The UKMT (the UK Maths Trust) is an organisation that puts on several different challenges to do with maths each year. Matthew and I went to Heaton Manor to compete in the Junior Team Maths Challenge. We teamed up with Finlay and Jonathan from the high school. They joined us because each team needs two members from Year 8 and two from Year 9
On the 7th of March Peter J Murray came to GEMS to talk to the year 5s and 6s. He talked a bit about the two books he had brought with him they were ‘BONEBRAKER’ and ‘MOONWHAILER.’ He read out an extract of both books to everyone and some children got dressed up and acted the scenes. The next day he brought both books in and children bought them and got bookmarks for free. Peter signed the books people bought and wrote a little message in them.
Once again, we have had our healthy school award renewed for a further 2 years, thanks to all the hard work put in by everyone at GEMS. We have a dedication to keeping our students fit and healthy, and the team who run Healthy Schools Newcastle spoke very highly of the programmes we have in place. These include the sports and fitness clubs, the various residentials, the focus on positive attitudes and self-esteem, our peer mentors training programme, our school nurse provision and our relationships education, to name but a few.
At the beginning of this school year, a group of students applied to be Sports Leaders. For this role, pupils were required to organise, run and hold sporting events both inside and out of school. Recently, Steph and Ben, who run the school’s Kick Serve club, gave us a lesson in how to umpire and successfully run a tennis tournament. On Thursday 16th March and Thursday 23rd March, the Sports Leaders went to The Northumberland Club to judge and help out at a Tony Blair Tennis Foundation with pupils from local schools.
On the 4th March some Year 8 students were involved in a mock trial which is where we went to a court room and role played a case. Those involved included Ben, Jonathan and Taibah as our magistrates, Amiee-Jayne, Noor as defence lawyers, Isabelle and Freya as prosecution lawyers, Tim as defendant, Ruth as defence witness 2, Katie as prosecution witness 1, Emily as prosecution witness 2 and James as legal adviser and usher. We all had a good time and worked really hard and we now know how the court and law system works in more detail. We look forward to similar opportunities in the future.
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In March a lucky group of Year 6 pupils got to go to the People’s Theatre to see an adaption of the book ‘Heaven Eyes’ by David Almond. It was performed by Théâtre Sans Frontières. The trip was to inspire us for a story writing competition with the title ‘The Journey’.
National Bird Box Week has been running for over 20 years. It takes place every year between 14th and 21st of February. St Valentine’s Day was chosen this year for the start of National Bird Box week as this is traditionally the time when birds find their mate and pair up for the new breeding season. The aim of Bird Box Week is to encourage people to put up bird boxes to help the breeding birds and so promote the conservation and diversity of wildlife. Did you know it is estimated that there are about 6 million nest boxes in UK gardens?
Two of our pupils were nominated for special awards...read our article to find out why.
On the 16th of March me (Sophie), Alannah, Ben and Hayden went to Mowden Hall School for a maths competition.
We met in the reception buzzing with excitement; we were ready. Piling into the taxi, we chatted about anything other than the competition. We were fine as we started the journey—we had a lot to talk about. But, as we neared Mowden Hall, we went silent. Tension was building. We had arrived.
School will be closed to pupils on Thursday 8th June due to the school being used as a Polling Station.
GEMS, yet again, saw the annual World Book Day celebration on Friday 3rd March 2017. Everyone came to school as their favourite book characters. There was a wide range of book characters from “Geek Girl” to “Harry Potter”. There was also a “favourite book competition” where pupils who took part found out the name of the teachers’ favourite books and whoever found the most would receive a prize.
