Can you believe it’s nearly Easter? No, me neither! I don’t know if it’s my age or working in a school (I’m hoping the latter!) but the weeks certainly do race by, don’t they? I hope you enjoy catching up on our busy week at Spring Brook and enjoy the photos.

Class 1 started the term building bridges which many of you saw at our Good Work assembly last half term. Well, this half term has seen them becoming ‘twitchers’, better known as bird-watchers. Their challenge was to design and build their own bird boxes which will hopefully provide homes to some of the wildlife in the school grounds or in their own gardens. A visit to the beautiful Pennington Flash Country Park in Leigh provided lots of inspiration and the children were very respectful as they toured the hides which are maintained by the local Ornithological Society. This is a free day out if anybody fancies it with their own families. Class 1 were able to identify many of the local birds and as you can see from the photos, a gentleman who was there with lots of equipment (binoculars/cameras etc…) took the children under his wing and shared lots of his knowledge with them. Well done again Class 1 for representing our school so well. Well done too to Miss Cubach for being very brave when the swan chased you across the car park!! I’m sure the children didn’t find that funny at all….

Once back at school, the design process began and involved a lot of Maths too. Measurments were taken, wood was purchased and all of Class 1 have used a range of equipment including hacksaws, jigsaws, hammers, nails, clamps, glue guns and sandpaper. They are not quite finished but you can see here the work in progress..

Class 3 have been the resident artists this half term and have been studying the work of Andy Warhol whilst learning about pop-art. They have done so well and seeing their finished products, even though they may have found elements of it quite tricky, has really resulted in a boost to their self-esteem. Here you can see their individual soup cans..

.. as well as them working as a team to decorate a huge one..

Their display outside of class based on the postage stamp images looks amazing! Very effective indeed..

In Science Class 3 have continued their work around Electricity. You may recall the batteries they made last term from coins and vinegar? Well, this has moved on to understanding what makes a circuit and how to control this with switches. They have been learning which materials conduct electricity which has led to them making some really creative switches – look closely and you will notice paper clips, split pins and even 10p coins being used. The children designed their own lamps using a variety of containers including polystyrene cups, plastic eggs and jam jars..

I particularly love Ethan’s fish lamp!

On Thursday I attended the North West regional conference for ‘Engage in their Futures’. This is a really important organisation for schools who have pupils with a range of social, emotional and mental health difficulties. It gives us a chance to share the latest research, develop successful strategies together and also to share best practice. It was the first time I’ve attended but I’m looking forward to the next one already. This week has also seen our school benefit again from being part of the New Bridge multi academy trust. Mrs Tootill, who is the head of our new Key Stage 4/5 free school, the Springboard Project, put me in touch with Paul Kelly who is a sports coach from Manchester City. Although our school takes part in a lot of sports competitions, football is one that has eluded us so far as we don’t usually have enough pupils to make up a team within each age group. City have a programme where they actively try to involve pupils within the special sector and pupils can join up with other schools to make full teams. I will be meeting with him again soon and this is something both the children and staff are really excited about.

Our Key Stage 2 children have represented us brilliantly in the Oldham Swimming Gala for the last two Thursday evenings. This can often be a tricky time for them, particularly when they are not the strongest in the pool, but our staff reported that they all tried very hard and certainly never gave up. Well done all of you.

Finally, on Friday we ended our week with an Easter themed coffee morning and our little ones in Class 6 also found time for Easter Bonnet making..

The coffee morning was very well attended and everybody had their fill of cakes and drinks..

Thank you to all the families who donated goodies and also to my lovely Mum for making each of the children a lovely knitted Easter Chick! Christopher told her he really appreciated all of the effort that she had put into them and Kyle thought they were amazing..

Thanks also to Liam’s Mum for the beautiful flowers that you can see in the photos..

We made a total of £115 on the day which has been donated to the children’s chosen charity of Comic Relief.

I will leave you with a few snaps of Class 6 going on their Easter Egg Hunt on Friday afternoon. It was lovely to be joined by three Year 8 pupils, Leon, Brody and Levi, two of whom were with us in Key Stage 2. It’s wonderful to see them developing into fine young men. They all hid the eggs and were then invited to join in by Lucy, Emily, Luke and Kaiden. They didn’t stop all afternoon and it made me smile when Leon told me that ‘he would sleep tonight!’

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter Break and to those of you taking part in the holiday club activities, I may see you next week.

Toni Thomason
Head of School

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