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

#NMSski18 Tweets

There are two upcoming events for women’s cricket.

Women & Girls Cricket with Morpeth CC

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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 – [email protected]