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.
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.
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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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!
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
Thanks to your support and generosity, our annual Book Fair took £2,031.
This has raised £1,219 in commission, which will be spent on books to support English lessons and book prizes for a variety of literary challenges.
Once again, a big “THANK YOU”!
Everyone is involved in making our Fairs a success: our customers (of course!) but also our student Fair Makers.
A BIG BIG “THANK YOU” to Chloe C and Tallula P in Y7 who gave up lots of lunchtimes to staple together more than 500 letters and Fair fliers publicising our Fair
and to Eva MacD and Chloe S in Y6, who provided lots of support every break time during Fair Week and helped to set up the Fair, distribute orders and tidy up on the last day.
There was a great deal to do and we simply couldn’t have done it without you!
Celebrating World Book Day
We collected £300 to support the work of Book Aid International in getting books to children in parts of the world that have none. Thank you to all those who supported this worthwhile charity which makes it possible for children in desperate need to learn to read, the first step towards helping themselves out of poverty.
The number of students spending the day in character this World Book Day was astonishing and a real pleasure to witness! The costumes were tremendous, making the job of judging extremely difficult. Just take a look at the prize-winners!
Thank you to everyone who dressed up, whether or not you made your own costume. Your efforts contributed to making World Book Day special – and that’s what it’s all about!
Enormous thanks to Eva Mac in 6P and Chloe S in 6B for patiently naming more than 500 World Book Day tokens so everyone could be sure of getting one in time for our Book Fair. You really are heroines!





















