What a week! As you may know, our Year 11s have been over in Wales for the annual residential to Haven. It looks like they have had a brilliant time and I have heard nothing but praise from Mr Smith about Dom and Poppy, our two Year 11 Medtia students who went on the trip (you can view the pictures here). As a result of the residential, our week has looked a little different as the Key Stage 4 pathways students have been based with us for the week and students have had more pathways time. Lumenus have had a fantastic week of workshops at Oldham Theatre Workshop, Activ8 have spent lots of time in the sun with their sports sessions in the park and Digit4ll have been working hard editing films and creating canvases!
I have spent much of my week balancing the books and planning our staffing and timetables for next year, whilst managing our huge growth in students!
On Tuesday our Bridging the Gap students based at Manchester Metropolitan University had their annual graduation ceremony. Unfortunately as I was away in London, I was unable to attend but Mr Quinn went to celebrate with Reece and Lewis. They both gave incredible speeches and we are very proud of them – their job coach Genna has a little speech of her own to make today..
So here is the update from the sneak preview we gave you of the Bridging the Gap Graduation which took place this week at Manchester Metropolitan University. Reece and Lewis did us all proud with amazing speeches thanking everyone who has helped them this year on their journey into paid work. It was an amazing day for all the employers who work alongside them, their families and myself as their job coach – I could not be any prouder of how far they have come. Congratulations boys!!
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More excitement on Wednesday, when I joined superstar student Ed at the Atrium where we were filmed by ‘That’s TV Manchester’ to celebrate our work at The Atrium. I am so unbelievably proud of Ed and of all of our Atrium staff, as you can see the video really shows what a difference our staff and provision make to our students. A huge thank you to Becci, Sammy and Toni who do such an incredible job each and every day!
We also celebrated Armed Forces Day at the Atrium on Wednesday and, like last year, our staff and students pulled out all the stops to make sure it was a great success!
On Thursday I met with Councillor Shaid Mushtaq and Mrs Tootill to tour the new Springboard Project building next door and to show him around Medtia. Next door is looking brilliant and will provide a world class teaching environment for some of the students within our Group! We can’t wait to welcome the students and staff of the Springboard Project onto the campus in September. It was also great to talk to Cllr Mushtaq about our provision – he was extremely impressed and we hope to work with the council in the future to extend our employability offer to students based within mainstream schools in Oldham. More on that soon I am sure!
Now over to our staff and students for some updates, starting with our job coach, Hayley..
Over the past few weeks in Hortus work experience the students have been tidying up the grounds of the Learning Centre to make it look beautiful and fresh ready for the summer (which we finally seem to be seeing something of!!) The students have also been taking care of the lettuces which they planted a few weeks ago.
Here is Josh working with Tony, getting the soil ready to plant the lettuces in the garden patches..
We took a time lapse video on the iPad to show the work which gets done..
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Summer had the task of tidying up the flower beds at the front entrance to the Learning Centre, we had a lovely couple of hours tidying the flower beds and the grounds. Flowers have recently been replanted and if anyone goes to the Learning Centre, I’m sure you’ll agree it is looking quite lovely now.
This week in our work experience session, Josh and Summer washed and dried the lettuces and then all bagged the leaves up ready to sell.
We had Jade our number one sales woman on duty for selling them to any of the staff at the Learning Centre. Summer made the sign for our lettuces and a bag of mixed leaves was 20p, that’s right just 20p!!!! Bargain…. I bought some myself and it was lovely. Here we have a photo of Miss Allison buying some lettuce from us. Thanks for the custom.
As I mentioned earlier, our pathway students have been very busy this week, including Lumenus..
This week in Lumenus it has been a very busy week. We have been joined by the Key Stage 4 Lumenus pupils and have done some very exciting things! This week we have been looking at selfie images and self perception and how we view ourselves. On Tuesday we all watched a performance at Oldham Theatre Workshop called ‘Presto’ by The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama from London. It was a very exciting non verbal performance which was all about the leader of the group wanting there to be only 12 notes and none more than that. However, not everyone conformed to this and there were more than 12 notes, this made the leader of the group very angry. In the end the leader accepted that everyone is unique and free to play their own note, even if it sounds different. The performance was enjoyed by both staff and students..
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On Wednesday Lumenus delivered drama games to Chrysalis, an adult theatre company. The Lumenus students did very well delivering this and enjoyed spending time with their friends at Chrysalis.
In the afternoon Michelle from Oldham Theatre Workshop delivered a writing workshop to Lumenus. Both Lumenus classes really enjoyed using their imaginative creative minds and started to write their own poems!
On Thursday we continued our morning exercise routine at Medtia that we have been doing all week – here are some pictures of us working out!
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Both Lumenus classes enjoyed using the performance space at Oldham Theatre Workshop and we continued to work on our drama workshop skills and writing our poems. That’s all from us this week, we hope you’re all enjoying the sun!
Next week we have an open morning for new students on Tuesday but before that we have our very first Employability Awards Evening on Monday evening! I am so excited about this and look forward to welcoming many of our students, families and employers to celebrate another year of incredible successes!
Have a wonderful weekend,
Daniel
Head of Key Stage 5 Pathways
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