Northumberland Community Enterprise Limited

25th April 2019Sarah Hall

Northumberland Community Enterprise Ltd are a Stobhill based charity helping families throughout the North East during hard times. They tackle food poverty, deprivation, help parents to find work and have recently been shortlisted to win a large National Lottery grant.

Grant funding will mean that they can open a community shop in Stobhill offering;

A free School Uniform Bank, Community Food Pantry, Free Haircuts, Recycled Household Paint, a Job Club and Training.

If they are successful in securing enough votes they will be working with local schools and social services who can refer families into their project. This will enable them to purchase and provide recycle bins for schools, organise regular collections and arrange mending and repairing of uniforms if necessary.  They will also be collecting food from ASDA twice per week and offering parcels to families during difficult times. Their hairstylist will work two evenings per week providing free school approved haircuts to children and those parents who have secured Job Interviews.

Please can we all support this local charity and vote to bring these services to the area.

Click the link to vote and remember to verify your vote in your email account afterwards

https://www.thepeoplesprojects.org.uk/projects/view/family-chances

 

Sporting Achievements

25th April 2019Sarah Hall

Well done to our various teams at the end of a very busy season.

Football

Our U11 girls’ team finished with a fantastic 100% record having won all of their league games and the Sports Partnership event. They will next be playing in the Summer Games on 27th June, representing our Area against the best in the county.

Our U11 boys’ team also played some exceptional football, with only 1 defeat in the league and also getting to the County Cup semi-final. This is even more remarkable considering most of the team are in Year 5. Good luck next year!

The U11 B-team had some very difficult fixtures playing mainly against school A-teams but again as most were in Year 5 it looks very promising for next year.

The U13 girls’ team are still in action through into next term and have definitely improved as the season has gone on, playing some impressive football and demonstrating a great attitude.

The U13 boys’ team have also improved hugely as the season progressed finishing with a convincing 4-0 home win against Ponteland and finishing 3rd in the league.

Rugby

The season is still going, and we’d like to say that we have been massively impressed by all our KS3 teams this year. The girls have improved so much from last year’s introduction to contact and the boys finished the term with impressive performances in the County 7s event. The boys will finish the season with another 7s event on 9th May and the girls will finish on the beach!

House rugby – the fantastic attitude and commitment was also demonstrated in the house rugby competition this term. Particular note goes to the quality of the Year 5 and Year 7 teams and the high intensity of the Year 8.

Well done to Howard for winning this event. The overall positions are now:

1st – Dacre; 2nd – Howard; 3rd – Mitford; 4th – Collingwood.

Netball

Year 7 and 8 girls have performed well this season with a 3rd place finish in the league. Miss Simpson has been very impressed with the girls’ attitude and resilience demonstrated all season.

Year 5 have shown a fantastic commitment to training this year and performed well in a difficult Sports Partnership tournament against teams from Year 6. Many thanks go to the Year 7 girls who turned up each week to help train them.

Sports leaders

Well done to our Sports leaders who were trained and then led a Tri-Golf tournament to our Feeder School pupils. Once again their attitude and leadership skills were of a fantastic quality throughout. Next term they will be doing a tennis event.

We’d also like to say well done to our Year 8 boys’ basketball team and Year 7/8 girls’ cricket teams, who took part in Area events this term. Particular note goes to the Year 7 girls who turned up in such amazing numbers for the cricket training, we were invited to attend a bonus tournament to give everyone a chance to play.

 

Big Bang Fair Competition group visit Coca-Cola Morpeth Site

25th April 2019Sarah Hall
On Wednesday 20th March, the Big Bang Competition group ‘Secret Life of Plastic’ were invited to visit the Coca-Cola European Partners site in Morpeth. The group were guided around the factory to see the production lines where all of the Abbey Well water and GLACÉAU smartwater in Great Britain is bottled.
 
The group were able to learn lots of new information about how plastics are used in production of bottled water, and how Coca-Cola are tackling sustainability through their ‘This is Forward’ campaign.

New Artwork for Morpeth Rail Station

25th April 2019Sarah Hall

Students at Newminster School in are busy creating new artwork which will soon be on display at the station, thanks to a Northern Railway Seed Corn Grant. Click here to see some photos of the artwork under construction at the school.

Ensemble Evening Concert – Tuesday 2nd April 2019

4th April 2019Sarah Hall
On Tuesday 2nd April the students of Newminster and Chantry Middle Schools collaborated to perform a spectacular evening of music. There were performances from the Newminster and Chantry steel pan bands, jazz band, ceilidh band, percussion, guitar, vocal, Northumbrian pipes and brass ensembles and nearly 400 pupils took part of these ensembles.
 
We would like to thank the amazing instrumental staff from Music Partnership North and Jenny Gilberg, the steel pan teacher, for their tuition, guidance and enthusiasm.
 
Simon Taylor the CEO of the Three Rivers Learning Trust said, “What an excellent evening with lots of students from both schools involved and it was really well attended by parents.”
 
“Wow! The concert was brilliant tonight. We had a great time. I bet you’re incredibly proud of all of the students. They were so focused. What a great night, thank you,” said a parent.
 
