Hello everyone, we hope you have all had a good week. It has been very busy here, the timetable and extra curricular activities are now all in full swing with our After School Clubs running from Monday to Thursday. Mr Fieldhouse’s Karate Club is proving very popular, they have welcomed new members this term and the dedicated group are enjoying training two nights a week. Our New Bridge Scouts are back in action too, we will have to find out what they are planning and bring you a full report!

Requests for places on our next Holiday Club have all been sent back now and our trip to Blackpool Zoo has been booked. It should be a very exciting day out and a lovely end to the holiday, we think the staff are looking forward to it as much as the children! Please contact the office if you need to check whether we have received your form.

This week our girls’ football team has gone to the Etihad training campus and taken part in some inter-school competitions. They had a fabulous time there, wining some, drawing some and even losing one. It is great to see the girls taking part in competitive football matches, their skills are amazing. Well done to all the girls and thanks to our PE team and Mrs Meadows for supporting them there..

Mrs McLaughlin and Mrs Gardiner have asked us to give their Year 9 English class a special mention. They have been really pleased with the independent work the pupils have done this week – here they are doing some fantastic writing..

Our Key Stage 5 Pathways have had a very productive week up at Medtia Square. You may remember that last year’s Head Boy, Matthew, wrote a weekly blog – he has now moved up to Medtia with Activ8 but he has agreed to continue with his blog to keep us updated on how he finds student life at our new base. You can read his first entry here.

Lumenus are making the most of the new facilities at Medtia too and they are already planning the big summer show – read all about their busy start to the year here.

Digit4ll have some very exciting news about not just one but THREE enterprises! In advance of next week’s ‘Digit4ll Special’, have a look at the new flyer..

and business card, both designed by the students themselves..

You can find out more in Mr Bright’s update here.

The Paralympics have been truly inspiring, showing us all that if we put our mind to it, “We Can!” It would appear that the Learning Centre students have taken this to heart, judging on their efforts in Mr Smith’s PE option on Wednesday. The group are working on understanding which muscles they are using when they perform certain exercises using different parts of their bodies and this week’s focus was on recognising the different leg muscles they were using. The key muscles were the quadriceps and gastrocnemius and the students performed a skipping exercise which worked these muscles intensely (when done correctly!)

Leah deserves a special mention for leading the group warm up, she was fantastic. The skipping challenge was then enthusiastically taken up by everyone and there was fierce competition for first place…the winner, with a grand total of 20, was Omar – well done!!

..closely followed by Yamin who joined Omar in a joint skipping challenge..

We should also congratulate Mr Barker with a total of 7..

..and Mr Hagan and Miss Rhodes with a total of 6, very impressive considering it was a joint effort..

Strangely enough there is no photographic evidence of Miss Allison’s grand total of 1 (we believe she mentioned something about quality over quantity…)

Our Wednesday options are becoming one of the highlights of the week – Music saw Will performing a very impressive rap..

We are pleased to announce the results of the Learning Centre student council elections. The students voted for their representatives as follows:

Year 12  – Steven with Zanub as reserve
Year 13 – Keiffer with Tamara as reserve
Year 14 – Kayleigh with Thomas G. as reserve

Well done to all our student representatives, good luck in your new roles!

During our Learning Centre assembly we reflected on the theme ‘Putting others before ourselves’ and watched the clip of Triathlete Alistair Brownlee giving up the chance to win a triathlon to help his brother over line before him. Not only did he help his brother finished, he also ensured he finished before him by pushing him over the line. A truly inspiring and touching story of brotherly love and care and of ‘Putting Others First!’

We would like to thank parents and carers at the school site for their support in helping us introduce a new one way system for traffic this week. As a result of changes to the local authority eligibility criteria that relates to our young people receiving school transport, more parents are now bringing their children to school themselves and the volume of people and traffic at the main entrance had become a significant safety risk. Last year we had to change arrangements for families collecting children in the afternoon and we now need to implement similar arrangements at the start of the school day. Letters went home to the parents this applies to explaining which entrance they should bring their child to in the morning and staff will be on hand to help at the start of the day. The new system will avoid the need to walk across the busy car park at the front of school and we are very grateful for your assistance in ensuring the safety of all our children.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Judith and Dawn

You can find our full blog here

The New Bridge Horizons blog is available here for updates on our Key Stage 5 Pathway students in Lumenus, Digit4ll and Activ8 together with Future Finders students and the young people at Horizons.

Click here to read Graham’s blog.