What a week! It may be approaching the end of the year for us but things certainly haven’t slowed down! This week we have held transition visits, exams, trips to Chester Zoo and one of our partner schools have had a visit from Ofsted!

On Wednesday this week, our Digit4ll students who are joining us next year came up for a taster morning. They got to try out a range of activities including video editing and using our print equipment – it was lovely to meet some of the students that are joining us and we have further visits arranged for later in the term. On Thursday our Lumenus students had their end of year rewards trip to Chester Zoo! They had a brilliant time as you will hear all about from Summer in a moment.

On Thursday we also held a full transition day for our Pre-Internship and Bridging the Gap students who are joining the pathways next year. Another brilliant day with lots of ambitious students looking at placements for their first term and talking about their hopes and ambitions for the future..

We also had visitors on Thursday from school who came up to work with Digit4ll to prepare some videos for our upcoming Sports Awards evening. It was all kept very secretive behind closed doors, but Mr Smith assures me that there are some great surprises coming up on the evening and even a live performance from our school rock band! We hope that our Activ8 students and families can join us for what promises to be a brilliant night.

Now over to our staff and students for some further updates…

A day in the life of Summer
Lumenus Pathway

Today is a very exciting day because Lumenus Key Stage 5 went to Chester Zoo! I have been looking forward to this as our end of year rewards trip! And after all the hard work everyone’s put into the show, it’s a well deserved trip.

We started the morning very excited and although it was raining in Oldham, by the time we got to Chester Zoo the sun came out. When we got there we went through admin and we all got big green stickers and we started our adventure!

First up we went to visit the elephant and monkeys. Then we went to the bat cave and it was very dark in there! We saw a sleeping tiger too. That was one of my favourite parts of the trip!

We saw sloths, snakes, spider monkeys, apes, orangutans, meerkats, flamingos, giraffes, ant eaters, penguins and so many other animals!

Another one of my favourite part of the Zoo was the butterfly cave it was very beautiful, so many different coloured butterflies!

The last stop of the day was the predator exhibition. There was so many dinosaurs that looked so life like I felt like I had travelled back in time! There was one dinosaur that squirted out water at everyone I found it hilarious!

It had been a very long day with lots walking and it’s fair to say that we were all very tired! I had a little sleep on the bus on the way back!

You can see all the pictures from our day out here..

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”182″ gal_title=”Lumenus Chester Zoo”]

I hope you all have a good weekend!

Summer 

Our job coach Bethany has an update for us on our work experience placements..

Our students have been busy at Hortus this week! Josh, Grace and Summer have all been making sure that the Learning Centre has been maintained and any unwanted weeds had been taken away making the allotments looking all nice and tidy again.

Before starting on cleaning up the weeds ready for the new plants, Josh and Grace have been preparing canes ready for runner beans to be planted. They both did amazing job with this and the last few weeks of learning meant they were able to work together to get the job done. After this, Josh and Grace carried on working well as a team to clear spaces in the allotments that had weeds in them ready for some new plants to be placed there.

Summer has also been working well, clearing the planters that are based around the Learning Centre. Summer has done the work independently and, just like Josh and Grace’s work, it has all been completed to a high standard.

Mr Blackburn has commented on how well they have all been doing over the last few weeks – how well they have all settled in and how hard they have all been working. Well done again Josh, Grace and Summer!

This week Dominic D. received our ‘Worker of the Week’ award – congratulations!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, on Tuesday and Wednesday Spring Brook Academy, one of our partner schools in the MAT, were visited by Ofsted. I was based at the school for some time over the two days to support my colleagues and I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the students and staff. Ofsted is a stressful time for everyone but they conducted themselves brilliantly and it was a real privilege to be a part of the process and to see what an incredible job the team at Spring Brook do every single day! You were truly inspirational and with New Bridge’s Ofsted coming up at any time now, it was great to learn from the best!

Have a fantastic weekend… I am off to sunny Blackpool for the weekend to see possibly the best singer in the world in concert… the one and only Jane McDonald!

Daniel
Head of Key Stage 5 Pathways

You can view our previous blog entries here

News from the Learning Centre and New Bridge School can be found here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham