Welcome to another week.

In my last blog, I mentioned that the students were involved in our ‘Flexi-Space’ project with Jon Large and his team. As you can see from the pictures, there were a lot of students who got themselves engaged and involved in the project..

The next step now is for our team of 6 students who are going to work with Jon and look at how we can put the ‘Flexi-Space’ into action.

On Monday a group of 10 students from Medtia joined the students from the Learning Centre for the Year 13 residential to Calvert. I am going to ask the staff team from Medtia to give you all an update next week on their week away. Meanwhile, back at Medtia, there has been plenty of work going on..

Last week the DIGIT4LL 1 pathway visited the Sharp Project in Manchester, home to over 60 digital entrepreneurs and production companies specialising in digital content production, media and TV and film production. This was a great opportunity for the students to actually see what goes on in the business and see the studios and green screen rooms where the photoshoots for adverts are done. As well as this, a lot of the businesses at the Sharp Project take on young apprentices! Here are the students buying tickets and getting ready to get on the tram..

The students enjoyed the talks given by the people who work at the Sharp Project..

Paddy made the most of the opportunity to put up a business card to advertise the Cozy Cuddler..

Our group enjoyed meeting other students from different schools..

Two of the rooms were set up as workshops and the students got involved in 3 different activities – manual, needlework and art. With the manual activities, they were able to use various tools in order to create figurines out of wood, foam and other materials. The needlework section used sewing machines and textiles to create a bunting and the art section was particularly popular with an image projected onto a canvas. The students then “traced” around the projection following the outlines and then coloured it in using various paints and brushes. As you can imagine, by the end of the day we had lots of different figures, images and shapes created..

Now we have an update from Mrs Harley on the work our students have been doing in English..

It has been a very busy few weeks in the English department here at Medtia. We have been working hard on our reading in the KS5FS2 group. We have completed writing our scripts of our version of Lord of the Flies and we are currently in the process of filming it for our own film. The students have made great progress with this and have really begun to excel in all aspects of their English: speaking and listening, comprehension and writing. We look forward to completing the film project and will, hopefully, be having a film premiere in the last week of term.

Our students here at Medtia have been very motivated this term at improving their spelling, punctuation and grammar in their writing in preparation for sitting their exams later in March. We have been using a fantastic program called ’10-minute word adventure’. The students have been working super hard and have done an amazing job improving the technical accuracy in their writing.

We have also been working hard on working towards our Level 1 and Level 2 Functional Skills speaking and listening. The topic for this has been on war: the history and effects. We have focused on our discussion techniques and roles within a discussion and how to maintain and hold a good quality conversation by questioning each other and using research to justify their opinions. The students really enjoyed themselves and made fantastic progress with their communication skills and all managed to pass their assessment with flying colours.

Our students have done an amazing job this term and have made us all proud in the English department. Equally, all of the English department and support staff have worked assiduously to ensure the students have had the utmost support in making supreme progress.

Mrs Nelson has also been busy with the girls group..

The girls group was very low on numbers this week but we have managed to complete a lovely piece of work together to display at Medtia using inspirational quotes to work as a team and to work in harmony.

The girls and staff have enjoyed painting hands and printing onto canvas to make the tree shape. Sarah painted the tree trunk and has done a lovely job.

We finished the week with a great Sport Relief challenge where between pupils and staff we managed to cycle or row the 200 miles from Oldham to London.

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Mike Newton, our fantastic TA in Activ8, began his bike ride at 9am in the morning and managed to get 72 miles banked.

What a fantastic end to the week!

I am aware that the current situation with the COVID-19 virus is very worrying for parents and carers. I would like to reassure you that we are monitoring developments closely and we continue to follow the latest official guidance to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep our young people safe. Please see the update on our website here for more details and advice – we will be keeping this page updated daily from Monday (at 2.30pm) and we will inform you of any developments.

I hope you have a lovely weekend,

Jaina
Head of Key Stage 5 Pathways

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can view our previous blog entries here

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