Thank you to all those parents/carers who attended or helped out at the Christmas Fayre on the last day of the Autumn Term.  We raised an amazing £1442.82 which will be used to help improve the outdoor environment.  Please check your raffle tickets as there are some unclaimed prizes:

• Green 716 – Cuddly Toy
• Green 696 – Bottle of whiskey
• Lilac 46 – Cleaning Hamper

Please contact the school office on 512874 to claim these prizes by Friday 11th January 2019.

Please click here to read the Morpeth and Ponteland SSP Autumn Newsletter

For Sale:

Scott Mountain Bikes

The first round of the French Spelling Bee took place this week.  Pupils in Year 7 learnt a bank of 50 French words off by heart and had to spell as many as they could using the French alphabet in one minute.  Congratulations to the eight winners who go through the second round in February.  Or, we should say, ‘Félicitations’!

Felicitaciones to our Estrella Champions for this half term.  In their Spanish lessons, they earned the highest amount of stars for their efforts over the past 3 months.  ¡Fenomenal!

Year 5 have been getting to grips with French phonics this half term by learning which letters make which sounds.  5B took part in a ‘read runner’ game where pupils had to work together in teams to correctly describe where different characters lived in France.  Bravo to ‘Équipe French Fries’ who were victorious in their efforts, getting 12 out of a possible 14 phrases perfect.

“Our tactics were to make sure we helping each other out and using all the time available to practise our sentences.”  Jess

“We have been putting mimes to some of the sounds to help us remember how to pronounce things.  For example, ‘ç’ makes a ‘ss’ sound so we move our hands as if they were snakes making that sound.”  Joel

“The game also taught me the names of places in France I had never heard of.  My favourite one to say was Menton, which I found out from Madame Said is also the French word for chin!”  Finley

Year 5 enjoy a wonderful candlelit service

During the morning of Friday 7^th December Year 5 took part in Chantry Middle School’s annual Christingle service which was held this year at St James’ Church in Morpeth. Every student in Year 5 made their own Christingles that were lit as part of the service. After the service pupils commented on how “nice to was to be in church,” “it made them feel very Christmassy” and they “enjoyed participating with the singing.”   We would like to say a big thank you to Val from the Mustard Tree Trust for leading the service, to all the parents, carers, grandparents and everyone else who took the time to support this event.

The Royal British Legion have thanked us for donating £33.19 for the sale of poppies in school.  Thank you for your donations.

Safety Works

6S visited ‘Safety Works!’ to learn all about being safe both at home and in the community. As part of the PSHE curriculum, students were able to receive a high quality experience and learn these essential skills whilst learning outside of the classroom. The curriculum recommends that it is important to learn about citizenship and being able to visit these workshops allowed the children to see the significance of being a sensible and safe member of society, and how to react if they are ever in an unsafe situation.

Whilst at the workshops, the students experienced many situations involving the emergency services. One of the circumstances involved the police and was regarding stealing. It was explained to the children the consequences of what would happen if anybody was caught stealing, this was demonstrated, like all of the scenarios, by role playing. The important message that the children were able to take away from this was that everybody can make mistakes, but if this was a repeat situation, they were able to comprehend how serious it would be.

Another scenario was about fire in the home; what could start fires and how to avoid this and what steps to take if a fire ever broke out in the home. Finally, the students completed a workshop with St Johns Ambulance about what to do if somebody was unresponsive and learnt how to put somebody in the recovery position. This was in a hospital setting and another great piece of advice they received was, if they were ever scared in a hospital situation to ask two questions: “Why am I here?” and “What will make me better?”; this piece of advice seemed to reassure the students, as they can learn how to take some control in what could be a scary situation for them.

Overall there were many opportunities to learn about safety from all of the emergency services and the children not only enjoyed, but took a lot of advice from all of the mock situations.

Click here or more information regarding PHSE at Chantry Middle School.