Alternative activities to try during time at home

75 th Anniversary of VE Day

Tomorrow, Friday 8 May 2020, is the 75 th Anniversary of Victory over Europe in World War Two. In normal circumstances there would have been a series of events planned around the country to commemorate this. Events are unable to take place now due to the Covid-19 outbreak, but if you would like some ideas of things to do or things to learn about on this day, please click on the links below:

Learning resources from the Royal British Legion: https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/teachingremembrance

Information about the day: https://www.veday75.org/

A programme of events that you could follow at home:

Code breaking – Week five Miss Wallhead

This week sees us celebrate the 75 th anniversary of VE day. The maths department have seen this as an opportunity to tell you more about Bletchley Park (and the fabulous Alan Turing).

Bletchley Park is a very special place to the maths department and somewhere we are fortunate enough to be able to visit each year. Bletchley Park is a manor house with expansive grounds located just outside Milton Keynes. During WW2 these grounds were filled with huts, within these huts were people breaking enemy codes.

Anyone who worked at Bletchley Park had to sign the National Secrets Act and was not allowed to tell anyone what they had done during the war for many years after.

One of the most famous codes broken at Bletchley Park was the Enigma code. This code was cracked by a team of mathematicians who worked in Hut 8 (this team was led by Alan Turing). The Enigma code was used by German U-boats. German soldiers would type the message they wanted to send into the Enigma machine, the machine would encrypt it and then the encrypted message would be sent over the radio using Morse code.

One hut at Bletchley Park would listen to the intercepted messages and write them down. The nonsense looking messages would then be passed to another hut to be decoded. This may sound simple enough…

The Enigma machine looked like a typewriter, again this seems straight forward enough. The big problems were that the machine had space for 3 rotors and there were 5 to choose from. Each time a button was pressed on the Enigma machine the rotors would move and the code would change.

Compared to a Caesar shift cipher where you have 26 options to test, an Enigma machine has 158,962,555,217,826,360,000 different possibilities! Even if you managed to check all of these (which would take years…) the settings were changed every 24 hours.

This meant the code breakers had to go back to the beginning every morning, when the first radio message had been sent. By the end of WW2, they were reading the majority of the messages sent using the Enigma code. The people at Bletchley Park played a massive part in our war effort and spent many years keeping their work a secret.

You can read about more codes and the people that worked there at https://bletchleypark.org.uk/

Speakers for Schools virtual talks

Speakers for Schools are presenting weekly VTalks. Their schedule is updated weekly and talks will be targeted to different age groups (see speakers below for May). To access the talks click the link: https://www.speakersforschools.org/inspiration/vtalks/upcoming-vtalks/

No logins are required and all attendees can stream the talks without downloading Microsoft Teams. Links should be opened in a browser that is not Internet Explorer. Students can view by clicking WATCH TALK LIVE HERE and then clicking ‘Watch on web instead’ and sign in anonymously. The speakers will appear at the set times e.g. 10am and 2pm.

MONDAY 11 MAY:  10am – Session in partnership with GAIN  2pm – Joe Twyman, Co-founder and Director, Deltapoll

TUESDAY 12 MAY  10am – Simon Mellor, Deputy Chief Executive, Arts & Culture  2pm – Josie Rourke, Film and Theatre Director

Josie will share her own journey within the creative industries, in particular film and theatre and director roles. Focusing on the challenges she faces, the joy she feels from her career and what she'd like her younger self to know.

WEDNESDAY 13MAY  10am – Lady Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President for EMEA, Facebook

Lady Nicola Mendelsohn will be joining SFS to discuss how she got to work at Facebook and her top tips for career success for young people.

2pm – Sereena Abbassi, Worldwide Head of Culture & Inclusion, M&C Saatchi Sereena's talk will focus on her journey of overcoming barriers and obstacles to get to where she is today. This talk will also share some helpful tips on how to get you name out there and build a career that you love.

THURSDAY 14 MAY  10am – Ed Couchman, General Manager, Snap Inc.

This session will focus on Ed's own story, what advice he would share with his younger self and how social media / technology might change in the future.

