Friday 16th November
Non School Uniform Day – minimum donation 50p
The Bronze Arts Award students were invited to take part in an illustration workshop with Newcastle- based illustrator, Bethan Laker, as part of the “Big Draw” Event on 13th November 2018.
Bethan began by showing examples of her work and then explained that the students would be making a drawn environment depicting an “Alice in Wonderland” tea party.
Bethan encouraged the students to be experimental and brave, using pens to make quick drawings of tea party objects and then to design characters from the story. These were then enlarged onto card and coloured using chalk markers.
The work will be completed in the Arts Award sessions and then displayed in school.
The students really enjoyed the project and particularly valued having the time to develop their ideas and techniques during the session.
The activity was sponsored by Northumberland Arts Development. (NAD) is a partnership between Hexham Book Festival, Berwick Visual Arts – Maltings, Queens Hall Arts, Museum and Archives Northumberland (Woodhorn), Alnwick Playhouse and is funded by Northumberland County Council and Arts Council England.
NAD provides support and advice to arts initiatives and organisations within the county in order to strengthen the sector and improve opportunities for anyone to access excellent art and culture.
This year’s regional heat of the annual literary competition proved to be the hardest yet. With rounds as obscure as Ducks and Drakes and Rocks and Stones, not to mention Squirrels and lastly, Unicorns, we were seriously challenged.
Expecting to be quizzed on books, we soon discovered that the word book would be interpreted very loosely. Manga, popular merchandising, film and TV were not off-limits in this very gruelling quiz! Questions skipped from The Last of the Mohicans – surely not a children’s book – to My Little Pony via the classics, comics, fairy tales and Disney. It was a real mixed bag!
We are so proud of our mixed teams of students from Years 6, 7 and 8 who maintained their concentration and enthusiasm throughout and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Chloe, you really deserved to win that tie-break!
Newminster A: Iona, Chloe, Michael and Will
Newminster B: Tallula, Ann, Tom and William
Newminster and Chantry Christmas Performances of Nativity Nightmares – St James Church, Wednesday 19th December 2018, 1.45 pm and 6.00 pm. Tickets will go on sale for these performances from break times (only) at the school offices on Monday 19th November 2018. £2.00 per child and £3.00 per adult.
Thank you to the students who have designed the tickets – wonderful work!!
‘In celebration of Tomorrow’s Engineers Week
Stephen Metcalfe MP
On behalf of The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee with Engineering UK
invites you to attend
The Big Bang @ Parliament
Monday 5 November, 1.00 pm – 2.30 pm’
On Monday 5th November, five Year 8 pupils travelled to London to showcase their Big Bang Competition project, ‘The Secret Life of Plastic’, to MP’s, engineering employers and fellow competitors.
The group represented themselves and the school extremely well. They were able to present
their work, discuss ideas fluently with their audience and speak with such passion that they have engaged interest and support from others at the fair. They met Ian Lavery MP who was very impressed with the group’s enthusiasm and is keen to work with the group moving forward on their project.
The next step for them is the The Big Bang Competition Finals in Birmingham in March 2019. The pupils will compete for over £20,000 worth of amazing prizes, including top and runner-up prizes in the Junior category for science and engineering, as well as the coveted titles of UK Young Engineer of the Year and GSK UK Young Scientist of the Year.
Everyone at Newminster is extremely proud of the group and we all have our fingers crossed for the finals in March!
Morpeth Amateur Swimming Club is a competitive swimming club based in Morpeth. The club has grown considerably in membership over the last few years and is one of the fastest improving clubs in the region. Over the last 12 months swimmers have won medals at both County and Regional level as well as qualifying for National Championships.
The club is close to capacity but some spaces are available. We are looking for swimmers born 2009-2012 to join our younger squads.
We will be holding trials on the following dates at Morpeth Riverside Leisure Centre NE61 1PR (swimmers need only attend one trial date).
Sunday 18th November 2018 4:00pm
Friday 23rd November 2018 6:30pm
The trial is suitable for swimmers who have completed Stage 6/7 of NPTS and can confidently swim 100m continuously.
Please email Head Coach Becki McGuire to book your place – [email protected]
Any swimmer who was born before 2009 and/or has previous ‘club experience’ should state this when booking as a different trial date may be more appropriate.
Becki McGuire
Morpeth ASC – Head Coach
On Friday 19th October, Local Councillors were invited into school, as part of ‘Local Democracy Week 2018’ to offer Year Seven Students the opportunity to pose questions to a panel of County Councillors.
Councillor Beynon, Councillor Towns, Councillor Byard and Councillor Tebbbutt were keen to engage with our students and offer an insight into their own roles as well as tackling local issues. This project was delivered in collaboration with the Northumberland Youth Service.
The Three Rivers joint Ceilidh Band (Newminster, Chantry and Dr Thomlinson Middle Schools) were lucky enough to have had a workshop with the incredible folk musician Sophy Ball on Tuesday 16th October 2018. Not only is Sophy a professional folk musician but she is an arranger. KEVI music department asked Sophy if she could create an arrangement of Ceilidh Tunes especially for the Middle school bands to perform using money donated at the joint Three Rivers Ceilidh last year.
Wonderful music making and we are looking forward to the next Three River Ceilidh in February 2019.
On Friday 5th October, Year 8 students entered the world of work and for the first time ever, the annual Careers Conference took place at Linden Hall.
The core purpose of the day was to provide students with the opportunity to engage with employers from a range of different sectors. The day is a central part of the careers programme for Year 8 students as they will soon embark on their journey towards high school education and be required to make GCSE choices very early on. We hope that this day. along with various other planned events in Year 8 will help prepare the students to make informed career choices for the future. The event highlighted alternative careers pathways such as apprenticeships as well as the more traditional routes into employment.
The careers speed dating session involved students grilling employers and Business Ambassadors from a range of local employment sectors to get a flavour of career pathways and typical working days.
The afternoon workshops were delivered by Northumberland Fire and Rescue, Police, RAF and the Navy. The workshops highlighted all of the different roles in various organisations as well as key skills needed to be successful and addressed common misconceptions.
Liz Kinninment, Headteacher at Newminster Middle School, gave a keynote speech to launch the day’s activities.
“At Newminster we are committed to encouraging students to think about their future careers from a very early stage. Being able to offer students the opportunity to experience a live working environment like this is invaluable. The experience certainly opens their eyes to the possibilities available and will hopefully help inspire their future career choices.”
The conference day was delivered in partnership with Northumberland Business and Education Partnership and we would like to thank all of the businesses that made the day a success.
Contributors for the speed dating activity included
- NCC
- NCC Apprentices
- Newcastle College
- Interserve
- Newcastle University
- HMRC
- RAF
- Northumberland Fire & Rescue Service
- Police Service
- British Army
- Robertsons
Here is what the students had to say:
“There are a lot more job opportunities in some jobs that you wouldn’t expect”
“It was an inspiring day”
” I have a new understanding of my future career”
