Well, I feel like my feet haven’t touched the ground this past couple of weeks! It’s certainly been busy, not just at Spring Brook but throughout the Group. We have finished our first round of meetings with the Trustees and our own board of Governors, I have been busy visiting some local schools to meet potential new pupils and I have been meeting with other areas of the Group to look at our curriculum offer for next year and ensure that we have all the right staff in the right places! Busy, busy, busy!

This Friday 31st March we will be holding our Easter Coffee Morning at the primary school from 10am to raise funds for Comic Relief. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible to have a chat over a brew and some cake. Donations of items to sell would be greatly appreciated..

Our Spring Brook Primary classes have been incredibly busy too and they have produced some amazing work. Class 1 have continued to study the work of Claude Monet. Their latest pieces have used his “Haystacks” work as inspiration and I think they have even surprised themselves with how well they have turned out. Mrs Fisher reports that every single one of them believed they ‘were rubbish at Art’ prior to this unit, yet by breaking the steps down and rehearsing techniques, they have all completed some wonderful artwork. You may also recognise Monet’s “The Water Lily Pond” which is a combined piece of work they have made as a team, using different techniques. The children told me that instead of using paintbrushes, they have used gauze to ‘dab’ the paint on instead which produces this lovely dappled effect..

Fantastic work Class 1! A couple of weeks ago, I told you Class 1 had also been practising their persuasive letter writing skills. Here are four examples of their letters to me – including a request to have a school tuck shop and Alex’s reasons for finishing school at 12 o’clock each day!

Miss Foxcroft’s Class 5 have been designing their own chocolate bars but this naturally requires some serious taste testing to take place! They have sampled different flavours of chocolate combined with different added ingredients to see which combinations they are going to include in their own bars. As you can see from these photographs, some they really enjoyed…and some they really didn’t..

Ms Foxcroft brought in different types of chocolate bars for us to try

The lesson is going to be about taste testing and then we will experiment with mixing different kinds of chocolate bars with popcorn, Haribo, marshmallows or Smarties

Harry is trying milk chocolate

Harry doesn’t like dark chocolate at all

Tyreece is trying some of the Roses chocolates

Tyreece is trying a piece of dark chocolate and Smarties

Tyreece is tasting Milky Bar and marshmallow together

Tyreece is loving Milky Bar chocolate and Haribo eaten together

Tyreece is about to try milk chocolate with Haribo

Szymon is trying Milky Bar chocolate

Szymon is giving it a go and is about to try dark chocolate with a marshmallow

Szymon is clearly enjoying the chocolate

Szymon is about to taste milk chocolate with Haribo

Szymon doesn’t mind Bournville chocolate

Szymon is not enjoying the flavour of coffee chocolate

Harry likes Roses chocolates

Harry is about to try milk chocolate with popcorn

mmm….Milky Bar…Tyreece’s favourite

Rudolf is excited to try Milky Bar chocolate with Haribo

Class 3 were lucky enough to be invited on an Adventure Walk. This should have been at Dovestones but because of the horrible, rainy day it was changed to Castleshaw. They had an absolute ball, splashing in every puddle and getting stuck in all the mud – my favourite kind of day out is one where you get messy!

Class 2’s Spies & Gadgets topic continues and this week they have been working incredibly hard writing their own short spy stories. They have planned setting descriptions with a focus on what they can see, hear, smell and touch as well as producing their own story maps to talk us through their build up, conflict and resolution. They have used word banks and thesauruses to up-level any basic vocabulary before demonstrating their computing skills to type up and edit their final piece. We look forward to sharing some of these with you in next week’s blog. Here are some snaps of their progress so far..

Finally to Class 6 who have been reading the story of The Little Red Hen. If you have read this book then you will know that she needs somebody to help her bake the bread. Well, look no more Little Red Hen, Class 6 have got the skills you need! Take a look at Kobi, Luke, Kaiden and Lucy weighing, mixing, kneading (and eating!) their delicious bread rolls..

In Religious Education, they have also been learning about the story of The Last Supper and how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples after eating their Passover Meal. Class 6 re-enacted this, including the feet washing! I suspect some of them would have sat there all day if they could have..

Two last bits from me – firstly, the New Bridge Group has started our own lottery with all the proceeds going back to school. As well as the local Group draw with a guaranteed winner each week, everybody who signs up is also entered into a national draw with a £25,000 prize each week. How good would that be? Please click here if you would like to find out more and sign up, it’s very simple and only took me a couple of minutes.

Secondly, there has been a lot of press coverage about a gaming platform that can be accessed via a free app called ROBLOX. I always believed this was quite a harmless game but unfortunately it’s not as secure as originally thought. A letter has been widely circulated on social media from a primary school in Audenshaw highlighting the dangers, in particular the messaging function which potentially allows access to 30 million+ users and the possibility of accessing age-inappropriate material which I know will concern parents. We have been asking questions recently about how children are viewing 18 rated games when families don’t own them – perhaps this may be one of the reasons why? I definitely didn’t realise this could happen via the ROBLOX app and I thought it was worthwhile sharing this information with you all. ROBLOX have now introduced parental controls which include the option to turn off the chat function and  have provided instructions on using them here, together with a guide for parents on keeping their children safe when using the platform here.

Don’t forget that if you ever have any concerns around e safety or you would like advice on helping your child stay safe online, you can contact us for support. There is a parent workshop this Thursday at 4pm at Hollinwood Academy where you can receive information on e safety and ask any questions you may have.

I hope you all managed to enjoy the sunshine this weekend, although sadly it doesn’t look like it’s going to stay all week. Timetables for those who’ve signed up for the Holiday Club will be coming home this week – it certainly looks like you’re in for a great time.

Enjoy the rest of your week and we hope to see you at our Coffee Morning on Friday,

Toni Thomason
Head of School

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