Look at all of these AR Award winners! Lots of Half millionaires and a special mention to Abbey and Imogen from Y6 and Esme and Bonnie from Year 5 who are now Word Millionaires.
The sharing of nudes, semi-nudes and other explicit material is a prominent issue in today’s digital landscape: both their distribution and their misuse. In fact, the National Crime Agency has issued an alert to hundreds of thousands of education professionals after a study found that 26,718 cases of “sextortion” had been reported in 2023 – more than doubling from the year before.
It’s vital for parents and educators to be aware of how they can safeguard children from exposure to, or involvement in, sharing intimate images – especially given that the sharing of such material featuring under-18s is a serious criminal offence. This week’s guide offers expert insight into the risks of sharing intimate images online, as well as tips on implementing measures to shield children from encountering inappropriate digital content of a sexual nature.
The sharing of intimate images online can be a dangerous avenue through which abusers seek to exploit children and young people, forcibly exposing them to explicit material, coercing them into sharing self-generated intimate images, and extorting them with the threat of sharing such images more widely. From reputational impact to potential blackmail or emotional distress, and even legal consequences, exposure to this harmful behaviour can have a severe impact.
It’s important to remember that the creation and distribution of explicit material featuring under-18s – even by the child themselves – is illegal under UK law. Our guide looks at the serious concerns associated with this behaviour, and lets parents and educators know how best to address these issues and protect young people.
Congratualtions to all the readers of the month for June. This month the children have been chosen for setting a good example to others with their reading. This includes returning home readers regularly, making super progress, challenging themselves to read more tricky texts and having a super attitude in school.
A special shoutout to:
Louis in Year 1 for his amazing progress with reading- moving up book levels very quickly and learning new sounds.
Orson in Year 2 who has made an outstanding 2 years of progress on Accelerated reading.
Grace, Riley and Isla in Year 5 for their excellent STAR reader test results.
As part of the NE Festival of Languages, our school choir learnt ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams in French. Our singing has been incorporated into a video with all of the other participating schools. Enjoy!
Year 5 are continuing to enjoy their STEAM week. Today, we have been finalising our robot codes and timing our missions. We have been putting all our innovation information together, as a group, into our presentations and creating our speeches for the judges. We are looking forward to our final day tomorrow.
In RE, we have been learning about the Northern Saints.
Elizabeth came to visit us to tell us more about them.
Christians believe:
- They were different from angels.
- They were holy people.
- They had to have died to become a saint.
- They are part of God’s family in Heaven.
- They were Christians (followers of Jesus).
- They looked just like everyone else.
- The way that they lived pointed away from themselves and towards God.
- God shines a light through the Saints
- They would stand out from the crowd
- They were a beacon, lighting the way to God.
- Their lives were a reflection of God.
We got to hear some stories about St Aidan, St Hild, St Cuthbert, St Bede. We looked at the clothing and objects these saints would have worn and used when they were alive.
We ended the session by writing with ink and a quill, like St Bede would have done many years ago.
Today, we continued with our STEM week activities.
We have been split into groups and in our groups we have started programming our Lego robot to complete various missions using the Lego models we built on Friday. As well as coding the robots, we have been producing a presentation to share with the judges, about sharing a hobby/interest with new people. We have looked at the careers of visual effects, stage management, sound engineering and museum co-ordinators to identify ways in which we could share our hobbies with others in an interesting and immersive way.
As part of our Maya topic in History, we had a visit from a Maya warrior called Big Nose.
We had a fantastic day! We learnt about different aspects of Maya life: what they wore, what they ate, their numbers and even some different ways the Maya sacrificed people to please the gods!
We took part in drama activities in groups acting out Maya stories; how to prepare the most important drink from Maya times (chocolatl); a Maya ball game called Pok-a-Tok; and how to prepare a body for burial.
There were Maya artefacts for us to look at and we thought about what they might have been used for, and what clues they gave us about Maya life.
We ended the day all together acting out the Maya creation story. Did you know the Maya believed the first people were made from corn?
What a great start to our new History topic!
We are incredibly proud of our year 3, 4, 5 and 6 pupils who participated in the national Leaders Award competition, where children are posed the question ‘If you were an engineer, what would you do?’ The children are tasked with identifying a problem and designing an invention to solve that problem. They created labelled diagrams of their invention and wrote letters to a panel of judges explaining what their invention did and the inspiration behind it. Out of thousands of children who took part, over 70 of our children were shortlisted to the final round of judging and had their work displayed at Sunderland University.
We are also delighted to announce that Carter, in year 6, was announced as the winner for the north east of England for his invention of the Emergency Stop System! Carter’s invention would help people cross the road safely and it would be especially beneficial for people with visual impairments.
Check out the amazing entries!
