On the 4th and 5th of February Year 5 went to Northern to play a lot of squash. Year 5 were very excited for Tuesday because everyone wanted to win trophies. It was an inter class competition! First it was 5EA boys VS 5AW boys. Then it was 5EA girls VS 5AW girls. Then 5SL boys VS 5ER boys. After that, each class played each class and in the end 5ER were in 4th place, 5EA were in 3rd place, 5AW were very close to 1st place because they were behind by only 1 point and the champions were 5SL.

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 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 Wednesday 6^th 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.

 

 

On Tuesday 13th November the lucky children of the Japanese Club were taken by Mr Dowman, Mrs Bhatt, and Mr Douglas to the Vue Cinema Gateshead, to watch a brand-new Japanese film: Mary and the Witch’s Flower. The film was meant to be in Japanese with English subtitles but it turned out just to be in standard English with no subtitles.

From Friday 2nd November to Monday 5th November, Joshua and Luke went on a battlefields tour programme to France and Belgium, in order to learn more about what happened in the Great War, one hundred years ago. During this visit, they studied the battles in Ypres (Belgium) and Somme (France).