On Thursday 18th October, Peter J Murray came to GEMS. He told us many cool things including scary stories. He wanted us to call him ‘Pete’ and he has a wife called Kath. He used to be a Maths teacher. He also has two grandchildren. (Both of them are too young and so can’t read his books.) Peter has a son called Simon who illustrates his books.
On Tuesday October 23rd, Year 7 were lucky enough to go on a trip to Hylton Castle. We weren’t able to go onto the site due to extensive renovations taking place at the moment, however we were able to learn the history and get relatively close to the construction site.
On Thursday 6th September Year 6 were generously invited on a visit to the Great North Museum. When we arrived, we walked to the majestic, impressive building with the large flight of steps leading up to the door that we knew as the Hancock Museum. After waiting a few minutes on the soft green grass, we were allowed inside.
On Saturday 29th September, 20 pupils had the opportunity to go on a residential trip to the isle of Arran. Mr Stout and Mrs Lambeth drove a minivan each to Gretna Green after leaving school at 9:30 in the morning. Gretna Green, in the south of Scotland, where we stopped off for snacks, was the place where people ran off to in order to get married. On our short break, we had the chance to look around the centre and buy treats for the journey like Starbucks, Krispy Crème and Burger King.
Everyone's now safely back from our sponsored walk. Just a reminder that you can make donations to Children in Need at everydayhero.com.
I don't want to mention it but as Christmas approaches some of you may be thinking about doing some shopping! If you shop online you could support Gosforth East Middle School by using Easy Fundraising - it doesn't cost you a penny extra. You just click onto the website and then choose the retailer and they donate money to us. There is a video here which shows you how it works, and the link to our page is here. Some schools have managed to raise thousands of pounds which has helped fund many activities and resources in schools - let's see if we can too!
The North East Book Awards took place on Monday 18th June and seven of GEMS finest KS2 pupils took part in the awards ceremony. However, if you wanted to attend you had to pay a price… a price of not being able to watch England vs Tunisia.
On Tuesday 5th June, Press Club members had the privilege of making a trip to the BBC Headquarters in Newcastle. The trip lasted from 10:10 – 12:45, and it was BRILLIANT. We looked at some Gory Games from Horrible Histories and practiced taking the ‘guts’ out of a mummy in one minute, and succeeded! Then we went into a very large studio and in the screen in front of us we were standing on the Tyne Bridge! They had it switched to a ‘green screen’ and so anything that the camera saw that was green, it cut out. Then it got switched to a ‘blue screen’ and when somebody was covered with a blue blanket, they disappeared! That is, we found out, how the Invisibility Cloak works in the Harry Potter movies.
On Wednesday 27th of June, lots of GEMS pupils, either singing or playing instruments, went to the Academy to perform in front of parents. The Pyramid Concert is a concert (obviously) where the First, Middle and High Schools join together to show everyone their talent. They had been practising since the start of the term, losing some of their evenings or lunchtimes just to prepare to perform at that one show.
On Friday 8th June, Miss Thompson took 16 pupils to Chantry in Morpeth during lunch. This was for a ‘friendly’ literacy quiz with schools around Newcastle. It was held in Chantry Middle School’s hall.
There were loads of tables set out for each team which was made up of 4 pupils. The topics allowed the questions to be based upon a whole range of different books: forests, woods and trees, terrifying teachers, Pictionary and shops. The Headteacher read out the questions which could focus on the authors or the events, places and characters from different books.
During curriculum week, many different activities took place, revolving around the theme of ‘walls.’ We were given a timetable for the week and all year groups shared the same lessons. It was a chance to make more friends with the various year groups and people from your own year group, who weren’t our closest friends, as well as to explore the theme of walls in all of its variations.
Mrs Cheape is very excited this half term because she has received the fantastic news that 2 lucky students from GEMS, will be able to travel to France and visit the WW1 battle fields for 4 days.
As this opportunity sparked so much interest from Year 7 students (it is only open to Year 7 because they will be in Year 8 next year), Mrs Cheape decided to create a competition. Anybody who was interested had to create a piece of work about WW1 and write about why Mrs Cheape should pick them. As she could only pick two people, everybody worked with partners. Therefore, if their work was picked, they both got to go.
