What a lovely way to finish a busy week at Hollinwood! Wednesday 10th October was the annual World Mental Health Day, drawing attention to the importance of mental well-being. Today, as a whole school, we supported the charity Young Minds. According to the Mental Health Foundation, around 1 in 10 children and young people are affected by mental health problems including depression and anxiety. However, they report a more worrying figure in that 70% of those young people have not received help at a sufficiently early age. With this in mind, our pupils across Early Years, Primary and Secondary all shone brightly today while wearing their #HelloYellow clothing in support of World Mental Health Day. The pupils have sensibly listened and talked about mental health and have been involved in assemblies and activities..

Throughout the day, we have been busy fund raising with cake sales, chocolate raffles and quizzes. We have raised an impressive £122.70. The money raised will be sent to the charity Young Minds.

Today has been a massive success and a step in the right direction in tackling the taboo around mental health. Some of our pupils at Hollinwood Academy suffer from mental health problems and one of the positive outcomes from today was a conversation had with a Year 10 pupil, Alex. He confidently shared with pupils and staff how he has suffered with depression for a number of years but has managed to overcome this and come out on the other side due to the support received at home and school. There wasn’t a dry eye in sight.

We are fortunate enough to have onsite Mental Health First Aiders at Hollinwood Academy who are able to help our pupils and provide early interventions, prevention, resilience, support and programmes to educate..

We encourage our pupils that it is ok to talk and support them daily when needed. We strive to ensure that this support and guidance will lead to a positive, healthy adolescence and adulthood for our pupils.

Early Years and Key Stage 1 have been learning how to cope with worries as Mrs Dunsdon explains..

We have been reading ‘A Huge Bag of Worries’ by Virginia Ironside. We thought about all the things we worry about and made our own huge bag of worries. We then thought about what we can do to help us if we are worrying.

The children had a great time making their own monsters and talking about what they worry about..

Can I personally thank all the pupils and staff for their involvement today. It has been a fantastic day and the money raised will be put to excellent use.

Over the past weeks, the pupils have decided who they would like to represent their class during our School Council meetings. During our #HelloYellow assemblies today we announced who our School Councillors will be this year. Our Primary Councillors are:

• Miss Parkison’s class: Harrison
• Mr Heap’s class: Darnell
• Mrs Lomax’ class: Thomas
• Miss Shin’s class: Summer
• Mrs Halkyard’s class: Luke
• Mr Rawson’s class: Lucas

Our Secondary Councillors are:

• Miss Daniels’/Mr Francos’ class: Gabriella
• Miss Meadows’ class: Solomon
• Miss Carpenter’s class: Caitlin
• Mr Hartley’s class: Macauley
• Miss Rudge’s class: Ciara
• Mrs Potts’/Mr Francos’ class: Logan
• Miss McMurray’s class: Neive
• Miss Bones’/Mrs Nuttall’s class: Thomas
• Mr Page’s class: Alex
• Miss Sanderson’s class: Hayley

This week, let’s take a look at the learning taking place in Miss Parkinson’s class..

What a busy week we’ve had! In Maths we have been focusing on number sentences. The children have taken on a very practical approach to working out the answers and have worked extremely hard to find different ways to write the number sentences. As well as using a practical approach, we have looked at different ways to solve an answer for example: a number line, a number grid and a bar model..

Our theme for topic this half term is the Stone Age and this week we have been looking at the clothes which Stone Age people wore. We looked at the similarities and differences between clothes back then and modern day clothes and discussed why they are so different. The children then designed a Stone Age outfit..

In English we are looking at ‘The Stone Age Boy’.  The children have loved doing a variety of tasks related to it, including some role play. The children enjoyed taking on the role of a character, they used some great expressions..

The children then used Showbie to extend their learning by inferring how a character might be feeling or what they are thinking.

Everyone in class loves our Music sessions and how practical they are. This week the children picked a song and the class would play an instrument to the rhythm of the song. We looked at a variety of songs and found out the slower we played the instrument, the quieter it was, and the faster we played, the louder it was..

Now over to Miss Rudge..

In Key Stage 3 Drama we have learning lots about the history of theatre lately. We have looked at Greek theatre..

..Medieval theatre and this week saw us explore the Elizabethan era and Renaissance theatre! We acted out our own ‘modern prologues’ from Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with a modern twist!

In 2003, the Illustrator Jake Parker started ‘Inktober’..

Inktober is an annual celebration of ink drawing! People from all over the world tweet, share and post their beautiful ink inspired Artwork throughout the month of October. There is an official ‘prompt list’ to follow..

..and this week has seen us be inspired by words such as whale, flowing, cruel, precious and star. Just look at our beautiful work..

We’ve had so much fun over the past few weeks getting crafty in our Art lessons..

We have made a range of animals..

..and even had a go at improving our tracing skills too (although thankfully these didn’t get shredded like the original….)!!

Hollinwood pupils joined some of our friends from across the Trust at the Palace Theatre in Manchester with Miss Byrne and Miss Rudge on Monday evening. The show was ‘magical’ and our pupils were a credit to us all! I always love showing off our lovely pupils during theatre visits; their behaviour was impeccable! So proud of every single one of them!

We have had some SUPER SEAL Superstars and Stars of the Week:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Shayan for using the communication board really well during literacy..

SEAL Superstar: Xander for being able to say what makes him feel worried and excited..

• Miss Grimsley’s class:
  Star of the Week: Jason for amazing work in English using a communication board..

• SEAL Superstar: Myla for showing that she is happy when playing with the bubbles..

• Mr Wood’s class:
  Star of the Week:  Ollie for being really brave and having a great swimming lesson..

SEAL Superstar: Christopher for being a kind friend and always being helpful in the classroom..

• Mr Corrigan’s class:
  Star of the Week: Edward for fantastic listening and trying his best. A brilliant week!

SEAL Superstar: Tyler for some fantastic sharing this week and playing nicely with his friends..

Our Key Stage 1 Homework Stars..

• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Mariam for doing some fantastic listening to instructions in Art and drawing a wonderful crocodile
  SEAL Superstar: Thomas for recognising how his friends are feeling and being a good friend by trying to make his friends happy
• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Thomas for brilliant work in Maths this week
• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week: Rahmeen for working hard in Maths with her subtraction
  SEAL Superstar: Alivia – for growing in confidence and using her big, clear voice in class
  Our new ‘Marvellous Meerkat’ is Rahmeen. 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: Finlay for working hard on an independent piece of writing
  SEAL Superstar: Reece for recognising feelings in other people
• Mrs Halkyard’s class:
  Star of the Week: Maia for always doing the right thing!
  SEAL Superstar: Aqsa for recognising how other people feel

On the last week of half term I will be handing out special Head Teacher’s Certificates to pupils. I will be popping into classes over the next two weeks and speaking to staff to see who has really stood out and worked hard to deserve this award.

On Saturday, I am going to watch Disney on Ice with my family. The girls and myself can’t wait, however, Ste’s not impressed he is missing the Grand Final! I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Laura

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