Scarlett and Winnie in Year 7 completed the Great North Swim this weekend on Windermere – the biggest open air swimming event in the whole of the UK. What a fantastic achievement and evidence to us all that ‘there is more in us than we know’.

Great work Winnie and Scarlett.

Last term in Spanish, Year 8 students worked hard to produce a final product which celebrated and culminated their learning of vocabulary around free-time and holidays.

As you know last term, as part of our Crew Day, students in G29 carried out fundraising for Toilet Twinning. This was connected to their learning from their expedition “Staying Alive” which included study of access to clean water.

This is a brilliant example of the 3-dimensional nature of our curriculum. We ask students to produce beautiful work, so that they develop their character and as a consequence see academic success.

The study of separating mixtures is part of the national curriculum. Studying this through expeditions brings this learning to life. Our students carried out practical investigations into separating mixtures, and learned about the need to filter and treat water from an expert in sewage treatment. Importantly, they also read a text about two children in rural Kenya, whose lives were markedly different due to the level of access to potable water. This was the driver for our Crew day: helping students to get a visceral insight into the daily experience of some children, asking them to show resilience, to support each other as a Crew whilst raising funds to make a difference.

Our aim for the day was to raise enough money to support one toilet block being installed in a place of need.

We are delighted to announce that, with your support, we have smashed that target!

Students raised a total of £1269 which has enabled us to twin our toilets with four sets of toilet blocks in schools in Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania – one set for each Crew.

Thank you so much for your support, it is so important in helping our students see that they are important, that their work is truly important and has global reach.

Olivia in G29 has been enjoying our current expedition ‘Hold Back The River’ so much that she has been conscientiously looking for links to our guiding question, ‘How does water shape our world?’, everywhere and producing extended study that has not been set for her or requested. Olivia watched a film Avatar, The Way of Water and was so inspired by the water speech in that film that she then wrote her own poem. Olivia’s class 2 crew all agreed that both the speech from the film and Olivia’s own poem were examples of beautiful work linking so well with our expedition that we should share on our website.
Enjoy, and well done Olivia.

Avatar, The Way of Water Speech:
The way of water has no beginning and no end.
The sea is around you and in you.
The sea is your home before your birth and after your death
Our hearts beat in the womb of the world.
Our breath burns in the shadows of the deep.
The sea gives and the sea takes.
Water connects all things.
Life to death.
Darkness to light.

Olivia’s poem inspired by the speech:
Water runs through our veins cleansing the body and soul.
It is around and in us.
The blessing brings us the joy of life, family, friends.
Our hearts beat in unison with the life around us
as our passion burns within the deep ocean of life.
Water is our family before and after life.
It connects us all.
It’s our guardian and home.
Water is our world
We have one world and one chance to save it.

Grace has completed a 6-week course and assessment and has now qualified as a mentor at Stepney Banks Stable. This enables her to support younger riders in the arena and guide them round during lessons. She is also now able to prep ponies for lessons and look after them after lessons. Fantastic work Grace!

Ben spent last weekend at Live Theatre being directed by Robson Green for a television performance. It looks like we have a future star in our ranks. Great work Ben, what a fabulous experience. More information and photographs can be found here:

https://www.culturednortheast.co.uk/2023/05/14/robson-greens-weekend-workshop-at-live-theatre/

Crew Frank are proud to announce that the total raised from our 7.1 Mile Sponsored Walk was £515.62. We are delighted to kick off our support for our chosen charity, The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, with such a fantastic contribution. We were super proud to be able to officially hand over a giant cheque that was designed for us by Ken Dobson of Studio Stunt Double and then printed by Adam Goodwin of Whittle Print. A huge thanks from us to both gentlemen who did this completely free of charge to support our school as we support many different charities. Unfortunately we had two of our Crew who were absent from school when Liz Luff came in to receive the cheque so missed out on seeing the cheque being handed over but we will be making sure they are in on future opportunities as we have lots of ideas for fundraising in the time ahead of us for what we feel is such an amazing charity that does fantastic work. Liz told us that Sir Bobby would be so proud to have us all on his team and would have loved the fact that we ‘went the extra mile’ when completing our walk (our original goal was 6 miles) as that was something he always tried to do.

Olivia produced this stunning artwork on her iPad using the sketchbook app. She started out curious if she could represent the unusual colour of her eyes and then continued to match her skin tones and hair colour with some beautiful strokes of the digital brush. She has then gone on to do some more images of her family too. Amazing work Olivia.

Felling Magpies have done it again, winning the league with a game in hand after this week’s 11-1 win against Prudhoe. Connor scored two goals and was nominated as man of the match by the opposing team. Lewis had a few great shots but the keeper made some fantastic saves to keep him out. Great work boys!

Winnie made the ‘Swim England Regional Championships’ this weekend. Winnie keeps on getting better and better with some new personal bests in the pool. Great work Winnie.

In our lunchtime club: ‘French Arts and Crafts; the students have gone through the alphabet in French and made salt dough figurines for something that begins with each letter.

Through A to Z they created animals, items of furniture, places and things. Then, with the help of an online dictionary and Señorita/ Mademoiselle Quested they have written facts about each thing in French.

The students have painted each with acrylic and have displayed them to present their beautiful work! Très bon travail!