This week’s blog is going to be short and sweet! In my last post I mentioned that we have opened our doors to 10 more pupils and that over the coming weeks the staff will be working hard to ensure a smooth transition for everyone. Callum and Waj have joined our Key Stage 3 team and they have settled really well into their new classes. Next week we have Louisa joining Mr Davies’ class on some phased visits and I am sure that she will also have a smooth transition into school.

We have also changed the groupings of some of our primary classes so that as a school the children are grouped together in the best way to enable our staff to meet their individual needs. Mrs Lomax’s class in particular has seen several changes and I can already tell how much our pupils have benefited from the new arrangements in such a short space of time..

As Hollinwood grows it is important that the staff team works closely together to ensure that all our children are able to achieve to their full potential. We also need to ensure that our younger children are able to increase their independence and do not get themselves too reliant on a particular member of staff.

As part of the changes in how the children are grouped, we have also created a Key Stage 2 Nurture Group to support some of our children who struggle to be part of the class. The Nurture Group is small so that the staff supporting these children can work on their social and emotional development using specialised schemes of work to help the pupils in the group talk about their feelings and share experiences with each other. Mr Rawson has joined Hollinwood Academy this week to lead the Nuture Group and he has a huge range of experience which will help support the pupils in this class – I am looking forward to bringing you news of their progress!

This week has been a little busy and I’m afraid I don’t have my usual primary and secondary class updates to share with you. However, Mr Corrigan, Mrs Halkyard and Miss Rudge have sent me some information and pictures that they are eager to share with us.

Mr Corrigan’s class have been linking Art into their English learning. They have been making masks and props to help them with their role play session which they carried out in soft play. What a fantastic way to integrate the learning to make it meaningful and fun for the children..

Mrs Halkyard’s class have been looking at how nutrients in our bodies diffuse in order to spread around. They put some skittles around a plate and added water so see the colour run..

They also made gelatine and added food colouring to see how it diffused onto it before printing using paper to create some colourful art work..

Over the last few weeks our secondary staff have been supporting the delivery of Spanish lessons and I am pleased to say that we now have a new teacher joining the secondary team who will be working on Thursdays delivering Spanish to all the pupils in Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. I am looking forward to sharing some work and pictures from these lessons but in the meantime, Miss Rudge’s class have really enjoyed learning the numbers up to 10 in Spanish. They even made up a song and actions to help them remember them..

On Wednesday Mr Smith took a group to the Salford Trampolining Centre for a special event to learn new skills. The pupils were taught how to perform a tuck jump, do a seat drop and progress onto a seat drop with a twist. Mr Smith was very impressed with their behaviour and said they ‘a credit to the school’ – as you can see, everyone loved the day..

Our ‘Stars of the Week’ are…

• Mrs Dunsdon: Farrukh for listening to instructions and being kind and helpful to everyone in the class (especially to Myla who will be joining the reception class)
• Mr Corrigan: Thomas P. for a great act of kindness yesterday. At play time when one of the reception children fell over and was crying, Thomas picked them up and gently took them by the hand to the teacher for help
• Mrs Lomax: Nimra for trying hard to get dressed without any help
• Miss Louden: Olivia for working hard in Science
• Miss Parkinson: Luca for fantastic engagement in all lessons this week but especially our lessons on Roman Gods
• Mr Heap: his whole class for being fantastic for Miss Rudge in their Music lesson! Miss Rudge sent Mr Heap an email saying, “….it was their best lesson. Everyone did fantastic!”
• Mrs Halkyard: Ethan for an excellent piece of independent writing

Miss Rudge has chosen 2 stars this week:

• Waj for settling in really well and answering questions beautifully in Drama
• Ciara for being very polite and helping out both teachers and other pupils

This week my Head Teacher’s Award goes to Thomas P. for being a great role model and showing how we can be kind and helpful to other pupils.

Well done, everyone!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

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