13th - 17th November 2006- Enterprise Week

Dragons' Den comes to BGS

You've all seen the TV version no doubt, but now BGS have their own Dragons' Den. As an activity of Enterprise Week the English department decided to replicate the TV programme as the challenge for the Year 10 speaking and listening assessment of their English GCSE coursework. And what a success it turned out to be!

Some of the ideas showed what great talent we have in this school – the automatic wardrobe selector even swayed the guys, with clothes to suit the weather, selected and co-ordinated ready for you to wear, devised by Jenna's team; Underwater headphones; Reusable self-heating gloves thought of by Gabby & Anastasia; improved tap dancing shoes which are more resonant and longer lasting by Shamimah; and a favourite – the butter stick by Connor Morgan & Co avoiding all the mess of using a knife and too hard butter. The presenters had to give a sales pitch, a business plan, talk about distribution and production, and body language and personal appearance were also important – all very useful skills for future interviews.

Six Dragons grilled the inventors, and Mr Stone congratulated Saffron, Gina, Natalie Stacey and Charlotte Newman along with Max and Kyle for being excellent Dragons. Attitude, persona, sales pitch, willingness to negociate and the ability to take criticism were important.

“The activity has really inspired the students, and it's the strongest speaking and listening GCSE activity I've ever done, reaching far beyond my expectations. The students took the activity so seriously, came up with innovative ideas and they really enjoyed themselves. I only wished I'd videoed the sessions.” Mr Stone, Head of English

Mr Stone joined in too, with Josh Cork, they proposed a business selling individuals' healthy organs after death – which naturally provoked plenty of lively discussion!

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Year 10 Careers Talks

On Friday 17th we were lucky to have speakers come in to BGS to talk about their own careers and provide advice on how to pursue a career in law, human resources, healthcare and nursing, business consultancy in the public sector and science based careers.

We are really grateful to Mrs Georgina Gillan, Chris Shaw and her team from Thames Valley University, Peter Haley, and Ana Tanczosfrom the University of Surrey for donating their time. Mrs Trinder

Additional careers will be covered in 2007. In the meantime, students might want to watch a video of ‘a day in the life of…' for a career they are interested in, all are available on the intranet – Go to Careers – Careerscape –but remember you'll need sound.

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Year 10 – Enterprise Day - Do we have Bright Futures?
By Ben Moffatt

On Thursday we were privileged to have the ‘Bright Futures' team come in to show us what we could achieve when us, year 10's, are older. To get into the spirit of being business men and women we had the option of coming in business attire.

The day started off by us all crowding into the hall where we were placed into groups. Then, the two ‘Bright Futures' representatives gave a short speech on what Bright Futures was about. They encouraged us to work together, to focus on our non-academic skills and introduced us to real life entrepreneurs, all with the aim of improving our chances after school and inspiring us to think in an enterprising way.

Now, it is quite hard to get us to answer questions, so, a little bribery came in handy. If your group completed a task and won, or if you answered a question well, you got a prize of a Starburst sweet, and the prizes certainly kept us focused and competing with the other teams. I was happy because our group won a bag of white Maltesers.

There were tasks that the groups had to complete throughout the day. One of them was setting up a production business of Top-up card holders and Top-up cards. We had to design the new top-up cards and boxes. We were given £7 (fake unfortunately!) to buy
materials, and we had to make as much profit as possible by selling our designs. The better quality of the card holder and cards, the more money we received. Also, there was a competition, where we all had to become entrepreneurs and devise and market a business that was based at Burnham Grammar School to help the needy. To show our proposals, each group made a poster. For instance, one group decided on a poster to advertise their Bingo Night plus film – for the elderly in the local community.

Overall, I thought the day was good and helped us understand what it would be like to set up our own business .

Thanks to Mrs. O' Sullivan and Miss Kelly of Business Studies for organizing the day.