Following the example set by our Sports option group last week, we continued our energetic theme with the very first of our weekly health walks on Tuesday. Mrs Wright, our Year 13 Pastoral Lead explains more..

The benefits of walking are well known, so we embarked on a 1km walk around the perimeter of the Learning Centre first thing on Tuesday morning. We are lucky to have some lovely countryside on our doorstep and the walk proved to be a refreshing way to start the day. Everyone involved has a target and some of the things we are hoping to improve are our physical health, our mental well-being and our concentration in lessons. All the students enjoyed the walk and came back in really positive moods and are looking forward to next week’s session.

I have to say I’m a little inspired to join them – watch this space!

This week I’ve been lucky enough to drop into some great lessons and activities. I feel I have to mention Mr Thompson’s Music option which saw every student enthusiastically taking part. I was especially impressed with Sabeel who is starting to master ‘I can show you the world’ from the musical Aladdin with only small pieces of blu-tack on the keys to guide him..

It was inspiring to watch him play and sing along, I can’t wait for next week’s option – I may indeed join in!

On Wednesday we were joined by an outside drama company called Touchdown Dance who came to work with our Dance and Drama option group. The company is funded through Children in Need to deliver a number of movement sessions around the theme of well-being and mental health. These sessions aim to aid with confidence building and enable pupils to find their own voice. Mrs Tracey who supported the students was so impressed she wrote this report:

What a success!! The students were totally engaged for the full session of Dance and Drama. Every student in the group participated in all activities that they were introduced to. They interacted with each other by using different objects to express their emotions. I feel I should also mention that their attitude and behaviour was absolutely fantastic and I felt really proud of them all. It was also evident that they were growing in confidence and were rightly proud of their achievements..

Well done to Ellen, Ryan, Saniya, Serish, Joseph, Leah, Dyme, Fahaana, Ruhel, Jake and Natasha!

Today has seen the whole of the Learning Centre take part in different fundraising events for ‘Children in Need’ as Mr Barker explains..

Today we had a fantastic time at the Learning Centre celebrating and fundraising for Children In Need..

We started off the day rounding up willing volunteers to participate in a sponsored silence. They were Ellen, Jade B, Lewis J, Josh, Natasha T, Cherrie, Callum and Sophie. Imnann and Shihab attempted a sponsored day without their phones. They all did fantastically well despite a number of friendly attempts to sabotage their efforts by staff and students alike..

Later in the morning the familiar tune of the ice cream van rang around the Learning Centre. Mr Schiavo, parent of one of our Year 12 students, Joe, had very generously arranged to provide free ice creams to all the staff and students alike with any donations going to CIN. He was then going to continue with fundraising events donating ice creams throughout the day across Manchester and was price matching everything raised himself..

As you can see from the pictures there was a real buzz of excitement – and that was just from the staff!

A huge thank you to Mr Schiavo for your generosity! I spoke to Mr Schiavo afterwards and it was lovely to hear him say that this was his way of saying a massive thank you to New Bridge for all they have done to support Joe over the years.

The afternoon involved making donations to buy cakes and ended with an assembly where we reviewed the day and did a big Learning Centre thank you to Mr Schiavo. The students showed their appreciation within assembly by sharing with everyone their thank you pictures..

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This week a number of our staff joined the Learning Centre working party to discuss the direction our curriculum offer should take. I’ll be sharing details with you as we go along, however what became evident through discussion is that we are all dedicated to providing our students with a creative, engaging and stimulating curriculum offer which enables them to flourish. Our aim is to enable our students to become as independent as possible and provide a clear pathway to appropriate destinations including employment opportunities where appropriate. What shone through our discussions was the desire to raise the aspirations of all our students to achieve more than they can imagine is possible. I look forward to sharing our ideas with you in the weeks to come.

I’d like to finish by saying thank you to Harry for feeding me today, I had a delicious stir-fry which was gone in seconds. I’ll share the recipe within next week’s blog..

I hope you have a lovely weekend,

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