Once again another week has flown by! On Monday we celebrated World Book Day early with our own ‘New Bridge Book Day.’ Many of our pupils came dressed as a character from their favourite book and we had a wonderful selection from Harry Potter to the Cat in the Hat..

..and Les Miserables to fairytale princesses and super heroes..

Thank you for providing the costumes, we know how stressful it can be (making costumes has never been one of Mrs Lamb’s strong points!) You can read more about the fun we had here and see more of the lovely pictures..

Shrove Tuesday proved another exciting day with an impressive quantity of pancakes made in Food Studies (although Mrs Lamb opted for the safer option of using a fish slice to flip them with her group as she didn’t want to risk decorating the ceiling). Next week is National Breakfast Week and Mrs Lund has kindly agreed to organise the activities. We will be having a variety of tasters during the morning tutorial to promote some healthy treats our young people can enjoy for breakfast and encourage us all to start the day with a healthy breakfast that will fuel our brains and body until lunch.

This week’s Learning Centre assembly was a celebration of the achievements of many of our students who continue to excel! Our inspiration came from the video of ‘Reece’s Story’, a film commissioned by Future Finders and professionally filmed and edited by New Bridge Productions, the enterprise run by our talented Digit4ll students..

Reece has been at New Bridge for many years and it’s fair to say he has come a long way. Reece inspires us to be confident in our abilities and grasp the opportunities that are available to us. During assembly our students listened attentively to his words of wisdom and the challenge was laid down for everyone to follow Reece’s example!

The Digit4ll students have also produced another film about Future Finders, our 1 year supported internship course for 19-25 year olds run in partnership with the Manchester College. You have already seen how Future Finders helped Reece gain the skills he needed to move into the world of work and we are very excited to see what opportunities will be opened up for this year’s students when they finish the course in June..

We spoke in last week’s blog about ‘life and work skills’ and the way we help students develop these. Miss Allison promised an update on the job interviews which started this week for Miss Evans’ group and she is pleased to report that the students devised a set of interview questions for the role of ‘Administrator/Receptionist’ to prepare themselves. It was evident that they have gained a good understanding of the potential questions they may be asked and the different skills and qualities employers may be looking for.

This week saw interviews for Steven, Luca and Fahad. We tried to make the experience as real as possible to give them a good idea of what an interview feels like..

All 3 students coped really well, overcoming their nerves to answer questions confidently. A special mention needs to go to Steven who was surprised to be interviewed by both Miss Allison and Mr Howard. Watch out Mrs Warner, there are some strong contenders for your job!

Our curriculum focus this week is PE, and we’re delighted to have been joined by Sale Sharks for the first of their six week course coaching our young people, a fantastic opportunity for them to work with professional rugby coaching staff of the highest level..

Year 7 have been working on their ball skills..

They finished dodgeball before half term and have now started tag rugby and are working on the basics of passing and running with the ball..

Our Boccia team are practising hard for their next tournament,,

Year 10 are playing basketball this term and here you can see them working on dribbling the ball..

Year 11 are currently practising badminton, boccia and new age kurling ready for their accreditation..

At the Learning Centre, the students have been working hard at keeping fit..

Our girls’ football team were thrilled to represent Manchester City in a recent match against Everton..

The Learning Centre Student Council have agreed that ‘Comic Relief’ is one of our chosen charities this year and Steven is liaising with the other reps. to plan activities for Friday 24th March. Watch this space for further news on fundraising events!

Later this month will also see the second meeting of our Learning Centre Parents Group on Wednesday 29th March at 2.00pm. We received very positive feedback from last term’s meeting and we are looking forward to welcoming parents and carers once again – please keep an eye out for letters coming home soon with further details.

Have a lovely weekend,

Judith and Dawn

You can find our full blog here

The New Bridge Horizons blog is available here for updates on our Key Stage 5 Pathway students in Lumenus, Digit4ll and Activ8 together with Future Finders students and the young people at Horizons

Click here to read this week’s blog from Graham