abbey college cambridge summer school newsletter 2015

A Great Summer Abbey Cambridge welcomed eighteen Summer School students who experienced

British education, life and culture for six weeks. Students visited famous landmarks

such as Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.

They also overcome fears and gained confidence in other

activities such as Go Ape’s Treetop Adventure. It was a

fantastic Summer for all students and staff who took part!

As their English teacher, I was particularly impressed by how well the group

bonded and made friends with each other, and also by their enthusiasm for

studying. They took great interest in the lessons and worked very

hard to produce their best possible work. It was a fantastic, positive

start to the course, and I am delighted to see many faces from

Summer School around at Abbey on A-Level and GCSE courses

now. Well done, Summer School 2015!

SUMMER SCHOOL NEWSLETTER 2015

Patrick Williams


english The Abbey Cambridge Summer School 2015 got off to a flying

start, with the first week focussed on Academic English.

During this week, we looked at Sport,

Goals and Achievement, which

combined with an afternoon of

sporting activities. Students found

out about the famous Cambridge

Athlete, Harold Abrahams, and

talked and wrote about their

favourite sports. We completed a

range of reading and vocabulary activities on the

topic of sport, looking at phrasal verbs in particular, and also

learned about the geography and

culture of the UK.

Students developed their English

around the subject topics across the

six weeks from Business and

Economics, Biology, Chemistry,

Maths and Physics.

Yesterday we went to a beach called "Wells", which was located on the north Norfolk

coast.

This was my first time going to a beach in England, the first thing that came to my

mind was wind and water.

When we arrived in Wells, we followed the teachers to a cafe to buy beverages and ice

cream. After that we followed Bill, one of the Business teachers. The beach was huge

and many people on the beach were lying down or building sand castles, some of us

played in the water. As a result, both of them got soaked. However, their clothes dried

very easily, since there was a breeze blowing as strong as a bear.

One hour later, we had our fun and walked to a fish"n"chip restaurant. It was quite a

long walk from the beach to the restaurant. I was dumbfounded about eating

fish"n"chips outside of the restaurant.


In week 2 of the summer school the students were given the chance to sample and

learn about aspects of Business and Economics. Students spent one half day

examining entrepreneurship where they researched well known entrepreneurs.

They also carried out a range of activities which also included teamwork and other

skills. During the week the cohort spent one day examining how markets worked

across the globe and were given the chance to have experience of being traders in oil

and dealing with world events. In the final session students learned about global

and local property markets. On the Tuesday the students were given the chance to

experience natural beauty as well as British culture with a visit to Wells-next-the-sea.

They visited one the most beautiful beaches in the UK and sampled a traditional

Fish and Chips lunch. The week was enjoyed by all.


Houses of parliament Abbey Cambridge Summer School students and staff headed to

London and experienced the famous Houses of Parliament , where

they learnt about all the historic facts of this phenomenal building

as well as seeing up close its meaningful artwork. Students then

visited the beautiful Covent Garden and enjoyed a delicious dinner

in this amazing city.

Biology The Biology week was split up into different topics: physiology,

genetics, ecology and adaptations. In physiology, students enjoyed

learning about the heart and the effects of exercise on heart rate. They

also dissected a sheep’s heart to learn about the structure and the

function of the different parts.

Students also learned about the structure of DNA and the important

role it plays in the features and traits that we inherit. They researched

genetic mutations and presented their findings to the class.

In ecology, students learned about the interactions of living things

with their environment. They researched what the food web might

look like in the Great Barrier Reef. Students also had the opportunity

to investigate owl pellets and identify the undigested bones.

Punting and King’s College Abbey Cambridge Summer School students took a trip to see the

sights of our home city Cambridge. They had a

tour of the famous King's

College as well as a relaxing

punting trip down the River

Cam. It was a wonderful trip

and students got to see close

up the beautiful city of

Cambridge.


