Abingdon News No.58

14 September 2021 Abingdon News Diary of a Drama Diary of a Drama was this year’s lower school production which documented some of what’s been happening over the last year. Part diary, part anthology, it told the story of a drama teacher’s attempts to put on a school play in a pandemic. With some original material created by the cast, and scenes by Salman Rushdie, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Robin Stevens, Michael Rosen and Graham Greene, the film features a cast of 26 lower school actors alongside professional actor (and OA) Alex Mugnaioni. The canoe polo season finished with the second years emerging victorious from a close competition with the third years. Blott Matthews Essay competition Congratulations to lower sixth formers Cameron Eilbeck and Dominic Wood on achieving joint second place in this year’s Blott Matthews Essay prize competition. They won £100 each. The students had to write an essay in the form of an engineering report. Cameron wrote an overview of the Apollo LEM, looking briefly at the challenges it faced and how it overcame them in terms of design and engineering. Dominic focused on the Millau Viaduct. He analysed the forces on the bridge to provide context for the engineering choices of the structure and outlined the challenges of the construction process. In addition to the success in the Essay Competition, two teams competed in this year’s Blott Matthews Team Challenge . The Challenge was to develop a plan to meet the UK’s electrical power demand between 2021 and 2040 based on achievable infrastructure development. Both teams carried out extensive research and then assessed the feasibility of different options to agree a plan. The judges were impressed both by the quality of the work produced and with the video presentation skills of the students. Abingdon team Eat Your Greens was awarded the first prize of £500 while EDP Energy received a £100 Merit Award in recognition of the quality of their participation. Story time Students shared recordings of themselves reading popular children’s books with our partnership primary schools. Canoe polo finale