WOW! What an amazing and fun filled week to finish the first term off with. I am not going to lie, I will be glad to see the end of 2020!! What a year we have all had. I would like to start my blog this week by sharing with you the students who received a Head Teacher’s Award for this half term. Well done to you all and keep up the hard work..

Here are some of the highlights from this week:

Food bank donations…

Thank you so much to all of our young people, families and staff for their very kind donations towards our Christmas ‘93p for the 9.3’ campaign. It was reported in May this year that Oldham now has the highest poverty rates in the North West, with a recent rise of 9.3%. As a school we wanted to do something about this and invited donations of 93p or non-perishable food items. We are thrilled to reveal that as a school we collected an amazing £186.25!!!!! Along with lots and lots of food items! This has all been donated to the Oldham Food bank. Thanks again for your wonderful generosity. Mr Heap and Miss Rudge 🙂

Christmas dinner, it was delicious..

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The students looked fantastic in their festive jumpers..

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Special visit from Santa and his elves..

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Let’s see what some of our wonderful students have been doing this week, starting with Mrs Halkyard’s class..

What a term! It has been great getting to know the boys; September feels like a long time ago and we are so proud of how the boys have adapted since coming back.

This week we have been having lots of fun getting into the Christmas spirit. We have made some lovely wooden decorations, reindeer bags, reindeer food, cards and calendars and painted some pots!

We also made some wooden decorations for the new sensory garden outside.

We loved watching the Pantomime and taking part in the bauble design competition. Well done to Tyler for winning a prize!

It was also lovely to all sit together and enjoy Christmas dinner in our Christmas jumpers.

To link with our science topic, States of Matter, we made our own Christmas chocolates and put in boxes to take home to show how chocolate goes from a solid to a liquid and back again.

So that we didn’t completely explode with Christmas excitement we have still done our daily lessons. Some of the children watched ‘Monty the Penguin’ which was a John Lewis advert a few years ago. We thought about the feelings of the boy and the penguin and wrote a letter to Father Christmas from the boys. The letters were lovely!

We have also been playing Maths and phonics games which everyone has enjoyed.

The boys did some great team work when completing a Christmas quiz – they used their iPads to scan the QR codes to find out the answers.

After a busy week (and term) we are looking forward to a lovely break!

Mr Stewart’s form have had a busy week too…

This week, the pupils have finished their bridge building project as part of their Life Skills Challenges work. Everyone’s bridge was able to cross a gap of 30cm and hold a weight successfully. We were all really impressed with the determination to succeed and problem-solving skills that pupils showed during this challenge.

With it being the last week of term, we have also had the opportunity to do lots of Christmas activities including pin the nose on Rudolph..

..and gingerbread decorating..

We also studied how Christmas was celebrated during Tudor times, and made our very own versions of the Tudor Rose.

Lots of pupils and staff across the whole school also looked very Christmassy on Wednesday for Christmas Jumper Day.

Now to our amazing SUPER STARs and SEALs

• Mr Corrigan’s STAR this week is Victory for settling back into school really well and having a great last week!

• Mr Corrigan’s SEAL Superstar is Joshua for trying his best this week with some excellent listening.

• Mrs Halkyard’s STAR of the week is Joshua for supporting his friends during lessons. Well done!
• Mrs Halkyard’s DOJO winner is Marcus. Well done!
• Miss McDonald’s STAR of the week is Renico for his fantastic effort in English this week and trying his best. Well done!
• Miss McDonald’s DOJO winners are Sofia and Corey. Well done!

• Miss Tootill’s STAR of the week is the whole class for having a fantastic Autumn term.

• Mrs Lomax’s STAR of the week is the whole class for having a fantastic Autumn term.

Last week, we presented a number of students with some outstanding self-isolation learning certificates and the following students received a £10 voucher for their efforts during self-isolation:

• Arissa

• Diego

• Hamza

• Jared

• Jack

• Ijaaz

• Maja

• Maxwell

• Neive

• Ollie

• Zachy

Finally, I would like to thank all our children, young people, parents, carers, staff and governors for all your hard work and support this term. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas break and I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. I look forward to seeing you all back on Monday 4th January 2021.

I’d like to end my blog with Hudson who is in Year 8 at Hollinwood Academy. They have been learning how to play jingle bells on the guitar in their spare time..

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AMAZING!

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas holiday and two weeks rest. I am ready to spend some quality time with my girls and husband.

Mrs Millard

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