Week Three got off to a big bang by looking at how vaporised alcohol combusts in

a confined space. Students studied the effect of an acid on the rate of a chemical

reaction. The acid was extracted from one of the classic ingredients of a famous

English pudding – rhubarb. Keeping in line with extracting interesting chemicals

from food, the students then learnt how to make a pH indicator from red cabbage.

We then turned to a more traditional kind of chemistry, and formed some beautiful

crystals of Copper Sulfate and samples of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide

for testing. To cap off the traditional chemistry, we roasted Magnesium to find out

the formula of Magnesium Oxide. The students also got to see what happens when

alkali metals are thrown into water as well as seeing a very long strand of Nylon

made, which stretched on and on and on and on. The favourite part of the course

was without doubt the afternoon when the students pretended to be wizards by

igniting methane bubbles in their hands.

chemistry

During the fifth week the students looked at mathematics in a different way, especially how

maths can be and is used in everyday life.

The idea of using Cryptology (codes) goes back thousands of years. However, using mathematics

gives many more options. One common use of codes is the bar code used to identify products.

The bar code was first introduced in the late 1960s, and now there are many forms. In one of the

sessions the students found out how to predict the end digit of a common bar code. Because

mistakes with bar codes can be expensive, bar codes need to have some form of self checking and

the end digit is often used as the check.

Trigonometry has many practical applications. Our students used trigonometry to estimate the

height of a tower of a local church. But the students could not get close to the church, nor did

they know how far away from the church they were. Using simple clinometers, the students

used a method to estimate the height of the tower. The answers varied from 20 to 200m. This

lead to another investigation about the effect of rounding and the need to design your

mathematical experiment very carefully.

Museum Visit, Buckingham Palace and the Theatre

Maths


On Friday 14 August 2015, Our Summer School students took a trip to London, and

this time to take a look at the Natural History and Science Museum, Buckingham

Palace followed by Dinner at Pizza Express and a viewing of the extravagant West

End show, The Lion King. It was thoroughly enjoyed by all.


Go Ape The Summer School students took to the skies and took

part in a treetop adventure at the obstacle course Go Ape!

Students had lots of fun climbing and swinging!

“Yesterday we went to Go Ape which is an amusement park

with outdoor activities. It is not very far from Cambridge.

Firstly the coach showed us how to use the safety harness to

protect us, then he told us some of the main points about the

equipment and after that I didn’t worry about my safety at all.” - LI Bingshuo (Taylor)

Physics During Physics Week students went to Go Ape. This is an outdoor activity centre

where participants climb trees, swing like Tarzan and ride down zip wires. We

based the first few lessons on the physics of Go Ape. We looked a motion,

acceleration and forces and even used videos of our motion at Go Ape to analyse

the velocity and acceleration of our motion.

The rest of the week we looked at electricity and magnetism. We started by looking

at the physics of static electricity and students had some fun playing with the Van

Der Graaff Generator (see photos) and the week concluded with constructing

electric motors using just pieces of wire and magnets.


ZHENG Yinlong (Lawrence) wrote a piece on his trip to the seaside on the second week of Summer School.

The Seaside in England

It was a nice day yesterday.

We took a trip to the North Sea. We went there by coach. Firstly, we played volleyball and

football, then we built a sandcastle with our teachers. All of us enjoyed it, including me. The most

exciting thing was that we went in the sea. After playing on the beach, we went

to a small town and ate fish and chips. It is a famous food in England. I had

never eaten it before. It was delicious!

I think it was the best yesterday as we did everything together . I enjoyed the

day because it was a unforgettable experience.

In English lessons, students created a story as a class to practise cause and effect and shows what happened

if a student works hard. The story had a very unexpected ending!

Swift’s Life

Swift was a good student because he was very hard-working and finished his homework on time.

Teachers liked Swift because of his attitude towards his studies. As

a result of this, he got good grades and went to Cambridge

University. After that he got a good job and as he was

hard-working he became very rich. He also became the CEO of

Microsoft. Therefore he was very successful and even richer than

Bill Gates! So he became the leader of the world. Unfortunately in

the end he was assassinated.

Student Work

abbey college cambridge summer school newsletter 2015

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