On Monday the Learning Centre Parent Group had the pleasure of welcoming Toyoba and four other members of the Oldham Short Breaks team. They spoke to a group of 12 parents and provided a lot of very pertinent information about what the team offer. They put to bed the misunderstanding from some that Short Breaks only involve breaks or time away and explained how the service actually offers much more than that.

The service provides disabled children and young people with opportunities and experiences that achieve positive outcomes for them. Their aim is for short breaks to contribute to keeping disabled children safe and healthy, enabling them to enjoy new activities, make friends and have new learning opportunities, as well as preparing teenagers for adulthood. It was an interesting and informative meeting.

Watch this space for the date of our next Parent Group meeting and details of the professional who will be coming to talk to the group next term.

This week Mr Barker and myself have been doing learning walks, dropping in to a variety of lessons and activities. We have been impressed to observe our students fully engaged in their lessons and clearly enjoying their learning.

I was asked to go in and observe an ICT lesson in Ebase 2. Mrs Joubert was getting all the students involved in using a switch which activated a fan to create a snow scene. The students thoroughly enjoyed the activity; their faces said it all and they were very keen to stop and start the fan via the switch to create a wonderful glitter storm effect. I did, of course, get very messy and am still picking glitter out of my hair. Thanks guys!

There was more mess and mayhem in Mr Newport’s Science option. This week the students have been learning about microorganisms. It was great to see all our students enjoying learning about some pretty complicated Science facts – they enjoyed it even more when their experiment involved mixing certain ingredients and then standing back to watch them explode! (I managed to avoid this one, better luck next time all!)

I was delighted to be asked to join our Year 13 students as they read out their very own play. Mrs Keane explains:

This term in English, Year 13 have used the topic of ‘Space’ as a theme for their work. As they are an imaginative group, they decided to write and perform their own play. First they wrote a synopsis, an outline of the plot, and decided what characters would be in their play. Then the group cast themselves in the roles – we had aliens, astronauts and robot sheep! As a group they then wrote their own lines, this meant everyone was comfortable with what they were saying. Next they listened to a range of ‘Space’ music and decided on the Star Wars theme to open the play.

We spent a couple of lessons rehearsing the lines, thinking particularly about expression and delivery of the lines. The group decided that they didn’t want to perform to everybody at the Learning Centre, just a select number of VIPs. So far, Miss Wright and Miss Allison have been our special guests..

I hope the pictures do them justice – I especially liked Josh’s depiction of the captain of a crashed spaceship!

On Wednesday our Learning Centre girls football team enthusiastically set off to the City training ground for the girls’ football competition. Unfortunately, torrential downpours stopped play and they returned early, sodden but still in good spirits and without grumble! Here’s to the next one ladies.

This Thursday, teams from the Learning Centre and Medtia took part in a football tournament involving other colleges. As previously mentioned in my blog, Kyle has taken on the role of manager of our newly formed Learning Centre team. He has been running training sessions on a daily basis for a couple of weeks, offering words of encouragement and advice to everyone involved; as Sabiha, our goalie put it, ‘He aced it.’ She said of the match, “I really enjoyed myself and everyone was supporting each other. I was really impressed with all the team. We all had a great time!”

Here’s a report from Kyle:

All our team were enthusiastic and motivated in both matches. They worked together as a team and it was great to hear comments from other staff on how good we played. We even remained calm when it got a bit physical and there was a bit of pushing and shoving from the other team. I’m proud of them all.

The scores were 6-0 and 3-2. A big ‘thank you!’ to Kyle and the team for your hard work and dedication, you represented all the best parts of the Learning Centre.

I’d also like to say a special ‘thank you!’ to Kyle, Nathan and Sabiha who have continued to help set up and run sports lessons in Mr Smith’s absence. They’ve also been supported by other students Elliot and Imnann who offered their help this week..

As part of the Learning Centre Employability curriculum, Miss Mehta has invited speakers to come and talk to the students about their jobs and the skills they need. The students have loved having Mr Schiavo who talked about his job as an ice-cream man, and Michael Ritson from the Visual Impairment team who also brought some special glasses which the students wore to help them understand the difficulties Sabeel faces on a day to day basis. Needless to say, Sabeel showed us all how it’s done. It was really interesting for the students and myself to gain an insight into Sabeel’s world..

Our Learning Centre choir continues to go from strength to strength as evidenced in these pictures – Mr Thompson can definitely bust some moves! They have also been down at the school site rehearsing for next Tuesday’s Christmas concert. I can’t wait to see them in action, they’re all very excited!

The Drama group have been having lots of fun too!

Once again I have been well looked after by Mrs Gillett’s food industry group..

Thank you Joseph, that was delicious!

I hope to see some of you at the Christmas concert on Tuesday. Don’t worry if you’re not able to join us, the Enterprise students from Digit4ll will be filming the performance and producing a DVD – order forms will be coming home soon.

Have a lovely weekend,

Dawn

You can find Gavin’s blog for the school site here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

Click here to read this week’s news from Graham

You can find my previous blog posts here