GIBSIDE GOSSIP July 2016

PINK CLASS Pink class have been doing a lot of work outdoors this term. We had a great time at the outdoor and adventurous festival and continued the work when we got back to school. We were given a hedgehog that we named Harry. He was very sad as he didn’t have a house. Pink class went on the yard and built him a wonderful house made of sticks – fantastic team work, cooperation and communication!

LADYBIRDS & BUTTERFLIES All of the children at our Blaydon site have had fun playing and learning in the outdoor garden this term. As well as all the physical development opportunities it provides outdoor play is one of the main channels in Personal and Social development and Communica-tion.

GOLD CLASS The children in Gold Class have had a fantastic Summer term. They have all enjoyed lots of sporting events, the favourite one was the trip to Gibside during PE week where everyone had a go at the low ropes, den building and archery! They have also been busy baking muffins, learning about the oceans, completing scientific experiments and writing our own stories. Gold class have had a brilliant year, you have made your teachers very proud. Good luck to Kieran, Connor and Jay as they move up to Dryden in September!

GREEN CLASS We have had a lovely term exploring plants, seeds and bulbs. We had a go at planting our own in the garden and looked after them. We’re going to see how high they can grow!

At Burnthouse Lane, Whickham, NE16 5AT; Tel: 0191 4410123 and Shibdon Bank, Blaydon, NE21 5EZ; 0191 4335588

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BLUE CLASS

Everyone in blue class has had a fantastic year! We have developed new friendships and have particularly enjoyed our outdoor learning throughout the year, exploring lots of new environments. Everyone has worked so hard, and the staff who work in blue class are very proud of all of the achievements which have been made. We look for-ward to seeing the children continue to make great pro-gress next year!

BRONZE CLASS Bronze class have come together fantastically this year, and we have all made a lot of new friendships and worked very hard together. We have discovered a lot of stories together and shared some old favourites; we’ve even tak-en the opportunity to act lots of them out! The children have all had the oppor tunity to act as ambassadors for the school on our com-munity trips and a number of other events besides, and each and every one of them has been a fantastic repre-sentative of Gibside School, we couldn’t be prouder. Bronze class have made fantastic progress in all areas this year, and they themselves have a lot to be proud of. To celebrate our success we went to Adventure Valley and everyone had a fantastic day out

JADE CLASS

The children in Jade Class have loved our summer term! Our favourite topic has been ‘The Solar Sys-tem’. We learned about all the different planets and the movement of the sun and moon. Pupils learned about the features of the different planets, includ-ing how far away they are from Earth and how hot the planets are! We found out that Neptune is very cold! Pupils loved taking part in lots of sensory and craft activities too – including making our own plan-ets from Paper Machie. Well done Jade Class!

ORANGE CLASS

In Orange Class we have enjoyed a fantastic Summer term together exploring our learning in and out of the classroom. We especially love going on our curriculum visits, looking at plants and animals in our surround-ings. We’re looking forward to our new classes in Sep-

tember.

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BLACK CLASS

Black Class has had a great year together! We’ve learned lots of new things and made visits which link to our top-ics. We visited Saltwell Park during our science topic on plants and the Angel of the North for Geography. Anoth-er favourite was science week when we made an erupting volcano. The children have all worked very hard and black class staff are proud of all their progress.

PEACH CLASS

This term in art and cookery we have been focusing on the topic ‘On the Beach’ not only have we been creating foods for a beach picnic like sandwiches, pizza and tuna pasta but we have spent the term creating a beach sce-ne in art where we would like to have our picnic. We have learnt many signs along the way like sun, seas and beach. As well as the signs for the food we are eating.

All of the children in White Class have worked very hard this year to make the transition from Early Years into key stage 1. We have enjoyed lots of cook-ing, painting, singing and stories. The children have behaved fantastically on our many trips out on the minibus and are a credit to the school and their par-ents. All of the children have made progress across the board and some of them have overcome significant barriers to learning. We have had lots of fun together and the staff look forward to seeing the children make even more progress next year.

SILVER CLASS

Silver class have explored gardening this term as part of RE. We explored the story of the sower and the seed, the children loved planting their own flow-ers at school and then as part of home learning.

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RED CLASS

This term has been a great term for Red class. We have explored the topic of the sea and en-joyed the sensory story of Winnie Under The Sea. Lots of seaweed, sea and sand…….

