This week my blog is going to focus on Miss Parkinson’s class. First a peep ‘through the keyhole’:

You can see in these photos how Miss Parkinson has set the classroom up to support a range of approaches including individual work, paired work and opportunities for group working. During literacy and numeracy sessions the pupils mainly work individually or in pairs and are well supported by a number of adults in class.
Group work and practical activities often take place away from the more formal desk-top working. As an example, three pupils are working here with Miss Williams on a science activity based on food categorisation. The science work is fully explored but there is also a huge focus on sharing, communication and listening to the views of others – developing important social skills and positive peer interactions…

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More practical activities are included in a cross-curricular approach to topics. A multi-sensory approach to learning helps pupils to utilise all of their senses and reinforces learning using a range of styles – auditory (speaking and listening), visual (looking and drawing) and kinaesthetic (touching and moving – physical exploration). These pictures show the class learning about Greek vases as part of their Ancient Greece topic. The pupils began by listening to stories and looking at books, they then drew their own designs and finally they enjoyed creating salt-dough models and painting them…

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The Key Stage 2 classes access some of their lessons with specialist teaching staff and spend some time using the resources available across at New Bridge School. Miss Parkinson gets a well deserved break on a Wednesday morning when the class go over to New Bridge for the morning – they have dance and drama followed by music before going swimming after break. (They are nicely exhausted then for the afternoon!) I followed them throughout these lessons this Wednesday and took some photos to illustrate the breadth of opportunities they are able to take advantage of and the different activities they participate in. The dance and drama photos are a little dark as the session took place in the dance studio with dimmed lighting to enhance the mood. The pupils enjoyed a warm-up activity making faces and noises to express different emotions…

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In music lessons with Mr Bloska the pupils are learning to play the recorder. I imagined that I would have my hands over my ears for the whole lesson after remembering my own children squawking away on the instruments, but I was very impressed by the standard of musicianship after just a few weeks of lessons. The photos show how focused the pupils were and I also filmed a video clip which includes Joshua and Olivia singing to Ellie’s recorder accompaniment – once we’ve sorted out a technical glitch I will add it here for you to watch (or you can catch it on our Facebook page). Having seen it I am sure you will all look forward to our concerts in the future!

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As I have mentioned previously, swimming is one of my favourite lessons and although I didn’t get into the water on this occasion I was delighted to see the class enjoying their lesson, gaining confidence and skills. Some of the Year 3s are already able to swim quite a distance without any aids…

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I’m going to move onto Key Stage 1 next week with a focus on Mrs Lomax’s class. Here’s a taster from our younger pupils. Look at these pictures of a PE lesson where three classes of our youngest children got to jump on the bouncy castle across at New Bridge. Again, I anticipated a mass of noise and shrieking when I went to observe but again, I was amazed by the self-control and super attention demonstrated by the pupils. The pictures were taken at the end of the session and you can see Mrs Tootill working her magic, getting all of the little ones to lay still on the edge of the bouncy castle, playing sleeping lions. Every one of them was able to manage to resist the temptation to climb back on and bounce and this meant that the group were able to calm down before quietly and sensibly making the transition to their next lesson…

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I’m also including our ‘Stars of the Week’ from Key Stage 1 who this week are…

 

Thomas from Mrs Lomax’s class for ‘trying extra hard with all his learning’

 

 

 

 

 

and

 

Zachary from Mrs Dunsdon’s class for ‘fantastic phonics’!

 

 

 

 

Well done you two!!

Finally just a reminder that you can keep up to date with news from both Hollinwood Academy and New Bridge School on our Facebook page here – ‘Hollinwood Academy, New Bridge School & New Bridge Horizons – Oldham’

Have a lovely weekend everyone,

Sarah