Please bring any Christmas jumpers you’ve grown out of into school on Monday to swap or donate in preparation for our Christmas lunch and jumper day on Tuesday.

The Newminster and Chantry choir performed at Heighley Gate Garden Centre on Saturday 26th November 2016 to raise money for the Henry Dancer Days Charity.

They were wonderful and sang a repertoire of songs including some from the Christmas performance.

We received a lovely email from the charity:

“Just to let you know that you helped us raise £740 today for Henry Dancer Days.
Many, many, many thanks for all your help and support. Please would you let everyone who was involved know of this superb amount.
Once again my sincere thanks. We are indebted to you for your wonderful, willing help.”

Sign2Sing Mascot

Sign2sing have revealed their new mascot who was designed by Ryan Rong, aged 12 from Newminster Middle School. His design was turned into a mascot for SignHealth by Jellyhead Studios, based in London, who have previously made mascots for the BBC, Asda and the Rainforest Cafe.

Kampala is due to visit the school soon! How exciting …..!

Last month, some of our Year 7s struck up a penpal project with a school in France. Pupils in 7S wrote their first letters to their new friends in École Ernest Millet and our letters have arrived!  We look forward to receiving their replies and seeing what life in like in La Belle France.

Show Racism the Red Card, the UK’s anti-racism charity, were in school in November working with Year 5. They promoted a message of understanding by using the high-profile status of football and football players to help tackle racism in society. All four classes took part in a range of workshops that aimed to:

• Educate young people about the causes and consequences of racism and to explore the various forms racism can take.
• Empower young people to challenge racism in the communities in which they live, providing them with relevant knowledge and information to enable them to do this.
• Help young people prepare to play an active role as citizens in an increasingly multi-cultural society.
• Enable young people to develop good relationships and respect the differences between people, regardless of their ethnicity, faith, culture or nationality.

Feedback from the children showed that they had all learned some valuable lessons from the day and we will be doing some follow up work in class to reinforce the messages learned.

Pupils from 8H rolled out their businesses last week as part of their DLE project “Make £5 Grow” with Mr Stoker.

Make £5 Grow is a fun and engaging enterprise initiative designed to help draw out important entrepreneurial skills in middle school pupils.

In collaboration with Virgin Money, pupils taking part are provided with a loan of £5 and have to use this money to create products or services they can sell. They are encouraged to think carefully about their target market, product costing, pricing and marketing. In the process developing their business skills and financial understanding.

We are delighted to announce that 8H made an unbelievable profit of £535.21 which they have very kindly decided to donate to a number of charities. More on this to follow!

As part of our History topic on Mining, Year 6 had the opportunity to visit Woodhorn Colliery. It was a fantastic opportunity for the pupils to relate closely to what life was like for a miner and understand in more detail the demands and pressures of everyday life.

During the visit the class took part in three education workshops which included an artefacts and archive session, a tour of the museum and a session on The Pitman Painters, which has also been used in our art lessons over the last few weeks. Pupils said they really enjoyed the visit as it helped them to understand more about mining. A big thank you to all the staff at Woodhorn for making the trip so enjoyable.

A huge well done to Rachael and Harry who did a wonderful job representing Chantry at the local final of Future Chef 2017! The professional chef judges from Compass were really impressed with the way Harry and Rachael worked during the competition at Gateshead College.

We are delighted to announce that Rachael was declared the winner of this stage of the competition and she will be mentored by chef David Bittlestone over the next few months ahead of her representing the North East in the Regional Final at York College in February! Good luck Rachael!

As part of their DLE project, 5I have investigated how people from different countries deal with problems associated with flooding.  In Bangladesh, a country that regularly floods, an ingenious solution has been found to the problem of crops being destroyed during the floods.  Plots of floating land are constructed on which families grow their crops.

5I were set a challenge to design and build their own floating gardens within their small teams.  As the weeks have progressed, designs have been altered so that each team was confident that their garden could float and withstand a ‘flood situation’.

Last Friday, the final designs were floated on the school pond and tested for the length of time they could float with weights being added, and finally being subjected to an improvised flood.  The results were very interesting and the pupils successfully analysed the reasons why some were better than others.

It was a really exciting project which kept all pupils fully engaged.  I am confident that they will take with them improved teamwork skills and a knowledge of design and build strategies.

We commissioned researchers from Children North East (a local charity) to work in school recently with the aim of uncovering institutional and cultural practices which may stigmatise pupils who live live in poverty. As well as being in school and talking to all the pupils via focus group sessions, the researchers invited all parents, staff and directors to respond to questionnaires, enabling them to hear from the whole school community. We are looking forward to receiving the report and action plan which will help us move forward in poverty proofing our school.