What a hot week it has been! I must say our pupils have coped very well with the heat, I think they have done better than I have.

Just some news to keep you all posted with. As you may already be aware, I will be finishing for maternity leave at the end of this term and Mrs Millard will be acting as Head of School while I am off. Mrs Millard will be supported by Miss Gordon as Deputy Head.

Some of you may have also heard about Miss Louden who is leaving us at the end of term to pursue her teaching carer abroad. Helen has been working for the New Bridge Group now for three years and we have seen her grow into a very confident and secure teacher who works hard to support the needs of the learners in her class. Helen’s next adventure will be teaching in an international school in Hong Kong which I know she will love. I have asked Helen to keep in touch with Hollinwood as we will all love to hear how she is getting on.

With staff leaving and the school growing in numbers, this week myself, Mrs Millard and Miss Gordon have been involved in recruiting new teaching staff for our secondary department. We successfully appointed an MFL Spanish teacher, Mr Francos. His name may be familiar to some of you, as Mr Francos has been with us through supply teaching one day a week in secondary and he knows the pupils and their needs well. Mr Francos will be joining us and working across Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. We have also appointed a new static group teacher for secondary, Mr Hartley, who has a breadth of knowledge of teaching at Key Stage 3 and 4 and is able to deliver a wide range of subjects to the pupils who will be in his class. The children who will be joining his group will get to meet him at our final transition session next Friday morning.

Our Year 6s have been enjoying the glorious sunshine this week on residential in Wales. I have loved seeing the pictures of all the pupils and staff having lots of fun (click here if you missed them) and I can’t wait to hear all about it! I have asked Mr Rawson if he would share their adventures in next week’s blog. Eric and Aaron have also been to Wales but this time with the New Bridge and Spring Brook Year 11s to Haven – again, I have loved seeing pictures of these two getting involved in the activities..

This week Mr Fieldhouse decided that water and rockets would be a great mix in his Science lessons and the pupils have really enjoyed launching rockets and getting very, very wet! Miss Rudge’s class have been busy in Living Skills..

This week KS3ZRE really got ‘cracking’ on our work in living skills! We discussed lots of different ways of cooking eggs and researched lots of ‘eggy’ recipes too! We had lots of fun in the kitchen trying out our new found ‘eggy’ recipes – thank you to Bradley for taking these great pictures..

Miss Louden wanted to share with you all what her class have been up to..

This week we have been making our own story in ‘Talk 4 Writing’, here are a few examples of our children’s work..

We have also been working hard in SEAL discussing how people are different and how people deal with change differently and we played a game to find out more about each other..

We enjoyed a brilliant game of ‘What time is it, Mr Wolf?’..

..and had a birthday to celebrate!

Mrs Dunsdon’s class and Miss Grimsley’s class have been making the most of the fun in the sun, taking their learning outside. The reception pupils have been learning all about shapes this term and it’s great to see how much the pupils have picked up – we will have some lovely pictures to share with you next week..

Our SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week are:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Jake for fantastic labels in literacy..

SEAL Superstar: Victory for using his symbol to request a hug

• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  Star of the Week: Fatima for sorting the ducks in her swimming lesson and having no tears when swimming had finished
  SEAL Superstar: Mia for accepting a change in the weather and taking her cardigan off..

• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Tyler for fantastic written and oral contribution in our topic ‘To Infinity and Beyond’..

SEAL Superstar: the whole class for coping well with change in the classroom whilst Mrs Lomax has been off school..

• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Thomas for fantastic homework, a great swimming lesson and trying his best in class – what an outstanding week Thomas!

SEAL Superstar: Ivy for understanding how she can help herself and acting on it..

• Miss Louden’s class:
  Star of the Week: Callum for his really hard work in Maths and Rahmeen for staying on task in lessons
  SEAL Superstar: Olivia for dealing with changes at home well..

• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week: Darnell for fantastic behaviour and following instructions first time..

SEAL Superstar: Liam for talking about changes and how they make us feel and Nimra for thinking of fantastic examples of different changes that might happen..

Our new ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ is Darnell. 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: Josh for being helpful to his friends and teachers

Well done, everyone! A special well done to all the pupils who went on the residentials, you have been absolute super stars and the staff team that supported are so proud of you all. We are also really proud of all the pupils that had a change of class this week – you all coped very well with the change in routine.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Jaina

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

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