Last week, our new Lower School esports club launched with an exciting inter-school build challenge against St Helen and St Katharine in Oxford and Thornton College in Milton Keynes, often with the classes joining an online video call to see their counterparts in other classes completing the same challenges. It is also being run at The Abbey School in Reading and Donhead Prep in London but at different times to the Exeter School club. The challenge was to design the best treehouse. Each week, two teams of three pupils compete against other schools, while the rest of the club take part in an inter-club version of the same challenge.
The age range is 7-11 as the intention was to create a primary competition. Then we casually judge the builds but essentially it is more about team work. One of our two teams of Upper One pupils kept sending messages on the chat about how nice the other treehouses were and Mrs Morgan kept having to tell them to carry on with their builds! True kindness and integrity virtues shine through.
Everyone enters 1 or 2 teams of 3 players each week. We always have 2 teams in the club with a different theme each week. The way we are doing it is the pupils in the club is split into teams and each week, 2 different teams will be those that represent the school. The rest of the club participate against each other doing the same challenge.
It has been a fantastic introduction to competitive esports for our Form One and Upper One pupils, and we are looking forward to next week’s challenge. We were also delighted to learn that all our entries to the European Space Agency’s Astro Pi challenge were successful. Code written by our Upper Two pupils will run on the International Space Station, and we look forward to discovering where the ISS was in orbit when their code ran when certificates are awarded in June.