FRIDAY 15MAY  10am – Fawaz Bitar, Senior Vice President, HSE, BP

MONDAY 18MAY  10am – Aleida Rios, Group Head of Engineering, BP  2pm – Session in collaboration with Unifrog

TUESDAY 19MAY  10am – Robert Peston, Political Editor, ITV & Founder, Speakers for Schools  2pm – Kathrina Mannion, Director of Environmental Policy, BP

WEDNESDAY 20MAY  2pm – David Dein, Former Chairman of Arsenal and the Football Association

FRIDAY 22 MAY  10am – Tom Dore, Head of Education, British E-Sports Association

Get Creative - Join the BBC Lockdown Orchestra for You Got The Love

As part of a ten-day creative challenge the BBC are asking the nation to dust off their instruments, warm up their vocal cords and join the newly formed BBC Lockdown Orchestra in a rendition of ‘You Got The Love’.

As part of Get Creative at Home the BCC are making sheet music available for rehearsals before filming and sending in your performance. Download the backing track and sheet music and film yourself playing You Got The Love. Then upload your video to the BBC Lockdown Orchestra by

11.59pm on Sunday 10 May 2020.

A selection will join those of the BBC Lockdown Orchestra to create a track which will premiere across BBC Television and Radio on Thursday 14 May. Full details are given below: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/lpcpKcs0Glj7w7hKkJv0Kv/join-the-bbc-lockdownorchestra-for-you-got-the-love

BBC Young Composer 2020 competition

The BBC Young Composer 2020 competition is open to students aged 12-18 of all technical abilities, backgrounds, and musical influences. The BBC are looking for:

We're looking for:  Students who have talent and creative potential and would benefit from the opportunity to nurture their skills and showcase their talent.  Students who work across any genre, any instrument, and any method, including those who use different means of notation.  Students who are passionate about creating their own original music - bursting with creativity, originality, and potential.

Winners will participate in a tailored development programme working with a mentor composer on a project with the BBC Concert Orchestra which will be performed and broadcast in a special young composers concert at the BBC Proms in 2021.

We’ve extended the deadline for this year's competition to 5pm, Monday 20 July to enable as many students as possible to enter. In addition, we're pleased to launch our 30 Second Composition Challenge which we hope you will share with your students. We are challenging composers aged 12-18 to get creative at home and create a 30-second piece for a single instrument or voice.

Young composers can find resources on our website as well as an Uploader to submit their pieces. We'll be selecting some of our favourites which musicians from the BBC Orchestras & Choirs will record, to showcase online and on BBC Radio 3's New Music Show.

You'll find all the information you need on the BBC Young Composer website below: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4mY3MbSJ5G2LvSbzZPbc85G/bbc-young-composer2020

Keeping Highfields reading: how to access free books

It’s really important that students keep up with reading whilst school is closed. The recommended reading time is at least 20 minutes every day. We recognise that at the current time it may be difficult to find books to read. Books are still readily available to buy online from Amazon, Waterstones and other bookshops, but there are also a growing number of sources of free books. The situation is changing every day, with publishers starting to offer access to more and more books, so this advice will be regularly updated. At the current time, the best sources of free reading material are:

Kindle Unlimited

If you are an Amazon Prime member you can sign up for two free months of KindleUnlimited. You will need to download the Kindle app on any device and then you’ll have unlimited access to books, magazines and audiobooks on the Kindle store. After the free trial period there’s a charge of £7.99 per month, but you can cancel your subscription at any time. Visit https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindledbs/hz/subscribe/ku?shoppingPortalEnabled=true for more information.

If you don’t want to sign up to KindleUnlimited you can still download some very inexpensive – or even free - titles from the Amazon Kindle store. Have a browse through the “Children’s” and “Teen & Young Adult” sections. There are some good offers. For instance, the first and second titles in the very popular “Cogheart” series are completely free at the moment. Free titles seem to be added daily, so it’s worth having a regular check of the website.

Audible

Amazon Audible has made all its audiobooks available free of charge if you start a 30-day free trial subscription with them. Visit http://www.audible.co.uk

Derbyshire Libraries

You can read thousands of e-books for free through Derbyshire Libraries. Even if you haven’t yet joined the library, you can join online and download e-books immediately.

If you are already a member go to https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/libraries/ebooks/ebooksemagazines-and-eaudiobooks.aspx and follow the instructions to start browsing through the books available.

If you aren’t yet a member of a Derbyshire library go to: https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/libraries/using-your-library/joining/joining-the-library.aspx and click on “Join the Library”. Fill in all your details and you’ll be given a temporary username and password that you can use until you get a membership card. So you’ll be able to start downloading books straight away.

Happy reading!

Updates to follow as and when other sources of reading material become available.