Black Gate

The penultimate week at GEMS is traditionally Curriculum Week when the timetable is collapsed and the year groups mixed so that a theme can be explored in a cross curricular and more flexible, and often more practical, way. This year’s theme was Community. After the tragic events in London and Manchester, it seemed particularly appropriate that we should be thinking about our own community and remembering what makes it so special, so strong and so precious.

But what is community? This is the view of two of our Year 6 boys Mark and Mahdi.

Community

Community is when you stand strong

When you back each other up

When you all work as a team

And work together as one.

Community is when you work together 

And get along with each other,

When you work as a team

But never doubt yourself. 

This is just a glimpse into two of the activities that ran on Community week...

Drama in the community  Some people were  selected to do drama and this is what they were getting up to…

We have been performing some scenes from the “Machine Gunners” and we have been doing everything from casting to designing our own sets. The Machine Gunners is a play and is set in World War 2, in the North East of England and takes place in a fictional place called Garmouth. It is about five children (Chas, Cem, Audrey, Clogger and Nicky) who find a machine gun and try to hide it. However, the police discover that the machine gun is missing and try to track it down. Later on they encounter a German pilot called Rudi, who has crashed his plane and is injured, ill and confused, at first, they weren’t very friendly but over time they bonded and became really close.

Personally, I enjoyed Curriculum week, it is nice to change the timetable once in a while and I can’t wait to do another “not-involving-the-timetable-week” again soon. But unfortunately, for now we have to wait and work.

By Tasha (5SL)

NUFC Visit Every day this week, several groups went to St James Park as a part of our Curriculum Week where the topic is ‘our community’. So the students that went got a tour of the stadium and learned things about the ground.

The stadium is a large part of our community, it is a facility that many of us use, often, to celebrate our love of Newcastle United together. The team and stadium is like a church as people are so passionate about it they give up their weekends to go, people get together, sing and do all of these things like a family. 

On this trip, students got a one-of-a-kind tour of the stadium. Everyone we interviewed said it was special to them as they live in the city and felt like they should learn more about what we have.  For instance, Jack said, “the stadium is a large part of our community and is very important to me as I am supporter. We got a tour of the stadium the club helps the community by bringing people together and by doing lots of charity work. I was very glad to be able to go. ”

Everyone who went on the tour really enjoyed it and recommend  for others to go.

The edited high-lights... Our musical students went out into the community and, at Trinity Church, performed songs from the war to some of our older community members; a group went on the Grand Tour of Newcastle, taking in the many famous buildings and landmarks; the history of the Hoppings was explored by one group following a visit to an exhibition at the Discovery museum; our cooking whizzes got in touch with our culinary heritage and made ‘Singing Hinnies’; our tireless adventurers explored the Ouseburn Trail; detectives went on a mission to track down the location of old photographs of Gosforth and document the change or to crack the clues in the local treasure hunt; Gosforth Central Park was the location for cross curricula activities and an interesting exploration of the war memorial located in the park.

The Grand Tour of Newcastle

Jesmond Dene

Poetry in the Park

Discovering the Hoppings