Harton Rockstars are 11th in England

21st November 2023G Booth

Once again, our Key Stage 2 pupils have taken part in the national Times Tables Rock Stars competition ‘England Rocks’. Our boys and girls have superseded their previous achievements and come 11th out of 4080 primary schools!! This is a masssive accomplishment and shows everyone’s dedication to learning their times tables.

Y6F came 27th out of 30,034 classes. Again, a massive achievement!

We are exceptional proud of all of pupils who took part and their amazing times tables knowledge. Superb results!

 

Half Millionaire

8th November 2023D Fawkes

Congratulations to our first Accelerated Reading Award Winner of 2023/2024.

Harry in Y6 has become our first Half Millionaire of the year. A fantastic achievement so early on into the academic year and we have no doubt he will be a Word Millionaire very soon.

Well done Harry!

.

 

Marvellous Myths

23rd October 2023N Trotter

Year 5 have completed a lot of work recently on Greek myths, particularly looking at Herakles and his twelve labours.

Each class was tasked with acting out one of Herakles’ labours. All groups worked together to produce a fantastic… and very dramatic performance!

Props were used and character’s lines were created by the children.

 

 

BHW in Year 6 – Nelson Mandela

23rd October 2023D Fawkes

Y6 have learned all about Nelson Mandela during Black History Week and wrote biographies about this key figure.

Nelson Mandela was a politician and an activist and he was a key figure in ending ‘apartheid’ (where there were laws to keep Black and White people separated) in South Africa.

The children learned all about Nelson’s beliefs that everyone should be treated equally and we discussed our own viewpoints on this and how we too think everyone should be treat equally.

We also learned about how Nelson went from being imprisoned for 27 years for campaigning and protesting for equal rights to becoming South Africa’s first Black president.

RAP Visit – South Shields Fire Station

17th October 2023D Fawkes

Y6 recently took part in the RAP workshop (Reducing Accidents at Play) at South Shields Fire Station.

The children met with firefighters who told them what to do in the case of a fire: who to telephone and how to keep yourself and everyone in your home as safe as possible.

We met with someone from Nexus who discussed how to safely get the Metro and access public transport.

We met with someone from Northern Power Grid who told us all about the dangers of electricity in our homes and outside in substations and how to keep ourselves safe around them.

We met with volunteers from RNLI who told us how to keep safe around water, including rivers and the sea.

We had a brilliant morning and learned lots to help keep us safe.

E-Safety Information – Among Us

4th October 2023L Forster

Among Us: fairly safe, or pretty sus? 👩‍🚀🚀 This scenario of spaceship crew members cooperating to complete tasks and uncover murderous alien imposters has garnered a sizeable and committed following with younger gamers 🎮

Though Among Us is presented in a (mainly) sanitised visual style, any children’s game which essentially foregrounds the concepts of deceit, betrayal and killing is always likely to cause some concerns. This week’s #WakeUpWednesday guide gets among it with Among Us.

Created in 2018 by a small indie studio that (at the time) had only four employees, Among Us has become one of the gaming world’s biggest breakout hits of recent years. In 2020, for example, it was the world’s most-downloaded mobile game. Its simplicity helped Among Us to resonate with younger players in particular: the game’s second largest audience slice is the 13–18 age bracket.

While the 7+ age rating, emphasis on teamwork and cartoonish, colourful graphics all suit a young fan-base, however, the game does carry more serious risks than betrayal by a team-mate or an untimely on-screen demise – with in-game purchases and possible contact from strangers on our #WakeUpWednesday guide’s list of hazards that trusted adults should bear in mind.

https://nationalcollege.com/

Crime and Punishment

3rd October 2023D Fawkes

This half term children in Y6 are learning all about crime and punishment and how it has changed over time, from the Roman era to today.

Last week we were so excited to have a visitor from Newcastle Castle.

We learned even more about crime and punishment, focusing closely on the Vikings. We got to dress up and take part in role play, acting out a case in court with a judge and jury. We were even lucky enough to handle some real artefacts and weapons used in punishments for crimes.

“The workshop was so interesting and I found it really fun to act out scenes” – Maizie W

“The artefacts were interesting to look at and touch and I was shocked at how they were used. The punishments were so unfair and brutal back then” – Ella G

Year 5 Rounding

27th September 2023G Booth

Year 5 have been rounding up to 6 digit numbers. We worked together to solve challenging word problems and reasoning questions. AJ explained, “You find the 100,000 column, and then look at the 10,000 column. It tells you if you need to round up or round down. So 546,500 would round down to 500,000.” All the children enjoyed rounding numbers up to 1,000,000.

Using dictionaries in Year 6

25th September 2023D Fawkes

We are reading Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo this half term in Y6.

When reading Chapter 4, the children discovered a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary. They spent a lesson identifying those words and then using the dictionary app on an iPad as well as dictionary books to find the definitions of words and then writing sentences of our own with them. The children also found antonyms and synonyms of each word.

In today’s world we know we can use technology to find a lot of information but we all recognised the importance of knowing how to use a dictionary book.

The children identified words such as ‘mellifluous‘, ‘impenetrable‘, ‘crescendo‘, ‘surreptitious‘.

We always want to improve on our vocabulary set and apply new words to our writing so we are looking forward to including such words in our future writing.