Yr8 Hat Show

Johnny Green has written for the website.

The Hat Show was a great end of year task for the Year 8s. It brought out confidence, team work and resilience in pupils who are normally shy, as they were allowed to work on a group project with their friends.

My job was team leader, as group leader I took control of organising all that needed to be done. Luckily, as there were so many categories to choose from the creative spark was found in all of us. The downside to all of this was it made everyone think of everything: so many things came to mind we nedded a meeting to see what our peers were thinking. Surprisingly, our ideas were actually quite similar; we agreed on a Wild West-Mexican theme and we all wanted to use a sombrero as the hat of choice. Cacti were a common subject within our group, and so the Spikey Sombreros were designed, linking our desire to incorporate sombreros and cacti into our project.

It was a hard task making a pot to put the cactus into and going round classrooms looking for the best sombrero in the GMS community. Immediately, we went to the Spanish classrooms as Spain is well known for sombreros. It turned out that Miss King, the French teacher, had the best sombrero for us and I hadn’t heard of a sombrero in France before.

After the painting, gluing and sticking our creation, it turned out our pot was much bigger than we expected – and it had to balance on my head!

Overall it was a unique experience that brought out the best in all of us. I am looking forward to seeing what the future Year 8s create next year.