This has been a busy but very exciting week for the group of pupils at Hollinwood who have been involved in ‘The Jungle Book’ performances at New Bridge – they completed a total of 5 shows over a period of 3 days! I know when I spoke to a lot of the pupils that they had gained a real sense of achievement and were proud of how well they had done. I think they deserve a long rest this weekend! As a ‘Well Done’ to them all, I went to see them this afternoon and presented them all with my special Headteacher’s Award – including our wonderful Miss Rudge who has worked so hard to support these pupils..

Ciara has written a little piece for the blog this week..

This week I was in the school production of our show The Jungle Book. It was an absolutely amazing performance that we did in front of lots of people. Over the past few weeks we have been rehearsing for the show and it has taken us lots of practising to get it right. The characters in the show were the wolves, Mother and Father wolf and the clubs. There was also the tiger (Shere Khan), the bear (Balloo), the blue peacock and many other characters..

Miss Rudge has been incredible in the show with us, she has been sorting different props that are going to be used on the stage and always helping us..

The band for the production have been smashing also..

I have really enjoyed doing the show and I can’t wait until next year’s!

Thank you to Ciara for her insight into the show. Miss Rudge would also like to tell you about it..

Wow! What a show! We had our biggest Hollinwood cast to date involved in our production this year, with 16 of our super talented pupils taking to the stage and helping backstage! I am unbelievably proud of the level of professionalism and commitment our young people have shown…they have worked their socks off! It’s always so lovely to feel the buzz around school on ‘Show Week’ and staff and pupils have been congratulating and supporting our cast and crew which has been so wonderful to see. Every pupil involved received an Art Award and a Headteacher’s Award too! I will really miss this show but I am going home this weekend with the biggest, proudest smile ever!

Our Key Stage 3 Peer Mentors have had their mentor training with Ms Hollingsworth and Ms Gordon this week. I popped in to see them hard at work, engrossed in the training and keen to learn..

We are hoping to get the peer mentoring started after the Easter holidays when the Key Stage 3/4 mentors will be working with our Key Stage 2 pupils.

This week, it is the turn of Miss Louden’s class to tell you what they have been learning. You may remember I mentioned the ‘Talk for Writing’ training our primary teachers had on the staff training day. Miss Louden has incorporated this well into her class and it has been great to see our pupils come to life in lessons. Here is what they have been up to this week..

In Maths this week we have been working hard both as part of a team and also on our own to halve numbers up to 10. Some of us have even been solving doubling and halving word problems..

This term we have been story mapping the story Farmer Duck in English. This week we are using our story map to change the story and create our own stories..

Our SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week are:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Renico for fantastic swimming..

SEAL Superstar: Jake for being able to say what he wants without hurting others..

• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  SEAL Superstar: Daniel for being able to show an adult what he wants without getting upset..

• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Amario for fantastic learning in Maths and independent problem solving in and around classroom using his measuring knowledge..

SEAL Superstar: Joshua for being assertive but not hurtful by helping his friends to use their words in order to share the toys at play time..

• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Ethan for a magnificent retelling of the story in his Literacy recount..

SEAL Superstar: Harrison for thinking about other children’s feelings and making a kind choice..

• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Aaron for improved behaviour this week
• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week: Caelan for fantastic independent work in Maths. This week we have been sorting 2D shapes.
  SEAL Superstar: Nimra for excellent work and behaviour in the girls friendship group.
  Our new ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ is Daniel for being very brave and for fantastic independent work in Maths this week.
• Miss Shin’s class:
  Star of the Week: Jacob for a fantastic piece of extended writing and a super attitude to learning, and Lana for writing a wonderful and creative retelling of The Jungle Book
  SEAL Superstar: Finlay for having a growth mindset – changing “I can’t do it” to “I can do it” when writing a story

And of course, the whole of the Hollinwood Academy cast have received a Headteacher’s Award for being superstars in ‘The Jungle Book’! If you weren’t fortunate enough to attend one of the performances, the Digit4ll students at New Bridge filmed one of the shows and will be producing a DVD after Easter – we will let you know when copies are available to order.

We heard some very exciting news this evening – Thomas C. emailed Colin Hegarty himself to inform him that he has now completed ALL the tasks on HegartyMaths..

Thomas has spent over 67 hours in total and answered 6250 questions during a 6 month period, completing even the higher level GCSE content – and he is in Year 9! Mrs Needham is looking forward to seeing his results when he sits his GCSE next year! Thomas has worked exceptionally hard on this in his own time – congratulations on such a wonderful achievement, Thomas!

We’re looking forward to welcoming everyone to our coffee morning at 10.30am on Tuesday, we hope you will be able to pop in and join us. We also have the exciting ‘City of Tomorrow’ event taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday where our pupils will be asked to think about how Oldham will look in the future before building their own models of our ‘City of Tomorrow’! More information on the event can be found here.

Don’t forget that we break up for the Easter holidays on Wednesday afternoon – please click here if you would like a reminder of all this year’s term dates.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

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