Those of you who are regular readers of the blog will be aware of the journey we are going on as a school and wider Trust to realise the potential of technology to enhance teaching and learning. One particular focus we’re exploring here at New Bridge is how technology can assist pupils with the most severe communication difficulties, profound and multiple learning difficulties or visual, hearing or physical impairments to access our curriculum. It was therefore an exciting moment this week to bring together a group of specialist professionals to develop a vision that will support this aim. In addition to our own IT team and Heads of School, we were joined around the table by specialist teachers for the deaf and visually impaired as well as representatives from the fields of speech and language therapy, augmentative and alternative communication technology and assistive technology.

The purpose of the meeting was to explore how we can work in partnership to meet the communication and access needs of our pupils by exploiting to its potential, the iPad technology we are introducing into the school. It was clear from all around the table that there is deep desire to work collaboratively to assess all aspects of an individual’s communication and access needs and build a personalised intervention package that ensures the iPad assists each child to engage with our curriculum and make progress in their learning. What’s even more exciting is that where there are barriers to this, or the technology currently doesn’t exist to support the needs of individual pupils, then our current partnership with Apple allows us to work with their engineers to create the solutions to overcome them. These are exciting times, we truly are working at the cutting edge when it comes to realising the potential of technology for our children to help them achieve their destinations. To borrow a phrase from Graham, “this is how we do it in Oldham!”

Miss Silvester’s Communication Group have recently enjoyed their very own ‘California Week’..

We looked at key areas in California, the Walk of Fame in Hollywood..

.Muscle Beach..

..and we created our own surf shack..

We went ‘surfing’ on our class made surf board..

..did our Hollywood handprints..

..and made pizzas..

..and milkshakes..

..for our surf party at the end of the week..

We were put through our paces by the Activ8 circuit and supported through it fantastically – thank you!

Then we did some ‘California dreaming’ in our sensory journey/Sherbourne session..

We had a fantastic week!!

We are very proud of Lucy, one of our Year 7 pupils.

Lucy has very kindly had her beautiful long hair cut so that she can donate it to The Little Princess Trust, a charity who provide real hair wigs to children and young people with hair loss, and fund vital research into childhood cancer.

Well done Lucy, your generous donation will make a real difference to another young lady.

As promised, you can now read Mr Taylor’s report on our very successful Bronze Duke of Edinburgh’s expedition here and find out how our young people overcame their personal challenges – a fantastic achievement! Well done everyone and a massive ‘thank you’ to the staff who made the expedition possible.

Have a great half term. See you all soon.

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

You can find my previous blog posts here