Welcome back to a rather wet and wild week, I hope you all had a rested half term. I know that the children who accessed our Holiday Club had a great time..

Letters for the Easter Holiday Club have gone home today but if you haven’t received yours, please let us know and we can send you another one. You can also find all the details on our website here.

This week I have asked Mrs Dunsdon’s Reception class and Mr Holland’s Key Stage 4 class to share what they have been up to. Let’s begin with our youngest pupils..

This has been a fantastic week for Mrs Dunsdon’s class. The children have come back after the holidays ready to learn and they have had lots of fun and have been working really hard.We didn’t let Doris keep us indoors on Thursday, we put on our waterproofs and our wellies and had a great time splashing in the puddles and feeling the wind blowing us around. We have started our new topic, ‘Down on the Farm’, and we have been enjoying working together as a group learning all about animals and their babies. On Tuesday the children had lots of fun finding farm animals in soft play and we could name them although we struggled a little bit with ‘turkey’..

We have been using our plasma screen to do animal games and jigsaws which the children really enjoy.

All the children have had some super successes this week that we are really proud of and would like to share with you..

• Brodey – swimming without arm bands
• Joshua – writing his name independently
• Tyler – using lots of new words
• Gearge – super reading
• Marley – super tracing over shapes
• Lewis – dancing in celebration of good work
• Amario – playing with others
• Farrukh – helping staff with lots of jobs
• Myla – good sitting and listening

Well done to all our children, every step you take is a huge leap and we are so proud to be able to be a part of it!

We wanted to share with you some of the work we did for Chinese New Year before the holidays. The children learnt all about the animals in the Chinese Zodiac..

and listened to stories, played games and worked in soft play. They had a great time tasting, feeling smelling and exploring Chinese food (they all thought the noodles looked just like worms!)..

 With Miss Dunne the children made special red envelopes with gold coins in to take home as a gift to their family..

..and with our fantastic volunteer, Mrs Turner, they made snake sock puppets..

They even managed to get the hang of using chopsticks (although not with food this time)..

As the year goes on we see how independent the children are becoming and they have class routines and tasks perfected. It is lovely to see how they put their things away in the right places in the morning and tidy up well at the end of an activity. When it is time for PE and swimming they are so good at getting undressed and dressed and generally getting themselves organised. They make super choices about things they like or don’t like and have formed some really good friendships in class and show this in the way they share and play together..

Now let’s move to our oldest children and although it’s been a shorter week they have certainly managed to fit a lot in..

In Maths, Mr Holland’s group sat a GCSE paper on Tuesday with some very promising scores achieved. A lot of work is now going into making sure that students achieve all the marks they are capable of when they answer questions by using a structured approach..

Mrs Millard’s Maths group have been looking at fractions, adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators. Before they can add or subtract fractions with different denominators, they first have to find equivalent fractions with the same denominator. To help them with this, they have been finding the Lowest Common Multiple (LCM) and then rewriting the fractions so they can then add or subtract these.

Summer and Harry have both spent a morning on work experience at the Age Concern shop in the centre of Oldham supported by Ms Meakin, one of the job coaches from the Group’s Future Finders section. They will be working there every Wednesday morning for 6 weeks before another two students receive the same opportunity. Feedback from the shop has been excellent and the manager is impressed by how well Summer and Harry are interacting with other staff and customers.

We have students who are undertaking their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award at Bronze level and one who has already gained his Bronze Award and is looking to begin his Silver Award. Three of our students have been selected to represent the New Bridge Group in a wheelchair basketball competition which is due to take place in March that will give our non-wheelchair dependent students a chance to experience life as others see it.

Our GCSE History group have just begun to study the American Civil War. All around the group there is a lot of learning taking place thanks to Mr Valentine and Miss Peak who do a fabulous job with students who can very much have minds of their own.

All of our usual pastoral care activities have taken place this week, including some of our students joining forces with Ms Ismail to make a ‘proper curry’. The teachers could vouch for its tastiness, doing an Oliver Twist, ‘please can I have some more?’ routine.

As a last note, we all wish Zak a speedy recovery as he is about to undergo some surgery this week. Everybody in the school wishes him well.

Finally, our ‘Stars of the Week’ are…

• Mrs Dunsdon: Brodey for swimming without armbands and excellent work..

• Mr Corrigan: Zachary for being a great role model and making the right choices..

• Mrs Lomax: Darnell who has been trying really hard to keep calm and complete his learning..

• Miss Louden: Justin for listening to instructions and being kind to others
• Miss Parkinson: Summer for great art work this week creating a Roman mosaic and Jacob for putting some fantastic effort into performing his poem
• Mr Heap: Olivia for working hard in Maths and Maia for fantastic work in Spanish
• Mrs Halkyard: Luigi for a positive attitude and great contribution
• Mr Rawson: Tobias for making the right choices

Well done, everyone!

This week my Head Teacher’s Award goes to Brodey and Summer. They have shown wonderful work and excellent behaviour, well done to them both!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

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