Ian from Venture Stream

30th November 2023L Forster

To link with our website creation unit, Ian Ferguson, a SEO from Venture Stream, came into to teach the children in year 6 about why and how websites are made in the real world.

He explained the different roles of website creation and how to increase traffic to their websites – including use of social media, paid advertisements and email marketing. He had the children plan different ways in which they could promote their website and get more people to visit it.

To end he demonstrated the use of A.I. (artificial intelligence) to help create content from text to images. The children were taught to use A.I. to inspire writing and not just copy it. They took several ideas from the children to make a brand new image using A.I.

Year 5&6 STEM Week Competition Day!

19th June 2023L Forster

After a week of work, the children have competed in their STEM week competition. They delivered their presentations to a panel of judges – including the Economic Inclusion and Career Development Coordinator for South Tyneside, a representative from the National Centre for Computing Education and the deputy head, Mr Donnelly. The children came back from presentations full of energy and enthusiasm. Their ideas got feedback such as ‘that’ll be tough to top’ and ‘this could work in the school yard to create energy’.

They have also took part in 3 robot games – which involved running their code to complete as many tasks as possible to score the highest amount of points. There have been some jumping with excitement and some hands covering faces in disappointment – but with some amendments and improvements, fun was had by all.

The semi-finals of the robot game took place in the afternoon (after an impromptu quarter finals because of a 7-way tie for 4th place), with the 6 top scoring teams competing in a knock out. The top 3 teams went through to the finals to compete for the robot game trophy.

To end the day, the children enjoyed the trophy ceremony. Each of the winning teams received a trophy and were celebrated by their peers in the sports hall.

The winners were:

Robot Design – Brick-otatoes (6F)

Core Values – Game Changers (6T)

Innovation Project – Brainiacs (6A)

Judges’ Award – Super Septuplets (6A)

Robot Game – Rotten Robots (6T)

Champions Awards (and overall winner of the week) – Energetic Energy (5L)

Based on the output of work, dedication to coding and overall enthusiasm from the children this week, the staff would like to think that STEM week was a roaring success!

 

Week 7- History Club

12th May 2023L Moore

This week in History club, we talked about the River Tyne and discovered why it has been significant over time. We found out about shipbuilding on Tyneside and the Jarrow Crusade. We listened to the ‘Last Ship’ by Sting and then made our ships!

Lego League Nationals 2022-23

5th May 2023R Errington

The Harton Primary Puzzlers visited Harrogate Convention Centre on 22nd April for the 2022-23 First Lego League UK and Ireland national tournament. The theme this year was Superpowered and was centered around finding efficient ways to generate, store and transport energy. The Puzzlers took their Skipatron 5000 working prototype along, and had queues of children and adults waiting to have a turn! They were interviewed by TV presenter, Maddie Moate, who even had a turn and came second on the leaderboard after Mrs Ratcliffe!

During the robot game, the team scored their highest score of 245! Commentators noted how efficient the team were throughout the game. Maizie was even invited to join the commentators to discuss the team’s strategy for completing the missions.

Out of the 69 teams from across the UK and Ireland, The Puzzlers emerged as the top ranked team from the North East of England, securing an overall position of 15th place, based on: their innovation idea and presentation; display of core values throughout the day; and their score in the robot competition. They were also in second place for a special judge’s award as well as being in the top 20 for their innovation project and core values.

We are all so proud of Jacob, Ella, Seamus, Mia, Darcie, Maizie, Max and Ellis for being absolute superstars throughout the day. They were a true testament to Harton Primary School.

https://youtu.be/ayad4gm0LMA

Town Hall Visit

5th May 2023S Whitfield

Year Three student council members had the opportunity to visit the town hall. We learned about democracy and sat in on an election hustings where candidates tried to convince us to vote for them. We discussed the impact our votes would have on the local community- for example one candidate said they would listen to all constituents and advocate for them. One candidate wanted to build a new swimming pool! After this we voted, waited as the votes were counted and welcomed the new prime minister of Staryland! We even met the mayor and had our picture taken with her. It was a great morning and we now have a much better understanding of democracy and the impact this has on our community.

Lego League Regionals 2022-23

3rd February 2023L Forster

The Harton Primary Puzzlers attended The Word for their regional Lego League competition – going up against other schools (both primary and secondary) from South Tyneside, Teesside and Durham.

The children took part in 3 robot games, a team work task and delivered a presentation to share their innovation idea to a panel of judges.

Their project was praised by the judges as being incredible, with little to no improvement they could suggest. Our innovation project was the ‘Skipatron 5000’ – a skipping rope that generates electricity, allowing us to use the kinetic energy of the children on a school yard to charge a device, and take pressure off the National Grid. We devised and developed this product with the help of Suez TeesValley, Equinor, Skipping School and SeaJacks.

We used our prototype – built with the help of our friend Danny, from SeaJacks – to hold a skipping competition in the pit. The person with the highest score won a bag of Skips. Children from every other team attending had a go. Even Mrs Ratcliffe joined in.

The robot games were tense, but enjoyable. The 2 robot teams worked very hard to start the robot in the correct place every time, in order to hit the mission in the correct place.

After lunch, the children were told they were one of the top 4 teams in the robot game, and would have 2 more attempts to make it to the finals. With a score of 195, they progressed to the finals – another 3 runs to try and score the highest amount of points to win.

Some children were not impressed with the teachers’ enthusiasm.

Showing that it is not all about winning, after their last game the children (lead by Jacob) asked the judges to wait before calculating their score to walk around the table and shake the hands of the opposing team – showing incredible sportsmanship, teamwork and character. In the finals, the children repeated their high score of 195, but were just beaten with 205 points from the opposing team (the highest score of the day).

The day ended with the award ceremony – and taking into account the Core Values, the presentation and the robot game – the Harton Primary Puzzlers were awarded the Championship trophy!

They will once again proudly represent South Tyneside in the national competition in Harrogate in April.

Year 3 Visit to St Lawrences’ Church

25th November 2022J Devlin

Announcement: Year 3 will be taking part in Christmas Advent activities at St Lawrences’ Church next week. 3B are going Tuesday afternoon, 3W on Thursday and 3P on Friday. Please let us know if your child has an appointment that day or are unable to take part for any reason.
Thanks,
Year-3

Harton Primary Mini-Police

21st July 2022C Allen

Our wonderful Year 5 mini-police were nominated for The Shining Stars Award at the Citizens in Policing Awards 2022 which were held at The Sage. Joseph and Maxwell attended the awards to represent all of our mini-police. It was a great night and the boys were presented with a goody bag each and met lots of important people, including the High Sheriffs of Tyne and Wear. They were temporarily knighted by one of them and held the title ‘Sir’ for 24 hours. The boys brought back certificates to present to the other mini-police. All of the mini-police have done a great job this year and we are very proud of them.