I would like to wish a very Happy New Year to all our pupils and families. I hope you have all had a lovely break and are ready for the new year ahead.

We have had a very busy week at Hollinwood Academy and I am looking forward to the term ahead.

Firstly, we have welcomed Mrs Woodhead to our teaching staff. Every time I have been into her class the children have been engaged and enthused about their learning and Mrs Woodhead has thoroughly enjoyed her first week at Hollinwood Academy..

We have also welcomed Mrs Stubbs to Miss Meadows’ class to support the pupils..

..and Mr Skander has joined Mr Heap’s class to support the pupils..

We are very fortunate to have such fantastic new staff.

Before we finished for Christmas, Miss McMurray’s class held a charity event at break time as part of their Prince William Award and raised £23.50, in just 15 minutes, for Cancer Research UK. This week they received a thank you letter..

The pupils make me so proud on a daily basis.

We have had two school trips and an external Maths visitor this week. Our external visitor was Louise Wilde who is the lead professional from the Maths Mastery teacher research group. As a school, the Primary department follow the Maths Mastery schemes of work and Louise came to visit a number of classes to give advice on how we can develop mastery further in Maths. She has given us some fantastic ideas for our mastery journey and I am looking forward to our teams working more closely in the future. Louise was also extremely impressed with all of the classes she visited and she said that the school must be very proud of how inclusive we are. She praised the warm and happy environments and was overwhelmed by the number of happy children that she saw; every class we visited and corridor she walked down had happy and friendly children. She said that it was an absolute pleasure to visit Hollinwood Academy and the children were an asset to the school. I couldn’t agree more with what Louise has observed and said!

Miss Rudge has all the details of the very special trip that took place this week..

On Wednesday, some of our lovely Secondary pupils made their way to the Oldham Coliseum Theatre to watch ‘Cinderella the Pantomime’. This was the only relaxed performance of the run. A relaxed performance is a slightly different theatrical experience and allowed this much loved pantomime to be presented in a more accessible way; specially designed for an audience with sensory and communication needs such as Autism..

Extra theatre staff were available for support, the lighting was softer, noise levels were quieter and our young people were able to exit and re-enter the auditorium whenever they liked. There was a ‘quiet space’ available for anyone needing to take a peaceful moment and also a ‘chill out zone’ offering colouring and other activities, with the show relayed on the TV screen nearby. We were also provided with a visual guide to aid our young people further. The guide explained how the day would look and exactly what would be involved in the show.

Our young people, as always, were an absolute credit to us! They behaved impeccably throughout and loved the show! We cheered Cinderella and Buttons and booed the baddies such as the Evil Step Mother and Step Sisters!

Wednesday was also Beth’s 18th and she was delighted when the cast gave her a big birthday shout out and the whole audience sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her! 

I’m so very proud of our children. They were wonderful. A massive thanks to our unbelievable staff team too! They, as always, went above and beyond to ensure that the experience was one that was thoroughly enjoyed by all!

Let’s see what Miss Parkinson’s class have been learning this week..

What a wonderful start to the year we have had this week. All the children have come back to school with a positive attitude towards their learning. This week we have continued with our learning on multiplication and division and loved making multiplication arrays with numicon and blocks.

In English this week we have been learning about homophones and enjoyed matching two words that sound the same together and recognising the differences..

This week saw us introduce our new topic of The Victorians… we even got to experience what school would have been like in the Victorian times!!! The children experienced the very strict rules and punishments of the classroom! 

It’s safe to say all the children prefer school in the modern day!

In my last blog Mr Hartley told us how his class have been using reciprocal reading and shown some excellent skills, acting as a teacher by creating their own questions, summarising the story, predicting what will happen next and clarifying the meaning of some of the most difficult words. I can now share a short clip of this with you..

[fvplayer src=”http://newbridgeschool.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReciprocalReading.mov”]

Now to some of our amazing SEAL Superstars and our Stars of the Week:

• Mrs Dunsdon’s class:
  Star of the Week: Xander for using extended sentences to explain, describe and respond..

SEAL Superstar: Jacob for being able to recognise and say when he is doing good singing..

• Mrs Lomax’s class:
  Star of the Week: Lucas and Vincent for having done some fantastic work on our new topic and drawing wonderful castles – fully labelled!

SEAL Superstar: Yousef for being able to identify his strengths..

• Miss Parkinson’s class:
  Star of the Week: Ivy for fantastic participation in our topic lesson this week of The Victorians..

SEAL Superstar: Brodey for settling well into his new class..

• Mr Heap’s class:
  Star of the Week and ‘Marvellous Meerkat’: Olivia for identifying unfamiliar sounds in phonics this week. 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: Summer for having a fantastic week..

Letters have gone home with details of our February Holiday Club, so please remember to return the forms by Friday 18th January if you would like to book a place for your child. If you need another copy of the letter or have any questions, please let us know.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Laura

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can find all our previous blog entries here