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How have we already been in school 7 weeks? This school year is going past very quickly.

This week Mr Heap took a group of Key Stage 3 pupils over to the ball hall for a basketball competition. Here is Mr Heap with a recap of the morning..

This term within our PE curriculum we have been participating in basketball. All of the KS3 students have been learning and developing a range of skills within basketball, as well as taking part in class competitive games and developing their confidence and communication skills. All of the students have behaved brilliantly within lessons and it has been great to see all the students helping each other and encouraging each other throughout each lesson.
This week Mr Smith organised a KS3/4 basketball tournament and gave Hollinwood Academy the opportunity to take part. Obviously our KS3 students were very excited when they heard about this and they have been talking about it for several weeks.

We selected our Hollinwood Academy basketball team and were ready to showcase the skills that we have developed and practised over the last 6 weeks within P.E. We selected our students based on their individual efforts and behaviour within P.E. this term. All of the students represented the school impeccably and it was great to see how well they worked together. They won every game within their group and made it through to the final and won the overall tournament. It was a pleasure to see how well they behaved both on and off the basketball court and even better to see their sportsmanship as they went to shake each person’s hand after each game.

Thanks to Mr Smith and the P.E. team for organising what was another fantastic morning and we are looking forward to many more to come. I would like to say a big thank you to all of the staff that supported our young people throughout the morning. It was great to see you motivate, encourage and even celebrate with our students! WELL DONE HOLLINWOOD ACADEMY!!

This week we have Miss Tootill and Miss Simms, two of our new teachers in primary and Miss Rudge who are going to share with you what their classes have been up to this week starting with Miss Simm’s class..

In English we started the term by looking at “The True Story of The Three Little Pigs”. We really enjoyed acting in the role of different characters and finding out that the wolf wasn’t so bad after all! We used Talk for Writing to help us develop our own stories with different characters. We have now moved on to Halloween poetry. As you can see, we have really enjoyed dressing up in Halloween costumes and exploring different spooky items. We even decorated our classroom with webs, spiders and bats!

This half term we have been working on place value and addition in Maths. We can recognise the place value of a 3-digit number and add numbers up to 3-digits. This week we have been working on answering some scary Halloween word problems.

We have had lots of fun finding out how sound travels in our Science lessons. We have been on a sound walk around school, made a string telephone to talk to our friends and even had a sing song on our very own hand made guitar.

In Art we have been learning how to draw self-portraits as well as learning how to write our name in a graffiti style. This week we wrote different Halloween words graffiti style! We also got to get very messy and splattered paint all over our work to make it really look like a piece of street art.

Our History lessons have shown us how important transport is. We have researched transport from the past and present to see how it has changed over time. We have flown our own paper aeroplanes, created our own steam train and became Vikings for the afternoon and set sail our own boats..

This week we became the inventor and designed and started to make our very own transport! Lots of us challenged ourselves and thought about what our transport model would need to make it suitable for land, sea and air.

Now over to Miss Tootill’s class..

This week the children have done some outstanding learning. We have started each morning by collectively trying to solve a different problem, the children have had so much fun and enjoyed the challenge.

In our English lessons have been looking at two different poems inspired by Halloween, from these children have written their own gruesome acrostic poems which they loved! Next week we shall be learning about the tale of Macbeth, just in time for Halloween.

In our Maths lessons we have been learning about multiplication. The children have been solving tricky multiplication questions by using array tables to solve different questions. Next week we are going to apply our knowledge to solve multiplication problem solving questions.

During this half term we have settled down into our new class, built great friendships and welcomed everyone with open arms ahead of this academic year.

We had lots of fun and enjoyed wearing yellow to help raise Mental Health Awareness.

Despite being an fulfilled half term class KS2LTO will be losing Mrs Davies next Friday as she will be on leave for maternity, we shall miss you lots and we wish you all the best on your new arrival.

Let’s see what Miss Rudge has been up to..

A few weeks ago, Fred’s form tutor Mr Francos and his Art teacher Miss Rudge were invited to attend a very exciting Art exhibition as part of the Rossendale Art Trail 2019! Our very own Mr Fred in Year 8 was showcasing his beautiful ‘Superhero work’. The Art trail showcased the work of over 50 artists at 20 venues. Fred, along with Ajaz and Andrew Holland were exhibiting together for the first time. As well as painting and drawing, ‘Fantastic Fred’ ran an Art workshop and everyone had a go at drawing their very own Super Heroes. Both Mr Francos and Miss Rudge were absolutely blown away by all the work! We are so proud of you Fred; thank you for inviting us! You made my weekend!!

During Mindfulness this week, our Key Stage 2 learners made some beautiful Origami Ships. Even though the original design was pretty tricky, we helped our friends with folding and each of us ended up making a beautiful piece of paper Art! We discussed the idea of ‘Friendship’ and the qualities that make a good friend. We then decorated our ‘Friend Ships’ with key words and beautiful colourful designs.

Our Communication Group had lots of fun creating a group piece using swing painting! We added paint to a balloon and attached this to a canvas stand. Miss Rudge carefully pierced a hole in the bottom of the balloon and we had lots of fun swinging the balloon and watching the paint patterns being made! A really lovely lesson 😊

On Monday, our GCSE Art pupils attended our annual Art trip to Manchester’s Northern Quarter. We were interested in seeing for ourselves some of the wonderful and thought-provoking Street Art on our doorstep! We took iPads and documented these images to include in our GCSE portfolios. We even stopped by the infamous Fred Aldous Art supply shop and some of us bought a few Arts and Crafts products using our spends from home. A truly lovely time had by all. I was so proud of each and every one of our pupils. The level of maturity shown walking around Manchester was unbelievable! We now have lots of wonderful photographs to discuss and use going forward. Thank you to Mr Valentine and Miss Taylor for supporting too – we sang happy birthday to Miss Taylor who was celebrating her birthday on the same day!

Last week, our Year 9 pupils were treated to a wonderful Pantomime workshop from Ben Cain at the Oldham Coliseum Theatre. This year, Hollinwood Academy have joined with the Coliseum as part of their Secondary School’s partnership. We have lots of very exciting workshops, visits and performances to look forward to as a school as part of our new partnership. We got to work with props and costumes that have actually been used on the Coliseum stage!