The year’s Picnic in the Park takes places on Sunday 16th July.

For the past few months, Chantry and Newminster have had the pleasure of hosting Ruth Hedley in their MFL departments.

“As a School Direct Languages Trainee, I spent my long placement teaching French (and a little German!) across both middle school​s​ in Y6-8.

Having spent my short placement in a High School, adapting to the pace of working with younger learners was one of the biggest challenges I faced. The initial experience of KS2 language delivery, and transition into the KS3 framework, was invaluable in terms of my appreciation of the challenges involved in striving for consistency across the key stages. Another beneficial aspect of this placement – and one new to me, despite having worked in schools for many years – was the experience of working within a Trust, and across two schools.

Of course, the highlights of my placement have been all about the students, and I remain impressed by the positive attitudes and ‘have a go’ approach to learning by so many pupils. Much of my training has focused on group work and encouraging the students to create a supportive atmosphere. I can confidently say that all of my classes demonstrated some really wonderful collaborative skills, producing thoughtful work and reflections. Très bien fait! It was also rewarding for me personally to use my knowledge of the Swedish language to deliver DLE sessions to very enthusiastic Year 7 students – many of whom surprised themselves with the accuracy of their pronunciation. There are, in fact, many similarities between Northumbrian/Geordie and Swedish! Keep it up! A big thank you to everyone involved for making my experience at Chantry and Newminster so rewarding. Hejdå!”

We wish Ruth the best of luck ​with the rest of her training and continued success as a​n​ NQT this September.

Au revoir et bonne chance.

The only local interschool competition that gives children who’ve always loved to read, a chance to display their knowledge and win prizes for it!

A record twenty-nine teams of students and two teams of staff from Tyne and Wear and Northumberland took part in this year’s Mini Lit Quiz, which is written and produced ‘in house.’ Our Quiz is modelled on the Kids Lit Quiz (UK) with both individual and team prizes, but has five rounds instead of ten and its own unique style. Each round of ten questions follows a particular literary theme but, unlike the KLQ, there is also a Pictionary round featuring picture clues and between-round elimination competitions for cash prizes.

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The sun shone down on the Key Stage Two students today as they enjoyed a variety of workshops to investigate how we can stay healthy and happy. This included trying out smoothies to keep us healthy, learnt how playing the djembe drums as a group helped our social skills, participated in zumba and hoopstarz to build up our physical wellbeing and made glitter jars to help our mental wellbeing.

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On Monday 5th June KS2 pupils at Newminster and Chantry Middles Schools are to be treated to a performance by the Ned Corvan Shadow Troupe.

Ned Corvan was the first professional North East singer/songwriter and music hall star.

Here is a taster of the show:

We’ve partnered with Go Raise – a brilliant and effortless way to raise money for our school.

Simply shop as usual with all your favourite retailers and, as a thank you, they will donate a percentage of the amount you spend to us at no extra cost to you!

So whenever you buy anything online – from the weekly grocery shop to renewing insurance or booking a holiday – you could help us raise £1000s in additional free funding this year.

Simply sign up to support us before you shop.

How it works:

• Sign up to support us at https://www.goraise.co.uk/newminster-middle-school
• Click through to shop with your favourite retailers – there are over 3,000 to choose from including M&S, John Lewis, Expedia, Boots, Sports Direct, Argos and more.
• When you make a purchase, a donation is generated and Go Raise will pass this on to us.