This week has been extremely busy. We ended the week with a full school transition morning where our current pupils and new pupils spent an hour and a half with their new teachers and teaching assistants. We have two more transition sessions planned for 22nd June and 6th July.

Last week I promised you that Miss McMurray would tell us all about the Disney trip – here is what she and some of her class who went had to say..

On 5th June, 6 pupils from KS3NMY went to Disneyland in Paris. They travelled by coach through the Eurotunnel, eating their weight in sweets, crisps and chocolate before arriving at the Explorer’s after 8pm. After eating pizza and chips for tea and having a play in the games room, the pupils showered and went to bed ready for their busy 2 days at Disneyland..

Over the next 2 days the pupils explored both the Disneyland and the Walt Disney Studio theme parks. Some pupils opted to ride the fast rollercoasters where they were able to use their fast pass cards to jump the queues and ride the rollercoaster 3 or 4 times in a row. Other pupils had a more relaxing time watching the parade, meeting characters and going on the more gentle rides. Fun was had by all pupils (and staff!) and all pupils behaved fantastically!

Ciara said, “My favourite part about Disneyland was seeing the characters. The parade was really festive and I got to see Mickey, Minnie and Daisy Duck.”

Leo said, “My favourite part of Disneyland was the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster because it shoots you off super-fast and it has a lot of loops and twists”

Cameron said, “My favourite ride was the Indiana Jones rollercoaster as I liked the part where it turns you upside down, I even had my arms up the whole ride!”

Back at school, this week the pupils have been looking at the topic of electricity in Science and they have enjoyed building circuits to light up bulbs and make a fan work..

This week the primary classes and Mr Layton’s sensory group have had the Wonder Dome in school! Mrs Lomax explains all..

Well, this week we really felt like we were following our topic and going to ‘Infinity and Beyond’! On Wednesday we were visited by the Wonder Dome – this is a mobile planetarium! Throughout the morning, all the classes had an opportunity to take part in a half hour presentation about our solar system..

Once inside the giant inflatable dome, a little bit like a giant blow up igloo, we were plunged into darkness – so sorry, no pictures from inside. We then had a light and video show that took us around our solar system. All the classes took part and the children really enjoyed it, with many statements from “Wow, that was awesome!” to a hopeful “Can we buy one?”

Now over to Miss Shin’s class who also wanted to share what they have been up to..

We have been enjoying our new topic ‘to infinity and beyond!’ We created papier mache planets..

..and we also revised our knowledge of the planets by making a fruit solar system which allowed us to compare the sizes of the planets in relation to each other..

In English we are reading the Iron Man and we have done lots of activities related to it. First we did some junk modelling to make our own versions of the Iron Man based on the title and front cover of the book..

We acted in role as the seagulls and hosted chat shows to find out all about the events in chapter 1..

We drew pictures of the Iron Man and labelled his body parts using the possessive –s and apostrophes..

In Maths we have been doing work on statistics. We have planted cress seeds and observed them grow, plotting their height on a time graph each day. We also measured each other’s heights and presented this data in a bar graph. We have done lots of problem solving too!

Now over to Mr Rawson..

This term we are covering Europe as a topic in Geography, so the class all have passports and we are travelling around Europe looking at the spectacular scenery. The class are researching mountains and rivers and making notes in Showbie for a discussion about which mountain range and river we will visit and why..

Once the pupils had finished their research, they had a friendly (!!) game of Geography snakes and ladders called ‘Up we go and down the flow’ with their partner (which brought out the competitive side of a few pupils!!)

Let’s finish off and see who our SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week are:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Lewis for excellent shape work in Maths
  SEAL Superstar: Lenni for having an excellent transition morning with Miss Grimsley’s class
• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  Star of the Week: Daniel for engaging in his lessons and having fantastic behaviour all week
  SEAL Superstar: Fatima for having a good transition morning in Mrs Dunsdon’s classroom
• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Marco for trying extra hard to do his phonics reading
  SEAL Superstar: Marley for coping well with our first transition day and for helping his friends to feel happy about the changes
• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Byron for following instructions with fantastic listening on his iPad in lessons this week
  SEAL Superstar: Charlie for being positive with change and being a great friend this week
• Miss Louden’s class:
  Star of the Week: Brooke for retelling our story with confidence
• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Harry for improved communication and engaging in all lessons this week
• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week: Thomas for coping well with change and for fantastic independent work in Maths this week
  SEAL Superstar: Darnell, Caelan, Dan, Thomas, Lucas, Vincent, Liam and Lewis for coping well with change during transition
  Our new ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ is Thomas. We hope you and Meerkat have a fantastic weekend and we can’t wait to hear about your marvellous adventures!
• Miss Shin’s class:
  Star of the Week: Alfie and Lana for fantastic behaviour this week
  SEAL Superstar: Luca for being mature and reacting well to a big change
• Mr Rawson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Lucas for exemplary behaviour and great effort in Art and Drama

Well done to all our stars!

I would also like to say a big ‘Well done!’ to 5 of our Year 11 pupils who have now completed their GCSE programme of study. The last few weeks have been very pressured for them but they have managed to complete their exams and we are so proud of the effort they have put in. I would like to wish them all every success in their future, be it at college or in work.

I hope you all have a great weekend,

Jaina

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