt that the marketing of the toys were stereotyped as blue for boys and pink for girls as a way to brand their products and sell more. After the talk we were assigned a task which entailed sorting a range of boys’ and girls’ toys which in fact proved harder than you may think and by the end of the talk we were very informed on the progression of childhood and how toys have played an instrumental part in the evolution of childhood.
St. Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow. Photograph by Molly Marriott (Year 11)