We loved our trip to Australia on the magic carpet.

We had a great time pouring liquids with UV lights!

Yes a great time was had by all!

PURPLE CLASS The children in purple class have had a fantastic year! We have made many friends made lovely rela-tionships with one another. We have been busy bees and completed so much hard work! Together, we have been on many visits showing the public our fantastic manors and shown how well behaved the children at Gibside School are. A lovely bunch of boys and we know that they will all continue their hard work in their next class! Good Luck

YELLOW CLASS

Yellow and white class enjoyed a brilliant joint trip out to the Blue Reef Aquarium and Longsands beach. All of the children were really well behaved and enjoyed looking around the aquarium before having a picnic lunch and some chips and ketchup. After lunch we headed off to the beach. We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather. We played on the sand and plodged in the water and it was warm enough for some of us to enjoy an ice lolly!

THERAPY

This term has been a busy one for our Therapy team. Laura (OT) and Rachel (SALT) have been working hard alongside class teach-ers to review SCERTS targets, for those children currently on the SCERTS framework. We are pleased to say that all of the children whose targets have been reviewed have made great pro-gress! The Therapists have also been planning the implementation of Lego Therapy which should be starting in the new academic year so watch this space!

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New mini bus

We were absolutely delighted to receive a new 13 seater minibus from the Variety club this term. The brand new, fully adapted bus was was secured with sponsorship from the Bingo Association and the school only had to make a small contribution. It is amazing for us to have another mini bus in school as this enables us to increase the amount of sporting activities for our children and also increase the educational visits we can offer. Both of which help our children develop confidence and learn new skills.

We had a fantastic day last week when the bus was pre-sented to our school by Denise Welch, Ray Crawford (Chairman of Variety), Mike Baron (Chief Executive of the Bingo Association) and other members of their teams. All of our guests had a chance to meet our children and staff, have a tour of the school and spend valuable time in our classrooms. It was also great to see the local press (Chronicle) coverage and photos afterwards. Thank you once again to both the Variety Club and the Bingo associa-tion for your kindness and support for our school!

Abseil

In May a team of parents, staff and Friends of Gibside took on a terrifying challenge and abseiled from The Tees Transporter Bridge in Middles-brough. Together they raised an amazing £8,000, with money still coming in ! Well done to everyone

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SPORTS NEWS!

Some of the children recently took part in a Panathlon swimming competition and did brilliantly!!

Three boys from Year 5 and 6 took part in tri-golf at Kingsmeadow School where they came in first place!!

Message from Gibside School Governors;

Hi, we are Julie and Pat of the school governors and we will be keeping you up to date with what happens in our gover-nor meetings each term.

The meeting we had this term included a presentation by the school’s Link Inspector (Ann Muxworthy) of her school improvement report to governors. You’ll be pleased to know (but maybe not surprised) that she judged all areas of the school’s work to be outstanding. Judith did a report, which she does every term, updating us on the work of the school since the last meeting and we discussed this and asked questions. Governors have made lots of visits into school this term and they all presented brief reports. They also shared information from training courses they had attend-ed and discussed the minutes of committee meetings that had happened since the last meeting.

We approved several school policies and looked at infor-mation from the local Authority. We also discussed how our school might develop in the future and agreed we all want to ensure it remains an outstanding school. Finally we agreed on a date for our next full governing bod meeting which will be on Wednesday 2nd November.

If you have any questions or would like any more infor-mation on the work of the governing body, then you can contact either one of us through school.”

Message from Judith

You all should be very proud of your children this year. Haven’t they all worked so hard! It has been such a busy year. We had our science and maths weeks, book week and sports week as well as all our fantastic class assem-blies. Our FOGs team have continued to support our fundraising efforts and have been exceptionally success-ful. Our abseil event raised £8000 for our school and the summer fayre as well as being profitable was a great fun day out. The event last weekend at Lord Lawson school was also very well supported and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in the organi-sation of all these events.

I hope you all have a very good and safe summer and look forward to another successful year next year.

Judith Donovan

HOLIDAYS Summer - School Closes: Wednesday 20th July & reopens Tuesday 6th September Half Term – School closes Friday 21st October 2016 and reopens Monday 31st October 2016

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