Hoops4Health tournament 2023

17th March 2023L Forster

40 children from year 5 took part in the Hoops4Health tournament at the Vertu Arena with the Newcastle Eagles.

Playing in 4 different group stages, the children had lots of fun playing against the others schools in South Tyneside.

After lunch, 2 of the Harton teams had to play against each other in the first of the knockout stages. Harton 1 won with a single basket to move onto the quarter finals – against Stanhope Primary School.

The children fought with everything they had and halted Stanhope from scoring a single basket – resulting in a penalty shoot out. Ria and Harley were chosen to take the shots for Harton.

With girls first, both Ria and the Stanhope playing missed theirs – followed by a miss from the Stanhope boy. Leaving the pressure to rest upon Harley’s shoulders. The ball went up, with a smooth backspin, hitting the back of the rim and dropping into the basket. The 39 other children ran onto the court, cheering Harley’s name – as the team progressed onto the semi-finals, which take place during the Eagles game on the 17th of March.

WORLD BOOK DAY 2023

3rd March 2023D Fawkes

World Book Day 2023

We have loved to see the children in their wonderful outfits, celebrating their favourite books and authors for World Book Day. All of the children have completed a range of book related activities in school.

Ella in Year 6 said she enjoys World Book Day. “I love reading and it’s fun to be the characters you love for the day”.

Sadie in Year 4 said she enjoys World Book Day because she loves reading and it’s a day all about celebrating reading.

 

Graphic Novels

16th February 2023D Fawkes
                       

Graphic novels are longer stories written and illustrated in the style of a comic, combining a sequence of engaging visual elements that drive the plot, coupled with short pockets of text in the form of captions and dialogue. The format has seen a burst in popularity in recent years and we have recently ordered a wealth of new graphic novels for both of our Accelerated Reader libraries for our children to enjoy in school and at home.

Check out these BooksforTopics links with recommended texts for 7-9 year olds and 9-11 year olds.

https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/topics/literacy-reading/graphic-novels-lower-ks2/

https://www.booksfortopics.com/booklists/topics/literacy-reading/graphic-novels-upper-ks2/

Safer Internet Day 2023 – Talking about the internet

9th February 2023L Forster

For Safer Internet Day this year, the children discussed and highlighted different ways that they use the internet. We learned about sharing our thoughts and talking to others, in order to spread awareness of things on the internet – this could range from: problems we found while using the internet; what we enjoy doing on the internet; or who we follow or interact with online.

Here was some of things the children in 5F wanted to talk about when discussing the internet:

The children were also tasked with thinking of things, people, games, websites and activities on the internet for each letter of the ‘Alpha-net’. Here are a few examples:

They also thought of 3 things that they love about the internet, and offered 3 improvements that they would like to see:

Reader of the Month January 2023

8th February 2023P Mullea

This month the staff were looking out for children who have made great progress in their reading but also who work well with others.

In Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 the children take part in partner work when reading stories. They help friends read tricky words and have shown themselves to be great team players.

In years 3, 4, 5 and 6 staff were really pleased to see how the children can support each other with reading and celebrate others achievements. They have made AMAZING progress too!

A special mention to Tyler in Y4 who has made 18months progress in his AR reading age in the last half term and to Maxwell In Y6 who has made 2 years and 4 months progress!

What an achievement!

We are so proud of you all and love to see so many of you enjoying reading. We hope you enjoy your prizes.

Next Month teachers will be keeping a close eye on the children who use Accelerated Reader, to see how well they perform in quizes and improve their reading. Staff will choose a Reader of the Month who shows a great commitment and attitude to their reading, using AR and when sharing books.

 

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.

Kielder Observatory

17th January 2023L Forster

To round off our work on Earth, Sun and Moon, we had a visit from Kielder Observatory.

  

We looked discussed the different types of light and created UV bracelets.

We then had to create landers to safely transport an egg to the ground – similar to the space capsule.

To start the afternoon, we worked together to order the planets correctly, before examining different types of rock – including rocks, some that were once asteroids and even rocks from the moon.