It’s been one of those ‘behind the scenes’ weeks for me this week. Ordinarily I’d prefer to be out and about, dropping into classes, talking to the pupils and the rest of the staff team and generally keeping up with the goings on around school. This week however, was one in which I met with the curriculum, pastoral and operational teams to review progress. As a school, we maintain a relentless focus on continually developing our offer for the pupils in order to further enhance the outcomes we achieve with them. In doing so it’s often too easy to concentrate on what you want to be better and forget to appreciate the huge strides you’ve taken since the last review. It was great to sit down with the teams and talk about recent successes. It is their unceasing dedication and commitment to offering the very best for our pupils that continues to keep our school outstanding in everything we do.

Speaking of huge strides, it was great to finish the week by getting out of an air conditioned meeting room and into a sunny Alexandra Park for the New Bridge takeover of the Junior Park Run. My 5 year old son and I had a brilliant time, joining up with pupils and staff from around the New Bridge Group to complete the 2 km run around this beautiful park on a crisp Sunday morning. We’ll be running the New Bridge Group takeover once a month so please do head along – it’s completely free and you can register here to take part: https://www.parkrun.org.uk/register/. You don’t necessarily need to wait until the next month either as the run happens every Sunday at 9 am. It’s a great way to fit in some exercise as a family.

This week we hear from one of our Year 9 classes..

9HSY have had a fantastic start to the year after settling really well back into the school routine after the summer holidays.

In Learning for Life, we have been learning about fixed mindset and growth mindset. We have been discussing how a growth mindset can help to build our confidence and self esteem, instead of saying “I am rubbish at Maths” we can say “I will try my best in Maths”.

In Art, we have been working on our self portraits. We have discussed our facial features and what our hair looks like with our peers. We have practised sketching our facial features in the correct position on our self portraits, and working on ways we can improve.

During our English lessons, we have been focusing on the topic of Space. We have discussed and researched the solar system, and the International Space Station. We have used Kahoot!, the game-based learning platform, to test our knowledge on what we already know about space and what we have learnt since starting the topic. All the students in 9HSY have really enjoyed this topic as we have learnt so many amazing things!

Also during some of our English lessons, we have been using our iPads to access the literacy apps – Teach Your Monster to Read, Spellzone and Literacy Planet.

In Living Skills, we have been focusing on Rules and Laws; looking at the rules in place in different environments and the laws in place in the UK. Following this we have discussed and learnt about the consequences of breaking rules and laws.

As well as Rules and Laws, we have also been learning about Safety in the Home, discussing what may be dangerous at home, likes knives and cleaning products, and how we can prevent the danger.

We had a very exciting visit from a police officer during one of our Rules and Laws lessons. The students had the opportunity to ask him any questions they had and he showed us some of the equipment he uses and explained why he used it.

We had a few very eager students who wanted to go and see his police car, as you can see..

In PE, we have been developing our skills whilst playing Boccia. This has also helped to improve social skills within our class.

We have been researching in depth about masks, the origin of them and why they can be used in Dance and Drama. We have started to design our own masks using images on the internet, and once they are all designed, we will start to create the masks we have designed.

We hope you have enjoyed finding out about our class!

Miss Silvester’s class are especially proud of one of their pupils, Ruhish, who has been making really great progress within Living Skills. Here you can see Ruhish following simple instructions and locating the correct equipment to carry out her task of making toast for the class and being a good friend – she did a brilliant job!!

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The pupils have been working very hard in English too and Mrs Taylor was very pleased to award certificates for the work they have completed using Spellzone and Teach Your Monster to Read..

I am looking forward to seeing you at Parents’ Evening on Wednesday 20th November.

Gavin

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

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

You can find my previous blog posts here