Shine

For the eighth year running, our Y5 and Y6 children will have the opportunity to take part in the SHINE Project with staff and students from Newcastle High School for Girls in Jesmond.

Starting on Saturday 11^th January 2020, Miss Torrance will take the children by coach to Newcastle High School for Girls where they will enjoy taking part in various activities in different subject areas, such as Biology, Philosophy and Drama. These sessions will be fun, highly practical and interactive. This initiative ties in perfectly with the WDPS Raising Aspirations Programme (RAP) as we want to inspire our children to achieve all that they can in life.

There is no cost to families for this 10 session programme and your child does not need to wear their school uniform. The children need to be at the Association car park for 8.45am, and they will return at 12.20pm.

Please see below the timetable of the SHINE Project:

Week	Session 1	Session 2
1.11th January	Who are you?	Enquiry
2. 18th January	MFL (Languages)	Forest Schools
3. 25th January	Mandarin	Chinese New Year
4. 1st February	Biology	Maths
5. 8th February	Art	Art
6. 29th February	Philosophy	Yoga
7. 7th March	Food	Drama
8. 14th March	PE	Music
9. 21st March	Presentation Skills	English
10. 28th March	Celebration of Achievement	Celebration of Achievement

The ‘Celebration of Achievement’ session will take place on Saturday 28^th March, where family and friends will be invited to watch short presentations from the children about their time at the SHINE Project.

There are only 13 places for our school and places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. If Miss Torrance receives more than 13 applications, the children’s names will be put on a waiting list.

Week 1: Saturday 11th January 2020

This week, the children participated in 'Getting to Know You' activities with the children from the other schools. For one activity, our children had to order themselves in alphabetical order without saying anything! A task Miss Torrance would have struggled with!

To conclude their first week, our 13 WDPS representatives had to answer some questions in groups. There were six questions in total, asking 'What would the future look like?', 'What does happiness mean to you?' and 'What is important in our lives?'. The children gave in depth and very mature answers.

Next week is Bushcraft and MFL (Modern Foreign Languages), where the children will be learning German.

The Big Questions

18.1.20 - Bushcraft and German

This week at Shine, the children took part in an outdoors scavenger hunt in the school grounds. It was so fun! They had to search for various things and had to use their imaginations. For German, they got taught how to have a basic conversation and most were lucky enough to earn a piece of chocolate for their confidence and efforts.

25.1.20 - Chinese New Year

On Saturday 25th January, the children at WDPS learnt all about Chinese New Year!

Firstly, they took part in a Chinese New Year quiz where the children had to write 'A' or 'B' on a whiteboard to answer the questions. At the end of the session, they all got a fortune cookie.

Their next task was to make a Chinese lantern. The children all made their own red paper lanterns whilst listening to facts and stories behind the animals of Chinese New Year.

The Chinese New Year challenge continued as the children used chopsticks to transfer sweets, pompoms and lolly pop sticks from plate to plate, ending on an exciting chopstick relay race!

To conclude this session at Shine, all the children got the opportunity to taste some Chinese dishes and delicacies.

1.2.20 - Science

This week at Shine, our children got the opportunity to make a car out of card in small groups. Once the car was constructed, designed and decorated, the children pumped air into a straw in their cars and had a competition to see whose traveled the furthest! It was so much fun!

8.2.20 - Poetry

The children had an enjoyable time at Shine on Saturday creating their own poems.

Job one was to pick and choose words from a given text in order to re-write into a poem. Job two was to spend twenty minutes exploring the school and write down exciting words they have seen, then they were to cut and stick the words in their groups to make a new poem!

Shine will recommence after the half term break.

29.2.20 - Geography and Philosophy

This week at Shine, the children were split into two groups: one group did Geography whilst the other group did philosophy, then after beak they swapped over. For Geography, the children were in groups of two and three and had to be volcano experts and had to create a plan to evacuate the residents of an island. For philosophy, the children answered some very thought provoking questions and had to rank some crime based statements in level of severity.

7.3.20 - Food and Drama

This week, the children (and Miss Torrance) got the opportunity to create their own chocolate lollies and pizzas! It was such a brilliant week! They also did some acting, too.