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Last week I mentioned that the numbers at Hollinwood are beginning to grow again. Many of our new starters in secondary have settled in really well and that is thanks to the smooth transition co-ordinated by the form tutors and Mrs Ismail, our Key Stage 3 and 4 pastoral manager.

In our primary department the children are continuing with their transitions. For many of them this is a much slower process as it is important that we give the youngest children time to settle into their new classes and get used to the new routines. One of the hardest things for many of our pupils is being in the canteen with the smells and noise, especially with their sensory needs. The primary staff ensure that during transition the children are allowed to spend time in the canteen and experience a lunch time at Hollinwood.

Before I go on to ask Miss Parkinson and Mr Davies to tell you what their classes have been up to this week, I would like to share with you a fantastic email that I received from Mr Lawrence, one of the PE teachers, who took some of our Key Stage 4 boys to MCFC to play football.

“Just a quick email to congratulate the students from Hollinwood who represented school at Man City (Aaron, Nathan, Zak and Connor)…..at football yesterday they were fantastic. They played well, no arguing, supported their team mates and were very sociable throughout. Please big the boys up with some praise because they thoroughly deserve it.”

These four boys have been with us at Hollinwood since we opened and it is great to hear how they are growing up, working together as a team and socialising.

Before Christmas we set up our Nurture Group and they have been spending some time with Mr Heap on Outdoor Ed lessons. As Mr Heap explains:

‘The Nurture Group have been out visiting the local community. This week they had their clipboards at the ready and went spotting wildlife in Alexandra Park. Everyone had a fantastic time and represented the school brilliantly.’

Now let’s hand over to Mr Davies..

This week saw the class welcome a new addition, Louisa, who has made a very positive start and said that she is enjoying school life. In English the class have been looking at emotive language. During the lesson, five different charity adverts were analysed and critiqued before the students were asked to pick which advert appealed to them most and why. Most of them chose the RSPCA as they said they preferred animals to humans..

In intervention Thomas led a lesson on stem and leaf diagrams and produced his own worksheets and PowerPoint. In Maths the class have completed work on averages and now fully understand ‘Mean’, ‘Mode’ and ‘Median’ thanks to Mr Goup. In Science the class have been learning about rocks and sediments and they enjoyed building a functioning Lego windmill..

The class have been working on different acting techniques in Drama with Miss Rudge..

In RE the class studied how Buddhists view the world in regards to ethics and justice. In particular they looked at capital punishment and abortion. Then in History we studied coal mines and the impact they had on local communities during the Industrial Revolution. All the pupils said they would rather come to school than go down the pit!

The class continued to work on the causes and effects of flooding in Geography. This week they analysed how flood defences worked, in particular whether soft or hard engineering was more effective at preventing flooding..

For assembly I created a PowerPoint on megafauna and extinct animals as Connor expressed an interest in learning about Megalodon..

In Citizenship the class presented the powerpoints they had created that showed which organisations and charities were designed to protect the rights and needs of children..

In Living Skills the class made mini pizzas which went down very well..

The class were pleased to meet their new Spanish teacher who they all spoke very highly of..

The class and I would like to thank Mr Boycott, Mrs Ismail and Mr Bratby for all of their hard work and patience this week.

Miss Parkinson wanted to let you all know what her class have been up to this week:

This week we have been continuing our learning about time in Maths. The children have all worked really hard this week and some of them are now referring to our clock in class and telling us the time – fantastic!

This week we have also been looking at Chinese New Year. The children particularly enjoyed looking for some Chinese New Year traditions in soft play and retelling the story using puppets..

We have also enjoyed making Chinese lanterns..

and learning about this year’s animal which is the Rooster..

Our topic this term is the Romans and for the past few weeks the children have been looking at Roman shields. We have designed and created our very own Romans shields in class..