The pupils invited the residence of East Riding Nursing Home to come to the concert. “Thank you so much for such an amazing night. My residents were in a very happy place as I could see on their smiling faces.” Joan – East Riding Care Home.
 
Another proud moment across the schools and a massive well done to everyone who was involved.

Wansbeck Music Festival

4th April 2019Sarah Hall
On Sunday 31st March 2019 our Newminster and Chantry Steel Pan bands competed in the Wansbeck Festival. Well done to everyone who took part and thank you to Jenny Gilberg for her tuition.
Here are the results from this wonderful musical day.
U11 soloist
1- Rose-Chantal  – Chantry
2- Lucy  – Chantry
3- Grace – Chantry
U11 Ensemble 
1- Rachel , Jess , Isabella  – Chantry
 
U11 Band 
1- Chantry A
2- Newminster H
3- Newminster E and Newminster I
 
U13 soloist 
1- Georgia  – Chantry
2- Sadie  – Newminster
 
U13 Ensemble 
1- Sophie, Sophie, Charlotte – Chantry
2- Naomi, Georgia, Amy – Chantry
2. Mary, Rebecca, Rachel – Chantry
3- Jenny, Rose, Chloe, Anna – Newminster
U13 Band 
1- Newminster B and Newminster C
2- Newminster A
3- Chantry C and Chantry F

 

Congratulations Cameron and Ayhan

4th April 2019Sarah Hall

Congratulations to Cameron and Ayhan, students of Newminster and Chantry Middle School’s on their recent achievement of winning first place in a competition designed to help ‘Save the Environment’.

Both Cameron and Ayhan are members of Morpeth 6th Scouts and won the competition, arranged by the Scouts as part of their Scout Camp in March, by designing a picture using articles they found during a beach clean-up in Seahouses.  As both boys are avid animal enthusiasts and keen to reduce ocean plastic pollution, their design was that of a turtle, showing their commitment to saving the environment and reducing harm to animals in the process.  We’re sure both Cameron and Ayhan will thoroughly enjoy their prize, a free scuba dive with 5drive Centre. Well done boys!!

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The North East Teen Book Award ‘Getting and keeping, young people reading’.

1st April 2019Sarah Hall

It was NETBA’s twentieth birthday on March 11th and we had a splendid anniversary celebration at the Centre for Life.

Two senior students from Thorp Academy presented their recollections of past NETBAs, and Seven Stories provided an excellent array of titles from which our students could select prizes – recompense for all their hard work over the past four months.

Book Club was invited to present two of the shortlisted authors, Martin Griffin and Sally Nicholls, and we were proud to see a very large proportion of our own work on the six enormous posters displayed around the walls, one poster for each book. Authors take these home as souvenirs of the awards ceremony and we hope they’ll find our comments uplifting when they’re struggling with a particularly tricky bit of plot!

Martin Griffin made us laugh with a story from his student days involving a chainsaw, a Polaroid camera and a very attractive policewoman – a recount that didn’t make it into his book – while Lauren James astounded us with spreadsheets of calculations, which she revealed in answer to a question from the audience.  Evidently, her novel – a romantic, sci-fi thriller – was inspired by a calculation she was assigned as part of her physics degree! Relax – the story has nothing to do with maths and is really very readable!  Sally Nicholls talked at length about the history of women’s suffrage in Britain and left us with a fascinating fact. The habit of calling female teachers ‘Miss’ derives, apparently, from a law that prevented women from continuing to teach once they married!

There were raffle prizes to be won and prizes taped under seats; party food and tempting bargains at the book stall.  All in all, it was an evening for book lovers to indulge and a fitting way to celebrate a twentieth birthday!

North East Book Award

28th March 2019Sarah Hall

Library Matters – Libraries Matter

Do you have a high ZPD for your age?

Are you an enthusiastic and mature reader?

Do you enjoy talking about what you are reading?

Are you interested in meeting authors and getting your books autographed?

If so, would you like to help select this year’s winner of The North East Book Award?

We have about ten weeks to read and discuss all the shortlisted books before voting!  There are six books this year instead of the usual five because two of them are are short.  Obviously, there’s more to say – and disagree about – as the weeks progress and more people have read more of the books!  As we read, we post reviews and comments on the NEBA website, which is closely monitored by the shortlisted authors. Extracts are used for giant promotional posters that the authors like to take home as souvenirs.

When all participating schools have voted, we attend an evening prize giving at The Centre for Life.  We talk to the authors, get our books signed and generally have a good time. The ceremony will be held at the end of June.

Visit the NEBA website for more information – http://northeastbookaward.wordpress.com/

If you think you’d like to give this a go – and don’t forget that you need to write a bit about the books as well as reading them – find out more from Mrs Inverarity by Friday, April 5th.

Meetings are as follows:

Tuesdays after school until 4:30pm in Newminster library – this group includes KEVI members and is limited to 15 students.

Thursday lunchtimes in Chantry library at 12:30pm                                              

The books involved are:

The closest thing to flying    – Gill Lewis

A darkness of dragons  – S. A. Patrick

Girl in the window          – Penny Joelson

Boy 87                             – Ele Fountain

She wolf                          – Dan Smith

Seaglass                          – Eloise Williams    

and we’re looking forward to seeing you!

Mrs Inverarity   

Library Matters – Libraries Matter