Well here we are, racing towards Christmas. Letters have gone out to families of the young people involved in our Christmas Showcase and rehearsals are well underway. This will be a wonderful opportunity to see your child performing the pieces of drama and music they have studied this term, a real ‘showcase’ of your child’s curriculum. If you have not yet returned the form confirming your preferred arrangements for the evening performances and requesting tickets, please send it in to Wendy Warren as soon as possible.

We are looking forward to welcoming families to our second Parents’ Evening at the Learning Centre on Wednesday when we will again be showing parents how our new ‘dashboard’ will enable us to capture both academic and learning for life skills and answer any questions you may have. If you are unable to attend but would like to discuss any issues with us, please get in touch. Parents’ Evening at the school site was a great success, we were really pleased with the turnout and the feedback from parents and carers was very positive. The ‘dashboard’ presentations went well and the parents who managed to pop in to one were impressed by what we are hoping to achieve with our new system for reporting progress. If you didn’t get chance to let us know how it went, please click here to fill in this short questionnaire to give us your feedback, we really value your comments and your continued support.

We’re delighted to bring you a report from Mr Maycock on the work that Hortus have been doing, including news of an exciting award..

Our summer programme was very successful with John, Matthew, Corey and Ryan all achieving the highest level they could with a City & Guilds Level 1 Diploma in Practical Horticulture Skills. Kevin was also successful in achieving an ‘Award’ in his first year of the qualification and was only a couple of units short of gaining a Certificate, the next step towards a Diploma.

The Hortus students have engaged in a number of programmes across the term including delivering a number of courses to primary schools and adult support groups within the local community as part of their North West in Bloom entry. Once again we successful with an ‘Outstanding Award’, the highest that can be achieved by an individual entry..

Kevin and John represented the school during the half term holidays and were presented with the award at the Southport Theatre and Convention Centre..

Our new students entering the Hortus programme this term have made an excellent start; Dwayne..

Ellis..

Jake..

and Liam..

They have finished off the mowing after first carefully walking over the area..

..mulched the shrub and flower beds..

..and kept up with the general pruning and tidying around the school sites..

Special mention should be made of Jack who has started his fourth year on the Hortus course and is now leading other students in many of the activities on offer.

Of course, they still made time for their ‘Cooking with Hortus’ session and this week made a very tasty Pizza Calzone. Unfortunately Miss Allison had no taste buds this week thanks to a terrible cold so until their chief taster returns next week, the lads have done their own review and the verdicts were:

• Really good – Ellis
• Love the pepperoni – Jack
• Different way to make a pizza – Kevin

This week is the turn of the PE department to share images of their active learning. The AB have been working on turn taking through fitness, parachute games and ball skills..

Year 7 have been throwing the javelin..

Year 9 have been brushing up on their netball..

Year 10 have been getting to grips with hockey..

Year 11 have also been showing off their netball skills..

The Learning Centre students have been keeping very active too, as you can see..

The Learning Centre staff and students are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Lola for the start of our ‘Dog Awareness’ programme. A number of students have asked to take part in either group or individual sessions and we are sure this will really benefit our young people. We will keep you updated with how the sessions go and make sure we get plenty of pictures – for now, here is Lola herself..

On a final note we would like to congratulate Jack, our new Head Boy, on his excellent blog – nothing like a bit of healthy competition, well done Jack!

Have a great weekend,

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