Here we are, the holiday is upon us and what a lot we have managed to pack into this first half term! Another busy week started on Monday when Hollinwood Academy and New Bridge hosted an open evening for all SENCOs and other professionals from schools across Oldham to share our curriculum offer and tour the sites. Earlier in the day Mrs Lamb had the pleasure of accompanying Mr Lawrence and the girls’ football team to the MCFC Etihad Training Academy where they met Tracey Crouch, the Sports Minister, who was there with Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Premier League, to see the work carried out by the City in the Community programme led by Paul Kelly..

New Bridge is very fortunate to work closely in partnership with Paul and we are very grateful for the many opportunities that our young people have accessed as a result of his support – you can find the rest of the pictures from our exciting day out here. Our Monday after school multi sports sessions which are run in partnership with MCFC are just one example of how our young people are benefiting from Paul’s work, as you can see they are proving to be very popular..

We have seen an extraordinary amount of learning going on this half term and we’ve had the pleasure of observing some amazing lessons – it has been a physical struggle not to join in with some of them ourselves, the quality and delivery of learning has been so good!  These observations have provided the opportunity for our staff to demonstrate their skills, dedication and commitment and it has been wonderful to see our young people so engaged and clearly enjoying their learning.

On Wednesday some of our Year 12 families attended an open afternoon at the Learning Centre supported by Shamin Akhtar, our Home/School Liaison Officer. Parents and carers were able to a chat about their child’s transition with Shamin interpreting as required. We spoke about the differences between the Learning Centre and school including timetables and the structure of the curriculum amongst other things, followed by a tour of the building to observe a number of areas and to meet staff.

We understand that at times our families can feel isolated and would appreciate the opportunity to talk to fellow parents who may understand their situation, concerns and the pressures they face. The afternoon provided the opportunity for families to meet each other and chat in a relaxed atmosphere with the added bonus of refreshments provided by our Food Industry group. Special thanks go to Mrs Gillett, Leah, Fahad and Shihab for helping to host the event. The afternoon was a resounding success and parents were very keen for it to be followed up with further events – there were even suggestions of food being brought along by parents to share. We are now looking into the idea of introducing a ‘Parent Support Forum’ where all our Learning Centre families can meet up regularly for a chat and some mutual support – we will keep you posted!

Our curriculum focus for this week’s blog is ICT and Mr Bright has the following report to share with you..

I am really proud of the ICT curriculum and the experiences we offer our young people. We base the curriculum on 3 key areas:

• Multimedia
• Technical IT
• Key Skills

In Year 7 the pupils are learning essential keyboard skills at the moment using software such as 2Type to identify different functions of the keyboard. Some pupils are identifying different examples of hardware. Abdul created the presentation below:

Year 8 pupils are learning all about email and the internet. Pupils get to send an email from their school personal email account for the first time to friends and staff in school, so if you start to receive a large number of emails, you know the reason why!

In Year 9 the focus is on video and animation and I have been immensely proud of the engagement the pupils have shown not to mention some of the work they have created too. They have been using green screen technology to create some fun chroma keying scenes. Pupils learn to use DSLR video cameras, tripods and soft box lights and then create effects in video editing software like Serif Movie Plus and apps such as Action Movie. The pupils are learning some great skills but just as importantly they’re having loads of fun too! Take a look at the spooky effect for Halloween that William and Subhan created…who says monsters aren’t real!?

Year 10 and 11 are continuing their ICT qualifications. They are all at different stages of their learning but some fantastic work is being produced. Take a look at Jermaine’s colour splash effect using masking layers in photo manipulation software, it’s amazing!

In our IB and AB classes we have been developing a range of access skills such as using a switch to make choices or touching the screen on iPads and large Plasma screens to select objects. The topic is ‘sound and vision’ using a range of auditory and visual stimulus to engage the pupils..

A really great resource for use at home and school is HelpKidzLearn which we can see the young people really engaging with.

Elsewhere, our Key Stage 4 IT Pathway have been learning all about morph animation, a form of CGI where learners design graphics that they can then transform into other graphics. Here’s a sample created by Michael and Danielle this week..

I’ll leave you with some pictures of them hard at work around school..

After half term we’ll be bringing you news from our Science and Humanities departments, watch this space!

Mr Smith took our basketball teams to a tournament at Manor Academy in Sale on Wednesday and he was very impressed with their behaviour both on and off the court. You can see all the pictures here but we thought you might like a quick look at the players in action..

It’s always lovely to see parents, grandparents, carers and friends at our coffee mornings. An amazing number of you made time to come into school and the Learning Centre to spend the morning with your children, their friends and the staff. We really value these informal times where concerns and celebrations are shared and it was a fantastic opportunity to talk about our young people’s achievements over the past half term. Once again, everyone pulled together to help with both the preparations and the tidying up afterwards – plenty of living skills and some excellent team work being put into practice, well done, everyone! At the Learning Centre special thanks must go again to Mrs Gillett and her Food Industry students (Rezaul, Kyra, Leah, Fahad, Seb, Nahim and Thomas) for organising the refreshments..

If you have any feedback, issues or something you would like to share with us, please do get in touch. We’re already looking forward to welcoming you all to our next coffee morning!

On a parting note, we’ve been asked to mention a ‘wow moment’ when a Year 6 pupil and his family were being shown round the school this week….Bobby-Joe spotted the tour and went over to the pupil, shook his hand and said ‘Good morning, my name is Bobby-Joe, welcome to New Bridge.’ – totally spontaneous and absolutely priceless!

We hope you all have a lovely break and we’re looking forward to seeing you back safe and sound after half term on Monday 31st October,

Judith and Dawn

You can find our full blog here

The New Bridge Horizons blog is available here for updates on our Key Stage 5 Pathway students in Lumenus, Digit4ll and Activ8 together with Future Finders students and the young people at Horizons

Click here to read this week’s blog from Graham