Congratulations to Year 11 pupil Maham who is the champion of CHS’s newest Design & Technology competition, The Cheadle Chilli Challenge – a celebration of creativity and innovation across the School.
Maham, who is planning to pursue a career in medicine, said she was thrilled to find out she had been declared the winner after completing a series of technical challenges to receive the highest number of points.
She said: “I’ve always enjoyed making things so when I saw my name as the Overall Winner on Google Classroom, I was so happy my hard work had paid off. I celebrated by running downstairs to tell my mum, ‘I’ve won!’ I’m going to share my prize with my family when we go to the Trafford Centre this weekend.”
Launched at the end of the summer term during the height of the national lockdown, the competition saw a series of Design & Technology challenges for all pupils to take part in, regardless of skill level and ability.
The remote challenge was designed to allow everyone to compete and be in with the chance of winning the grand prize: a Nando’s voucher supplied by CHS Director of Technology, Mr Dunn and light-up trophy handmade by CHS Teacher of Design & Technology, Mr Tulloch.
The challenges included building a paddle boat, creating an outdoor ‘junkyard’ obstacle course, coding, and building a prosthetic hand out of cardboard. The pupils were tasked with showcasing each project and the creative process behind it, to be measured by the Design & Technology department’s chilli rating system. The pupil receiving the highest number of chillis would be declared the winner!
CHS Teacher of Design & Technology, Mrs Metcalfe who set the challenges and co-ordinated the project said: “As a department we were so proud of the effort Maham made; the level she attempted all of the challenges at was really quite sophisticated so it’s a very well deserved win, she worked really hard for it.”
Mr Metcalfe continued: “We had some fantastic video submissions, some brilliant photos, sketches… it was really lovely to see how creative the pupils were being and how engaged they still were with the curriculum after several months of not being able to see each other and their teachers. It was just a really positive way to end what had become a very strange school year.”
Hear Maham and Mrs Metcalfe discussing the competition in more detail on the latest episode of CHS’s Ed. Podcast, “How hot is your Design & Technology?” below, or anywhere else you turn in to your podcasts.
