As many of you know, promoting the Arts is particularly important to me and it continues to be an area within which many of our students succeed. This week I had the pleasure of dropping into Mrs Sheehy’s GCSE Art lesson and seeing some amazing artwork. She has provided us with a report on their progress so far this term..

This year’s students have just started their exciting journey towards their GCSE qualification in Art. Throughout the two years they will have the enjoyable task of experiencing lots of different artists and exploring and experimenting with a range of art materials. They have made a really good start. They’ve looked at the Artist ‘Hundertwasser’ and decided they love the patterns and bright, vibrant colours in his art work. The group are now working on extended drawings to show how they are beginning to understand the artist’s style, whilst improving their drawing and colouring skills! They have been working really hard and have already shown great progress… Well done guys! The pictures show just how well they are working..

Thanks to Cherrie from the Nurture Group for my very tasty tortilla pizza on Monday..

..and, as promised, here is the recipe for her tuna pasta bake from last week’s blog – enjoy!

Our IB students visited the Museum of Science and Industry this week and enjoyed exploring all the interactive exhibits..

The Nurture Group have been working hard on our new British Values display, as you can see..

This Thursday saw our students take part in their first ever basketball tournament and our Sports Option group have been working hard in preparation for it..

I’m told that their attitude and behaviour at the tournament were exemplary – they were certainly buzzing on their return to the Learning Centre! With a broad smile on his face, Malcolm reminded me several times that he scored a basket! Here’s what our own Mr Smith had to say about it today..

I just want to say a big thank you to all the staff who supported with the basketball tournament yesterday. I’d also like to say a big ‘well done’ to all the students who did New Bridge proud. It was a fantastic morning and it was nice to see good sportsmanship from all players. I will be organising another MAT cross country event before Christmas.

Miss Wright who supported our students also highlighted how well the young people from the different sites within the New Bridge Group came together as one – I’ll hand you over to our reporter on the ground, Miss Wright..

On Thursday morning all the schools in the New Bridge Group came together to participate in a basketball tournament, organised by Mr Smith. Representing the Learning Centre was Mr Smith’s Sports Option Group. All the students were excited to play basketball and were taken aback by the number of other students from all the other sites. The Learning Centre students were put into teams that included students from Activ8 and other pathways. The action was frantic from the very first whistle with the games being played end to end at a furious pace. Nathan and Malcolm scored a basket each and there was some great defensive play from Maryam. Cherrie, Sabiha and Lewis all hustled on the court making it difficult for other teams and Michael was a target man who had many shots and only just missed the hoop. The Learning Centre students thoroughly enjoyed the competition and can’t wait for the next event!

Thanks again everyone! During last week’s Learning Centre assembly, we introduced the Invictus Games being held now in Australia. This week we listened to an inspiring speech by Prince Harry who set the games up 5 years ago. He spoke about the resilience and optimism the athletes promote, how they inspire all those around them watching them achieve their goals against great odds. We echoed the theme that anything is possible if we put our minds to it and we should all look to make a positive change in our lives, whether big or small, to make things better both for ourselves and those around us.

On Friday, Bobby Joe, Sophie O., Nathan W., Omar and Imnann joined Mr Barker, myself and our Learning Centre governors Cathy Williams and Ken Stapleton for the first of this year’s Student Council meetings. We discussed a wide variety of topics and concerns which we will be working on over the next half term. I am immensely proud of all our students who clearly articulated concerns and maturely discussed some fairly challenging topics. We will be sharing some of these in weeks to come.

I am a Governor of New Bridge School and Learning Centre. I attend the Student Council meetings as often as possible. I feel that it is important to listen to the views of students and to find out what issues are important to them. We can then take this information back to the governors’ meetings and use it as part of our decision-making process.

 The student representatives always bring issues to the meetings that have been brought up by their fellow students.  These can range from choices of food at lunch time to how to deal with problem behaviour. A recent example is that students said that a drop kerb was needed at the Learning Centre because students in wheelchairs were having problems getting from the car park to the pavement to leave the site. This was addressed over the summer break. At the school site a couple of years ago, students said that they would like to have a sports day. This has now become a very popular annual event. The students were also part of the selection process for head of site last year at the school site. I attended their preparation meeting and was impressed with how well they thought about what questions to ask.

The students also learn important skills from their role such as how to gather views of other students and bring these to the meeting, how to represent the views of others, not just their own, how to listen and take turns to speak in meetings, taking direction from the chair of the meeting. These skills will be useful to them as they grow up. 

Cathy Williams, Governor

I feel sure our Student Council will be in safe hands this year and I look forward to our journey together in making the Learning Centre the best it can be for everyone.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone for their dedication and support in enabling all our students to achieve beyond their perceived goals.

Don’t forget our next Parent Group meeting on Monday 12th November, we hope you will be able to join us. You can view details of more events happening this year, including the Learning Centre Parents’ Evening on 20th November here.

Have a great half term whatever you may be doing and I look forward to welcoming you all back in a week’s time.

Dawn

You can find Gavin’s blog for the school site here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

Click here to read this week’s news from Graham

You can find previous blog posts here