The colour run event, organised by Mrs Cheape, took place on Friday the 23 of March. It was a 30 minute run where other people throw powder at you. The run was organised to raise money for Sport Relief. Lesson 4, the Year 5s ran and Year 6 threw powder at them, then they swapped round. Lesson 5, Year 7s ran and Year 8s threw then switched. The powder colours used were: yellow, pink, blue, green and purple.
To celebrate all the marvellous mums, GEMS had a mother’s day afternoon tea with sons and daughters welcome too. For all the cake lovers (including me!) you got some cake, scones, tea/coffee and sandwiches to enjoy.
In mid February on Wednesday there was a Valentine’s disco. There was a DJ and live bands by year 5, 6, 7 and 8- some of our talented students were playing their own music. It was AMAZING there were stalls with food, drinks and sweets. Everyone was dressed to impress and everyone danced the night away … there were some sore feet the next morning. The hall was decked out with hearts and Chinese new year decorations to put everyone in the mood for love!
The girls Under 13 squash team, Evie , Zoe , Kate and Ava from GEMS and Grace and Libby from GCMS , played Royal Grammar School at Northumberland Tennis Club and won which meant that they were then through to the national finals. They won every game that they played which gave them a lot of confidence for the next round of matches. On Monday 19th March, they played in the finals which were in Nottingham. The team stayed overnight and had lots of fun. They went to bed at 10pm and had to get up at 6am so there were some sleepy faces at breakfast. Each member of the team played one or two matches and only three were lost. This was a brilliant achievement as their opponents were generally 13 year olds and Kate noted how tall they were compared to her diminutive 4’ 6”! In a ceremony at the end of the competition the team received a trophy for the school and medals for each team member. Ava and Kate train everyday so this effort and dedication has certainly payed off. The team had left Newcastle hopeful and returned delighted if a bit unwell after too many celebratory sweets! Well done to the team and to coach Richard Vitty.
By Ava and Kate, 5ER
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The Newcastle SUMDOG maths competition has just finished, and here are the winners. All top ten spots went to GEMS' pupils! Jeffrey is City champion, having got 973 out of 1000 questions correct in just one week. Well done to all our winners for a great achievement.
On Tuesday 16th January, the six of us, (the Guide Dogs for the Blind-MEAMSH Key Group) got the chance to go back to the guide dog centre in Four Lane Ends. This time, we got to witness a guide dog in training. We met 5 of their guide dogs – some were professional guide dogs, ready to meet their companions.
Two of our boys from Year 8 recently had an amazing opportunity to experience university life during a day and a half experience run by Newcastle University. Murphy and Conner joined another 150 pupils for a whole range of activities among which were a campus challenge, making a nest for a Dodo, learning about heart disease and taking measurements of their own heart beat, computing activities including connecting buildings to different servers, and activities based on the World Wars.
On Thursday 11th, all year sevens went to the hall and experienced a drug workshop. As we are getting older, we need to be aware of risks and potential situations that we may get into. Most importantly, we need to be aware what to do in those situations.
Children from Years 5, 7 and 8 all went to the Centre for Life to learn about maths.
On the 14th January, the Year 6 girls went on a trip to an historic place called the Victoria Tunnels. The tunnels might not be particularly “well known” but it has been part of Newcastle for nearly 200 years! Part of its 200 year service has been for “coal transportation” from a colliery to the River Tyne (The advantage of that was that the colliery could deliver coal to the other side of Newcastle cheaper) and it served as “The Safest place in Newcastle” as it was Newcastle’s Air Raid shelter in World War 2 (did you know when it was an air raid shelter, the original plan was for it to shelter 9000 people, but only 7000 people went to the shelter!)
On Monday the 13th of January, year 6 boys went to the metro centre to watch “Early Man”. There was a very expectant air because lots of us had seen Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run or Shaun the Sheep so we had high standards for the film to meet. We endured the long metro trip to the station and boarded another train to the metro centre. There were some very mixed opinions about the film, mostly negative, but we encountered many different characters, such as Hognob, Dug and many, many more. At the end we had to fill in a form to show which character we liked most, which bit we liked most and various other things.
Well done to our best French spellers of the week. These are the top ten students in the French Spelling Bee competition. Keep up the good work!
