This has been another eventful week at New Bridge. Across the Trust, Tuesday saw our annual Celebration Evening when the entire staff team come together to celebrate our individual and collective accomplishments over the last year. At the Learning Centre we watched our celebration video, created by the Digit4ll team, along with those from the school and Medtia. It was lovely to see the journey our students have been on. We also learnt quite a lot of previously unknown facts about each other which we can’t really share on here, however, needless to say we have a very talented (albeit quirky!) staff team and Miss Allison wouldn’t have it any other way. We then shared ‘What we are proud of’ and it quickly became apparent that our answers all focused on us working together as a Learning Centre team to help our students be the ‘best they can be’! It reinforced how extremely proud we are of our hard working, supportive and talented staff team!!
We also had a short section from IB on Super Heroes..
..and we revealed our very own learning Centre ‘Super TA’ – well done, Miss Reade!
A massive thank you all the Learning Centre staff for helping to provide a lovely buffet, it’s always special to share in enjoying something that everyone has had a hand in providing #teamworkmakesthedreamwork
At the school site, in kicking off the celebrations Mr Lyons shared a quote by a woman called Helen Keller. Helen passed away in 1968, however during her lifetime she was an American author, political activist and lecturer and notably the first deaf and blind person to earn a university degree. It was her school teacher, Anne Sullivan, that initially helped Helen to overcome being unable to hear or see and became her guide throughout her life as she learned how to communicate. It was Anne’s teaching and that of many other individuals along the way that enabled Helen to learn how to speak, to learn how to ‘hear’ by reading people’s lips or sign language with her hands and learn how to read and write using braille. Helen attributes her own accomplishments to this team of people who supported her throughout her life.
At New Bridge, we have many pupils who, like Helen, experience hearing or visual impairments. It is for this reason we have Visual Impairment and Hearing Impairment teams in school each week, working alongside our staff team to ensure we develop our understanding of each child’s unique difficulties so that we can remove the barriers they may present and ensure our children are able to learn and make progress, not just whilst they are with us in school but as they continue into adulthood.
In the six months Mr Lyons has now been part of the New Bridge team, he’s been struck by what a passionate, hard-working and dedicated group of individuals the team is. Each individual cares about the success of our children and frequently goes above and beyond to ensure that every child gets the very best care and education. Whilst our Celebration Evening highlighted many individual accomplishments, it highlighted one significant accomplishment in particular; that every day, our team draws on the huge range of individual talents, skills and experience of every one of its team members, whatever their role in school, and the result of that teamwork is that every day we move each of our pupils that little bit closer to a successful outcome when they leave our school. To quote Helen Keller, ‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’
This week our Living Skills department would like to share some of their work with you, from helping set up the refreshments for parents’ evening..
..to learning how to follow directions..
..and what to expect at the hairdressers..
The Year 13 students have been finding out about what they need to travel safely..
..while Year 7 have been learning about sorting laundry..
..and Year 10 showed how they know how to make healthy (and not so healthy!) food choices..
On Wednesday evening the Learning Centre welcomed Year 11 pupils and their families to our annual Transition Evening. We talked about how we have developed and improved our curriculum offer and went through the new options which include a wide range of subjects based on 3 the strands of leisure, employability and academic subjects. The Key Stage 5 options booklet is now complete and has been sent out to the Year 11 pupils who will be joining us at the Learning Centre in September – if you have not yet received your copy, you can view it here. Families now have until Friday 6th July to return their child’s options choices as our Year 11 pupils will be away on their Haven residential next week. We’re sure everyone will have a brilliant time – it certainly looks like they’ll have the weather for it! Our current Year 12 and 13 students will also be receiving the options booklet to enable them to make their choices for September. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us on 0161 883 2402, we’re here to help.
On Thursday our intrepid Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s group returned from an extremely successful 4 day qualifying expedition in North Wales. We understand that they worked incredibly well as a team, encouraging and supporting each other, and we’re really looking forward to sharing Mr Taylor’s report on their adventures with you next week. For now, here are just a few of the wonderful pictures..
Mr Meadows’ Nurture Group have been looking at bullying and the effects it can have on people. They wanted to get the message across that bullying is always wrong and you should always tell someone if you or someone you know is being bullied. The group came up with the idea of making a film to show what can happen and they have worked really hard on making ‘Daygon’s Story’ – they hope it will help people understand why bullying is always wrong. They were very proud to show the finished film in Friday’s assembly and you can now watch it here too..
The group enjoyed a lovely afternoon in Alexandra Park on Thursday to recover from all that hard work!
We’ll leave you with a sentiment which closed our Learning Centre staff Celebration Evening..
We hope you have a good week,
Gavin and Dawn
For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square (this week Digit4ll met Prince William!!) please click here
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