This week has been national Careers and Apprenticeship week. Employability and community access are, of course, core aspects of our Learning Centre curriculum and we provide opportunities for students to take part in a number of different internal and external work experience placements.

Kerrie had a great time at the RSPCA this week, as job coach Bethany explains..

Staff at the RSPCA were really impressed with how professional Kerrie was and they were really happy with how she approached each cat. Kerrie worked well with some of the cats today, she was able to get the really nervous cats out of their beds and spent some quality nurture time with them..

Friday saw Learning Centre students attend a ‘Careers Carousel’ day at First Choice Homes in Oldham. The day consisted of a tour of the business and a number of 15 minute activities with teams including builders, marketing and customer service. Kyle, Cherrie, Nathan, Sarah and Liam really enjoyed themselves, enthusiastically engaging in a range of activities as evidenced in the following pictures. Well done guys!

For the majority of this week I have been treated to a number of very tasty pancakes, which it would have been rude to turn down! Thanks Kyle!

Mrs Gillett has more to say..

This week we have made pancakes as it was Shrove Tuesday. We used the BBC easy pancake recipe and everybody has a great time making them..

All students except a certain Kade had traditional lemon and sugar or chocolate spread. Kade decided that chocolate spread and hot chilli sauce would go well together. So wrong! Here’s the proof!

The highlight of this week, however, was taking part in an ‘Appreciative Enquiry’ which saw teams of colleagues from across the Trust spending the day at all three New Bridge sites, observing lessons and feeding back on the strengths of our curriculum offer. I was immensely proud of our Learning Centre team as we had the opportunity to observe several amazing lessons with students fully engaged, challenged and clearly enjoying learning. Here is just a taste of what we saw:

The Hortus students worked independently painting the benches and boxes in the Learning Centre entrance area and finished off by planting an array of colourful flowers. Thanks to Liam, Jake, Ryan, Jordan and Josh..

We were also lucky enough to catch our Learning Centre students taking part in the BBC News Day. Our group decided to do a news report on building on green belt land and how it affects our local community, and eating disorders/body image issues in children which have hit a national high according to the NHS..

I am delighted to share their news report here:

[fvplayer src=”http://newbridgeschool.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/LCNewsReport.mp4″]

One of the most memorable moments of the day was watching one of our students, Sabiha, teach a full lesson of PE with confidence and calmness, following her lesson plan closely, with the whole class responding positively – she did Mr Smith and the Learning Centre proud!

Other lessons visited included E-Base Maths..

..Art and Music..

Finally, I’d like to share the feedback from the day’s Enquiry:

‘The Learning Centre curriculum can be described as: Personalised, Practical, Student Led, Flexible, Positive, Challenging, Supportive, Responsive, Pro-active, Age Appropriate and Challenging.’

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to get your Red Nose Day gear ready for next Friday!

Dawn

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