I spent more time this week preparing for visitors. This time it was in readiness for a team of 15 staff from Apple’s Northern Europe office who are coming in next Monday to look at how we are using the iPads, not just within our school, but across the Trust. As a Trust that provides education and care for children and adults with a wide range of special educational needs and disabilities, we’re pretty unique in exploring on such a large scale, through our Trust wide 1:1 project, how Apple’s technology will help us create accessible and inclusive learning opportunities for all and increase individual levels of independence.

Consequently, the Apple team have a keen interest in understanding the work that we are doing and working with us to discover ways in which they can further support us to be successful. We’ll be sharing with them the unique aims we have developed here at school and our progress so far with our own iPad project. However, I’m also really eager to hear their views and understand their ideas about how we can exploit this technology to its potential for the benefit of all the pupils here at school. I’ll be sure to update you on how it all went next week.

This week our pupils have been making the most of the Autumn sunshine..

On Wednesday, Mrs Holland, Mrs Cockcroft and Mr Arif’s class wrapped up warm and took a Sensory walk to Westminster Road Gardens in Failsworth. We did an Autumn themed scavenger hunt and looked at how the trees and plants are changing now the weather is getting colder.

The students were then free to explore the gardens and found some very interesting items and places they thought animals might be hiding to keep warm.

After a mini picnic, we headed back to school and talked about our findings and what our favourite smells, sounds and things we discovered were.

The class also enjoyed a trip to the cinema this week to see ‘The Kid who would be King’..

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One of the pupils in the class, Leshay, is very clear about his long term goals. He dreams of becoming a builder. Therefore, he went to meet the foreman who is currently working on constructing our extension. Leshay turned up for the important meeting equipped with some articulate questions that will give him aN insight into how he can ‘live his dream’ once he leaves school (along with some very well received chocolates!). He was also able to talk about the people who have inspired him so far. Leshay has a great understanding of how the personal steps of progress he is currently making will inevitably make him the young man he will become. Keep up the hard work!

We haven’t yet finished counting all the money raised last week for Children in Need (there were still cakes being bought on Monday!) but we do have that special feature we promised you on Miss Patchett’s Life Skills pathway class – please click here to find out how they adapted their lessons last week to support our fantastic New Bridge Children in Need cake sale!

After such a hectic week you might think they would be ready for a rest but Miss Patchett’s class have been busy supporting another charity this week, working with Rose Knipe, the Community Champion at Tesco Failsworth..

We really enjoyed our community volunteering at Tesco in aid of the Oldham Foodbank donation scheme. All the students acted appropriately in the store, conversing with the public and completing the tasks set. The students felt really proud of their achievements and the great job they did for a worthy cause. Well done everyone!

Mr Bright had a very exciting day on Thursday at the Natspec TechAbility Conference 2019 in Birmingham – please click here to find out more!

It was lovely to welcome so many families to our Parents’ Evening on Wednesday, thank you for coming. If you have not yet had chance to fill in our very short questionnaire about your visit, please could you take a few minutes to complete it here.

Mr Smith has been busy organising the next New Bridge Group Parkrun Takeover Day which is now set for Sunday 15th December. Please come along if you can – more details are available here.

Letters have gone home to all our Year 8 pupils with the first details of our incredible Disneyland Paris residential in June 2020, please return the reply slip or contact us if you have any questions.

I hope you all have a good week,

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