Please click here to see a letter from Paul Carvin, Chair The Board of Directors about the appointment of Headteachers at Chantry, Newminster and KEVI.

Thanks to your tremendous support and generosity, our annual Book Fair was a great success – despite the enforced holiday in the middle!

We took £1,953 which raised a magnificent £1,172 in commission to spend on books for prizes and to support English lessons.

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 Ellen Davison, Iona Lane and Anna Jakubovics who gave up lots of lunchtimes to staple together more than 500 letters and Fair fliers publicising our Fair;

Will Cottiss, Ellen, Iona and Anna who provided lots of support at break times during Fair Week and Ellen and Anna who helped distribute orders and tidy up on the last day.

There was a lot to do and we couldn’t have done it without you!

Celebrating World Book Day

We collected £221.07 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 truly staggering and a real pleasure to witness!  The costumes were tremendous – do take a look at the pictures the news story.

If you don’t have time, here are just a few of the 20 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 Iona, Anna, Will in Y7 and Ellen in Y8 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 heroes!

We are looking to recruit new directors onto The Three Rivers Learning Trust.

Click here to find out more.

Recruitment information can be found here.

We held our annual British Science Week day on March 9th this year.

British Science Week (BSW) is a national  ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths – featuring fascinating, entertaining and engaging events and activities across the UK for people of all ages.

British Science Week is a great opportunity to get enthused about science. The theme this year is exploration and discovery. It’s about encouraging everyone to explore science in the world around them, thinking about everyday discoveries and how they affect our lives.

On the day, pupils from all year groups took part in 5 workshops and had the opportunity to build things, solve mysteries, watch demonstrations, ask questions and learn a lot!

BSW 2018 saw 25 workshops on offer from a range of external partners. Thank you to all of them for coming in to make the day such as success.To give you a flavour of the creativity, inspiration and fun that British Science Week brought to our school take a look at our photo gallery by clicking ‘continue reading’.

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 10 weeks to read and discuss all 5 shortlisted books before voting!  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. (You can see some outside Chantry library.)

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 in 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 Thursday, March 29^th.

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 Polar Bear Explorers’ Club –  Alex Bell
• Sky Chasers                                –  Emma Carroll
• Kick                                              –  Mitch Johnson
• A Place Called Perfect               –  Helena Duggan
• 1,000 Year-Old-Boy                    –  Ross Welford

and we’re looking forward to seeing you!

Mrs Inverarity

All Stars cricket is a programme for 6-11 year olds, running at Ulgham Village. See image for more details.

A record number of students put in huge amounts of effort to create their book characters and make this day special.

Here are just a few:

With so many great ideas, selecting winners was very difficult. Here are just a few with the prizes they have chosen:

Newminster Middle School will be inspected by Ofsted on Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 March.

It would be much appreciated if, as requested by Mark Evans, the Lead Inspector, parents of children at Newminster Middle School could find time to access Parent View online and answer the questions asked.

The inspection team will take note of the number of responses made, so the more parents that complete Parent View the better for our school.

Click to visit the Parent View website.

Click here to see the letter to parents from Ofsted.

Click here to see an Inspection Guide for Parents.

Ofsted would also like to hear the views of Students. You can do this by completing an online pupil questionnaire.

Your views are really important to Ofsted and, will help inspectors understand your experience of school. The questionnaire will close at 11am on 13 March, to give the inspection team time to look at the results. The questionnaires work in Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 11, and on mobiles and tablets when you copy and paste the link into the browser.

It does not ask for your name, so you will not be identified from the responses you make.

Your continued support is much appreciated.

Mrs Elizabeth Kinninment
Head of School

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