Happy New Year to you all and welcome back! I hope that you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year break.

The Spring term is an opportunity to settle into the hard work and begin to really focus upon progress and improvement. It has been wonderful to see all the pupils return back to school enthused, happy and ready to learn. I have enjoyed popping in to see all the classes this week and I have been able to reflect on how much progress they have all made since September. It has shown me that our pupils are remarkable as they are able to respond so well to their learning environment and have all developed trusting relationships with the key staff they work with. September, in the distant past now, brought with it new pupils who joined Hollinwood with high levels of anxiety and apprehension, as was also the case for our pupils who had been with us for much longer. It is wonderful to see the smiling faces and calm responses now, showing how secure the pupils are beginning to feel and the confidence they are gaining which enables them to achieve to the best of their ability.

Our Reception, Key Stage 1 and Year 7 pupils had a wonderful start to the term when they went off to Oldham Coliseum on Thursday morning to watch the Sleeping Beauty pantomime. I asked Mrs Lomax to tell you all about the visit..

What a lovely start to the year. The children have come back to school full of lovely stories about their holiday celebrations with friends and family. On Thursday the children and staff enjoyed a morning out at the Oldham Coliseum Theatre in Oldham for their pantomime production of Sleeping Beauty..

The Coliseum have organised their first ‘relaxed’ performance which was aimed at children with additional needs who may not be able to access a traditional performance. There was gentler lighting, quieter sound effects and special rooms with live screening of the performance in side rooms if the children needed this..

The performance was brilliant and all the children really enjoyed it, with lots of booing and hissing when the bad fairy appeared and lots of clapping and cheering for the good fairy. At the end the children were able to have a good dance and were even able to meet all the cast and have their photographs taken with them..

..and of course they all lived happily ever after..

Our Key Stage 1 and Early Years creative curriculum area is ‘Traditional Tales’ – what a lovely way to introduce the children to this and to stimulate their interest. I can expect lots of brilliant writing, Maths and History learning coming from this trip!

I couldn’t end the blog without adding in our ‘Stars of the Week’ who this week are…

• Mrs Dunsdon: Tyler who has been developing his cutting and sticking skills and has produced a great bobble hat picture
• Mr Corrigan: Ivy for being brave and trying new things
• Mrs Lomax: James who has settled back well into school and has shown some fantastic listening skills
• Miss Louden: Lewis H. who has been working hard and contributing to the English lessons..

• Mr Heap: Donte and Aaron for both showing excellent behaviour..

• Miss Parkinson: Connor who has shown enthusiasm with his reading..

• Mrs Halkyard: Kyle who has settled back into learning really well after the Christmas break..

• Key Stage 2 Nurture Group: Bradley for excellent work and effort in Geography..

What a wonderful start to the year these Stars have made! My very first Head Teacher’s Award for 2017 has to go to Lewis H. Lewis has made tremendous progress since joining Hollinwood Academy – well done, Lewis, we are all very proud of you!

Over the coming week we will be opening our doors to 10 new pupils from Reception to Key Stage 4. Pastoral managers and key staff are working with our new families to ensure that they experience a smooth transition into school. We cannot wait to meet our new pupils and welcome them to Hollinwood Academy.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend,

Jaina

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