www.abingdon.org.uk 21 Abingdon School in Partnership November heralded the first joint MUN debate of the term with St Helen and St Katharine. The topic for the debate was the invigorating question of ‘commercialisation of space’. Gordon, the delegate for Japan, presented a resolution which called for the restriction and regulation of satellite launching, and thence the commotion commenced. The USA attempted, once again, to wield its fist over diplomacy, against which Bhutan immediately brought up the pressing topic of alien rights, attacking the USA for its ‘outrageous exploitation of martians etc.’, North Korea similarly spoke against the USA who had spread the ‘obnoxious’ rumour that the DPRK had ‘attempted to land a satellite on the sun’. Russia submitted an amendment that called for the launching of all satellites to be controlled by Moscow, which angered the Irish delegate who pointed out that it was rather the duty of the Pope to make decisions of such spiritual importance. In the end, however, Russia was repelled and for the 1st time in a very long time(!) the resolution was passed. by Thomas Chorley On 3 November, 66 students and their teachers came together for the inaugural Business Language challenge, hosted by Abingdon School. The day was run by experts and industry volunteers from Business Language Champions who aim to ‘promote modern foreign languages and cultural cohesion by demonstrating to young students the importance of language skills in the workplace.’ After an inspiring keynote speech from a sales and marketing expert with broad language skills, students worked in mixed teams on a series of challenges in their target languages. Using either French, German or Spanish, they set to work to promote and sell a popular confectionary item. After initial icebreaker activities, they set to work on designing a trade stall, producing an advert and flyer as well as creating their version of the product, before testing their language skills with a real life phone call to a large supplier. The afternoon saw students working together, sharing their ideas and drawing on their individual and group strengths, then finalising their designs and presenting their ideas to the industry experts. Initial feedback from staff and students showed that they enjoyed the opportunity to work with, and meet, new people as well as getting to be creative. They valued the support of the volunteer linguists with one student describing the day as ‘wunderbar!’ Model United Nations In September, 50 Primary School pupils spent an exciting morning learning about historical crime scenes, philosophy, rocks and life as a Roman soldier (with one of our 6th Formers dressed in full Roman regalia proving to be particularly popular). They had great fun participating in a range of activities, which complemented their school curriculum. When in Rome Open to schools in Oxfordshire and run by Abingdon’s own Peter Willis, Oliver Lomax and student assistants, 12 November saw 8 teams of over 40 students come into School for the inaugural event of Robocon. This free robotics competition aims to link DT, Physics, Electronics and Computer Science in a fun and exciting event. With the support of the team at Abingdon, students in Years 9, 10 and 11 will work together in teams over the next few months, to design, build, program and test a robot. In March, they will then compete with their Robots in a series of challenges and we are very much looking forward to the result. Robocon Business language challenge
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