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To celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen, pupils at St John Fisher Catholic High School in Peterborough embarked on a royal research project.
The project was carried out jointly with St Joseph’s Catholic School in Laverstock, Wiltshire. The project, the first Inter-Catholic Schools Quiz, was led by Mrs Pauline Helcoop of St John Fisher and Mrs Sam Barratt from St Joseph’s. Both schools formed a quiz team of 8 year 9 students and since Easter have been busy researching about the Queen, her family, hobbies, the Royal Residences and the Commonwealth in order to create and take part in a quiz on Thursday May 26 via Teams.
Based on the Mastermind principle, the quiz comprised of two rounds – one general knowledge round and one specialised topic round. However there was a twist to the specialised topic. Each school chose a specialised topic for their opponents, which was kept secret until one week before the quiz.
Study began in earnest after the Easter holidays and Mrs Helcoop began training her quiz team. Alujay Levis, Faiza Khan, Charlie Henson, Alan Chrusciak, Jaciara Correia, Shiprah Muriuki, Zohal Haydari and Emilia Gintauskaite met once a week at lunch times to research and digest as much information as possible about the successes and achievements of the past 70 years.
With eight days to go before the quiz the specialised topics were revealed; St John Fisher were to be challenged on answering questions about the Commonwealth and St Joseph’s would face questions on the Royal Residences. So final preparations were undertaken. St John Fisher’s quiz team decided to split up the mammoth task of learning all the facts, flags and population figures of the Commonwealth between them. Team work was paramount.
The day of the quiz finally came and both teams were ready. Both schools had prepared some excellent questions which would have challenged even the best quizzers. St Joseph’s took an early lead in the general knowledge round and St John Fisher found themselves 5-7 down, with still the very tricky unseen specialised topic to come. Fantastic team work and superb quizzing resulted in a victory in the inaugural Inter-Catholic Schools Quiz for St John Fisher. The final score was 12-9. The quiz was enjoyed by everyone who took part and both quiz teams can be justly proud of themselves. Their teachers are certainly very proud of them.
The next step is to expand the project and develop a quiz league within the diocese of Clifton and East Anglia in the coming academic year, resulting in a final quiz between the top schools in each diocese next summer.
Pictured above is the quiz team from St John Fisher High School, Peterborough.
