What a week! If you’ve been keeping up with our posts on Facebook, it’ll be no surprise to many of you that a group of our Year 8 pupils hopped over to Disneyland Paris for what has become an established New Bridge tradition and part of our annual calendar of residential trips. We were joined by other Year 8 pupils from Hollinwood Academy and Spring Brook Academy making it a real Trust-wide experience. The park was so vast and varied that it had something for all our pupils; thrillseeking fast rides, chilled out relaxing rides, dazzling 3-D shows, meet and greets with your favourite Disney stars, and live action performances and parades. This was all on top of simply just exploring the park, soaking up the sights and sounds, immersing yourself in the fun-filled atmosphere, and enjoying the sheer spectacle of it all.

It’s fair to say then that we all had an absolutely brilliant time. For me though, what made it such a positive experience was the feeling of it being one big family holiday. All of us being together, pupils and staff, spending time with each other outside of our normal day to day roles back in school, gave us a chance to see a different side of our characters, to get to know each other better and strengthen our relationships. So whilst the high and lows of the various rollercoasters I spent my time on were a great deal of fun, what will stay with me from my first trip to Disneyland will be the teamwork of the staff as they went above and beyond to make the holiday a truly memorable experience for the pupils. It will be the camaraderie amongst the pupils as they looked out for each other, supported each other and developed their friendships with each other. It will be knowing that the New Bridge family ethos has been strengthened and the relationships that have been nurtured will contribute to our continuing success back in school.

Back at school, the other pupils have been sharing some of the Disney fun. Mr Fieldhouse explains the impressive project his class undertook..

The theme for this week has been Disney and since Disney started with animation, so class 11SFE (and others) decided to learn about the world of animation. Using iPads as cameras with stop frame animation and time lapse photography apps, we embarked on the journey of becoming animators. There are three animated films below. First, the test film, about 10 seconds at a frame rate of 9 frames a second. The next film we scripted and features the characters of RoundBoy and ConeGirl on an adventure. The animation is complex with each frame containing dozens of different characters moving to their own stories. The third animation was improvised as the pupils went along. The final section is the time-lapse photography of  the days and hours that went into making the animations – enjoy!

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Mrs Parkinson’s class decided to create the Eiffel Tower and hid a number of Disney characters within the picture before challenging the rest of the school to come and find them..

Miss Dunkerley’s class set up their own French café and took turns to serve each other as part of our Super Learning Day which focused on kindness..

Mrs Fennelly’s class had a lot of fun making their own Disney creations, both the edible kind..

..and the artistic variety..

They also had a lot of fun with Disney’s Mr Potato Head!

Last week we promised you more details of our Year 7 pupils’ day out to the Royal Armouries in Leeds..

It was an exciting day for our Year 7 students last week when we went to the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. When we arrived, we were surprised at how big it was. A huge five floors to explore! It was a perfect opportunity to get out of the classroom and discover.

We were hooked as soon as we entered the building when our Lords and Ladies greeted us dressed in their finest. We also learnt about Henry VIII. We were faced with a challenge, to recreate a suit of armour for the King.

One of the highlights of the trip was when we looked at the Hall of Steel, a huge display of arms and armour. Another popular activity was when we were given the opportunity to design a pattern for Henry’s new armour. After watching a fantastic enactment of a swordfight, we were lucky to get some free time to do even more exploring.

Here are some of our pupils to tell you what they enjoyed the most..

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Our Year 8 pupils weren’t the only ones having adventures out of school this week, we also had yet another Duke of Edinburgh’s expedition. I’m not going to spoil the surprise as Mr Taylor will be bringing us a full report of their adventures next week, but I can tell you that the expedition was a big success and we are very proud of how our pupils rose to the challenge.

Gavin

You can find Dawn’s blog for the Learning Centre 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

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