This morning (Thursday 31st February), the Year Sevens and Eights were given an assembly on mental health. Although many people don’t want to talk about it, mental health is a very serious issue that affects many more people than we think, and it is very important to discuss it. A lady called Danielle delivered the assembly and informed us about a website called Kooth.
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Four students from each year group (including me!) were chosen to go to the Apple store on Tuesday 22nd January. We were all picked by our ICT teacher because of our work in computing lessons since September.
We travelled by metro to Eldon Square and arrived back to school for lunch at 12:30pm. One of the staff from the shop gave each of us a new iPad, Apple pen and headphones (BEATS!) to use while learning about three of their apps in more detail: GarageBand, Procreate and Clip.
On 15th January a small group of our year 7s and 8s went to Temple Parks, South Shields to take part in a Cross Country competition.
On the 1st February some Year Fives were chosen to represent the school by playing basketball.
We played all day and it was very enjoyable. We went on a mini –bus and came back on one. This event took place at the new Newcastle Eagles training and matches centre. It was huge and lots of schools went there. Our school had 2 teams, mine and Emma’s team were, Dan, Isaac, Olivia, Theo, and Sam. The other team included, Owen, Archie, Amelia, Lola, Annabel, Conner and Abdul (but he was sick so he didn’t come.) Both of our teams played around 8 or 9 games, and luckily one of our teams got into the semi-finals.
On the 22nd of January, a group of Year 8 musicians went to the Academy for a transition day. In the morning, the Year 8s were split into three groups and went to practise a song. These songs were Rolling in the Deep, Hound Dog and Mustang Sally. Once they had practised, they performed to the rest of the year 8s.
On a Saturday in March, our school will be competing in an event called the Mock Trial. Nine students (including me) are busy preparing for this event. We all have different roles, for example I am a prosecution lawyer. We will attend court on that Saturday and act out a real situation that may occur.
Having been given the case and our roles, we are now devising what we will say. Seeing as I am a prosecution lawyer, I have started to think of questions to ask the defendant/defence witnesses. As it is a competition, our prosecution lawyers and other prosecution roles are trying to achieve the verdict of ‘guilty’. They are also being scored out of 10 each time they ask questions or speak. They will be against another school’s defence lawyers. Then our defence lawyers and other defence roles will compete against the opposing school’s prosecution team, in a bid to get the verdict of ‘not guilty’ and get some more good scores.
On four specific dates, all four Year 6 classes paid a visit to the fabulous Live Tales. In the heart of Newcastle city centre, we journeyed along the Quayside and turned into a small alleyway that led to a building. That building was Live Tales, and there we were greeted by spectacular friendly staff. We were led upstairs, and there the magic began. After some fun & games, we all made up the beginning of a story together. 6NG’s was hilariously funny – it was about a purple-skinned fire demon named Craig who lived in a candy land on Pluto with his pet duck-faced dog named Patricia!
On Wednesday 6th February some lucky children from 5.1 and 5.2 got to go to the Maths Festival at the Centre For Life. There were six activities to do. The pirates, enigma coding, murder mystery then lunch and then we went on the 4D motion ride, did a 600 year old puzzle and space navigation. The pirates taught us about ratio and coordinates, enigma coding taught us about Alan Turning and his code, the murder mystery was about coordinates, the puzzle was about strategy, and space navigation was about differences and navigating. They ranged from hard to easy. The hardest by far was the pirates! You may have noticed that I said that we went on the 4D motion ride, well yes, it wasn’t all maths. The 4D motion ride was a twisty turny ride all over space. It was amazingly good fun and everyone really enjoyed the whole day.
On the morning of Wednesday 16th January Paul Hopper came to our school and held an assembly about peace and what peace really means. He is a physics teacher and a close friend of GEMS. Also, he talked about an important event that will take place at our school at the beginning of April...The Chain of Peace. The theme of the event is clearly peace and there will be sweet harmonies all about peace, crazy amazing dances and time to show of your performance arts and creative talent. If you want to take part in this exciting event then you will need to go and see Mrs Cheape and show the school what you can do.
On Wednesday 6th February, two ladies came to school and held an assembly for GEMS pupils about sepsis, a topic rarely discussed. It was intended not to be scary but to be informative and to be the forerunner to a fundraiser, which should be looked out for soon.
