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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:
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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
There are two upcoming events for women’s cricket.
On Monday evening, eleven students from Newminster and KEVI braved the weather and headed for the North East Teen Book Award ceremony at the Centre for Life in Newcastle.
They’d been reading and discussing the six shortlisted books since October and were looking forward to meeting the authors and discovering whether their personal favourite had won.
We all thought Paper Butterflies deserved to win. Even if it wasn’t our personal favourite, few of us will forget this compelling and cleverly structured story of an abused child let down by her father, her teachers and ultimately, America’s justice system.
In fact, obtaining justice was a common theme in this year’s shortlisted books. In Cell 7, the British legal system has been scrapped in favour of trial by TV reality show in which viewers decide who lives and who is eliminated. It’s the first of a trilogy, all of which are now available.
Berlin Love Song follows the fate of a Romani gypsy circus troupe and a member of the Hitler Youth during World War Two. It makes a fascinating and authentic read.
In Show Stopper, society is divided down the middle into Dregs – from whom everything, including dignity and self-determination, has been stripped and Pures – the ruling and privileged class. Gruesome reading!
Troublemakers explores the meaning of family and the influence of politics on an unusual family unit in contemporary London. It’s funny, thought provoking and intelligent.
Piglettes is a wickedly funny story featuring three overweight teenagers who deal with a public humiliation as pigs on Facebook by taking to the road and cycling to Paris. Their aim is to publicise the hypocrisy around self-image and promote home-made sausages by selling them along the way!
You can find out what we thought of these books on the NETBA website.
Extracts are selected from these reviews, made into posters and presented to the authors as souvenirs. This year, 29 of the 35 extracts selected by the organizer were from our school! We always have plenty to say!
Before the winner is announced, each author is introduced by a group of students, talks about their books and answers questions. This year, we were privileged to be asked to present two of the six shortlisted authors: Catherine Barter and her novel, Troublemakers and French author, Clémentine Beauvais with Piglettes.
Our students were able to get together for rehearsal only minutes before they were due on stage – but you can see how well they performed in these clips:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1egFTeNXfIXzH_g97ABRv2RYpMKB_wCNO
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jWLs72zUHvFXo40GYAe_LnRxMIxoq4k0
As usual everyone, including parents, had a brilliant time and came home with piles of autographed books!
NETBA is challenging for Key Stage 3 as it’s aimed at Y10 and involves a considerable amount of reading and discussion – and some writing. Sometimes the stories are complex and the topics controversial. It’s greatly to the credit of our younger students that they’re so keen to have a go!
If you’d like to get involved with next year’s NETBA or with the junior event, NEBA (which starts very soon) please get in touch with Mrs Inverarity.
Cambois Rowing Club will hold a junior learn to row course during the Easter holidays.
The course will be made up of 3 x 2 hour sessions on Monday 9, Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 April.
If anyone would like further information on the learn to row course if they could contact Cambois Rowing Club via e-mail at –Â [email protected]
As school was closed by the snow last week, our annual Book Fair will remain in school all week!
Please, please support us to reach our goal!
For every ÂŁ1 we spend, 60p comes back to school for spending directly on our children to help promote a lifelong love of reading!
Take a look at the books on sale by visiting the Fair after school on Tuesday until 4:15pm and check out the new specialist teenage case for our oldest students:
There is something for everyone!
Discount vouchers, which give your child 20% more book buying power at the Fair, can be purchased from https://shop.scholastic.co.uk, and the dedicated free helpline (office hours) is 0800 212281
Have a quick peep now at the books that will be on offer – many at discounted prices!
Children with the most original and ingenious, home-made book character costumes are eligible for a book prize from the Fair!
Together, we can make this Fair the best yet!
Winners from last year’s World Book Day
Your child can use their special WBD token to get ÂŁ1 off any book worth more than ÂŁ2.99
Your child can put a lot of effort into dressing up as a book character – and possibly win a prize – or dress down to suit their personality.
Some of last year’s brilliant winners:
Either way, please remember to bring a ÂŁ1 contribution to help send books to children in areas of the world which have none. These children cannot learn to read without a supply of good books!
You might be interested to know that publishers donate the books free of charge but it costs £2 to get each book to where it’s needed. Books travel by ship, air, truck, motorbike, camel…. and even on carts pulled by bullocks – whatever’s available!
School will be open as normal tomorrow, Monday 5 March.
Just a reminder that our annual Book Fair starts in a week’s time and will be held in the school library from Monday, 26 February to Friday 2 March.
On Tuesday 27 February, the Fair will stay open until 4:15pm to enable those of you who collect your children from school to view the books, if you’d like to. It would be lovely to see you!
All children will have the opportunity of visiting the Fair where they can purchase from an exciting range of books and items of stationery.
We strongly recommend a visit to the Scholastic website for a flavour of the books that will be on offer.
From here you can also purchase discount vouchers which are much safer than cash and give your child 20% more book buying power at the Fair.
The dedicated free helpline is 0800 212281.
60% of the total Fair takings comes back to school to be spent directly on our children in various different ways, so it’s worth supporting.
Last year we achieved our highest sales yet. This year, with your help, we might do even better!
