Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you all in our first blog of 2022! Our children returned raring to go and have settled back into class brilliantly.
School continues to be as busy as ever and as always, we continue to develop our offer for your children. Next week will see a small group embarking on Equine Therapy, an amazing opportunity to work with specially trained horses and therapists. The children will learn how their actions impact on others, through watching the reactions of the horses to things they say and do. We are thrilled to be a part of such an exciting project, along with pupils from our upper school who will be going on a different day. Watch this space for updates and photos.
We are also interviewing this week for two important roles across both of our sites. One is for our new EHCP Co-ordinator and this will be the person who will arrange and hold the annual reviews of your child’s EHCP going forwards. The second role is that of a Safeguarding Lead, who will work with our pastoral teams to ensure that all of our families are fully supported. I will introduce you to them both, via our blog, at a later date.
Finally, we are in the advanced stages of opening a further class for KS2 children and hope that they will be joining us at the end of January. This will take us up to nearly 50 pupils and demonstrates just how popular our school is becoming.
Onto the classes now – here is Mrs Fisher’s update from class 1…”
“Just before Christmas, we had one of our Super Learning Days where we looked at a number of celebrations. We learned all about Yom Kippur, the Jewish festival. We thought about the things we could apologise for and how we could put things right. We read the story “The Hardest Word” about Ziz, who accidentally destroyed a children’s garden on Yom Kippur and God gave him the task of finding the hardest word, which was sorry. We talked about what it means to be sorry and how hard it can be to really mean it and ask for forgiveness.
We have been doing lots of teamwork in Maths working with parts of and whole numbers, had fun at Heaton Park and learned about Greek Gods.
Since we returned in January, well, wow, what a busy week! We’ve been learning to code using the Sphero robots in computing, building electrical circuits and learning how to subtract 1 and 2 digit numbers with exchanges in Maths. We’ve also been writing some fantastic diaries using characters from The Tempest in literacy. The most exciting thing however is that we have visited the local pet shop and set up the cave ready for our Guinea Pigs! Our class of 7 will hopefully become 9 next week!”
And Class 2…
“In class 2, our fish have finally arrived and been moved to their new home. Gary the snail has been joined by about 10 other fish, which are the most beautiful colours. The boys have named them and love taking a few minutes to watch them swimming around the tank. In Science they have been looking at water densities and how they differ in the ocean, using both salt and fresh water and observing how and where eggs float in the mix. They have written guides of how to care for their mythical creature and had a stroll along the Pennine Way above Littleborough. The boys enjoyed the moors and scrambled on the rocks. A good day of working and playing together.”
Class 3…
“Teamwork was the word of the day for class 3 at the park – they tired Denvon out! A day at the Science & Industry Museum allowed the boys to do lots of exploring and hands on experiments, which they loved! In Forest School, they worked together to make some outstanding dens!”
Class 4…
“Mr Lawrence had the boys in Class 4 completing circuit training, with boxing and rowing machine challenges! They visited Marple Park to feed the ducks, celebrated Joshua’s birthday with a pig cake, baked biscuits, played shop, had a go at peer massage, completed multiplication using numicon and Maths and used story mapping to write about the journey of the Titanic. Phew – it’s a good job they’ve had two days off!”
Class 5…
“Class 5 have been suggesting improvements they’d like to see in their local area – here are the suggestions that Tommy, Mia and Cullen thought about. Kayne was using finger dough, they have been counting in 5s, Declan has been making 10 and working with Andre in Maths and they have used the rope ladder to do some active Maths too. During their Super Learning Day, they found out about Harvest Festivals and spent time thinking about “what we are thankful for.” They made their own harvest baskets and even made some hedgehog bread.”
Well done everyone for an excellent start to 2022, I can’t wait to see what you achieve next 🙂
See you all soon,
Miss Thomason
