Welcome back for another celebration of the many ways in which you’ve been keeping up with your learning at home. Another week, another truckload of examples of all that you’ve been doing. A quick notice to families of our pupils as one or two of you have been asking; the Home Learning area on our website here is updated weekly with content from all of your child’s teachers. There’s lots there to support you in keeping your child in a good routine and keeping up their learning at home. At the same time, we understand your individual family circumstances are very different, so please use as you wish based on what works for you and what is manageable.

Mrs Taylor has been keeping an eye on how many of you are accessing the learning activities set by your teachers on SeeSaw. Just look at how that line goes up and up on the graph below showing how many more of you having been using the app to keep up your learning over the last month. Great to see so many of you getting involved.

So, on to our shout-outs this week.

Joseph has been hard at work again. Mrs Holland (the first of two Mrs Hollands in this week’s blog), Miss Silvester, Miss Henry and Miss Shaw are very proud of everything he’s doing, ranging from English to Maths and including some Music, Art and a little bit of gardening. So fantastic to read your feedback on Showbie Joseph, I love reading what you’ve been learning about..

Mrs Patchett’s class don’t seem to have stopped when it comes to their home learning! This week Sean has been busy developing his multiplication skills..

..whilst also using his understanding of time to organise his daily activities..

..Kaif has been practising his addition skills and ordering the days of the week..

..meanwhile Chelsea has been improving her understanding of time, focusing specifically on matching the time on an analogue clock to the written form..

When you’re not studying hard using your iPads, you’ve been ‘actively relaxing’; Sean likes working out on his exercise bike..

..and Chelsea loves baking. Last week it was bread, this week it’s been cookies and brownies! Yum!

Callum and Jack have been working away on their English work set by Mrs Fitzsimons using the SeeSaw app. Great work guys, I particularly like your assessment of your qualities Jack. Very modest!

SeeSaw isn’t the only app you’ve been busy on. Mrs Holland (the second of our two Mrs Hollands in this week’s blog) wants to give a special mention to the following pupils, all of whom have been regularly completing learning tasks set on the learning apps Literacy Planet and Spellzone: Mariam, Dylan and Daisy from Lumenus. Hasnain, Ashton, Jaydon, Mackenzie and Corey from Year 9. Katie, James, Khadija and Lucy from Year 8. Khadir, Mahdi and Katie from Year 7. Similarly, Mrs Taylor has noted the achievements of Sulaiman, Rose and Yunus who have earned certificates for their learning on Literacy Planet..

..and Katie, Josh and Mackenzie have earned certificates for their learning on Spellzone..

Congratulations to every one of you. Amazing progress, keep up the good work.

This week Mrs Holland has given her Outstanding English Award to Katie in Year 7. She has produced some beautiful work that is completed promptly and reports that she is really enjoying her studies.The pictures show Katie’s response to a challenge in which she was asked to create a description of how she was feeling. She had to spell the word out with the strangest things she could find..

Her piece of writing is a wishing tale the class have been looking at called ‘The King of the Fishes’. The first challenge was; What would you ask for if you were given three wishes? I have to say to I think your wishes are absolutely brilliant Katie. Very well done on your award.

Mahdi has also been working hard..

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..while Sean has been very busy in the kitchen..

Mr Hanif has shared with me the efforts of pupils from several of his History classes and his Form Group. Jaydon has been matching countries and capitals and using the voice recordings to explain to Mr Hanif how he found his learning tasks..

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Millie has been summarising her learning whilst researching the lives of Victorian children and the jobs they had to do..

Robyn’s been learning about the Continents and Oceans of the world..

Rose now understanding the layers of the earth as part of the Extreme Earth topic..

..and Lukas is making superb progress towards his spelling target in his Learning for Life lesson..

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So impressed with all of you. Superb effort.

Mrs Keane has been keeping in touch with the pupils from her Form Group as part of her pastoral role and checking in on their wellbeing. Always helps to have common interests, and Holly and Mrs Keane have been swapping photos of their pets..

Meanwhile Raresh has been as helpful as ever around the house, this time doing his bit with the gardening..

It’s not all been fluffy friends and green fingers however; both have been practising their use of adjectives as you can see. Amazing work both of you..

I’m conscious that the blogs have so far featured everything that you have all been doing at home. We shouldn’t forget that a small number of you are coming into school each week. I’ll be sharing more of what those in school have been up to in coming weeks. For now, I’ll share with you the culinary creations of Xavier and Callum … pancakes! Who says it has to be pancake day to make pancakes! Double yum!

I also have news of two competitions that you are all invited to take part in. The first is a DT competition which opens next week across the Trust but we have the details of here. For the second challenge, Miss Allison is asking for your entries to the New Bridge ‘Big Art Competition’ which you can find out more about in her blog here. Staff will be sharing the new Showbie group codes for both competitions with your child next week.

Congratulations to Miss Williams who has just completed her Level 4 Classroom Assistant course, well done!

As I mentioned in my last blog, this week’s planned Trust wide production of “We Will Rock You” has been cancelled for obvious reasons. Instead, our pupils (and some staff and parents) have recorded their own individual performances and our brilliant Creative Arts and IT teams have pulled it all together. No doubt many of you seen it already as we posted it on our social media channels earlier this week. So, to finish the blog this week, for those of you who have yet to enjoy this incredibly uplifting video, and for those of you who want to watch it all over again just because it’s so good, here it is!

Take care, stay safe,

Gavin

You can find Dawn’s blog for the Learning Centre here

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

You can find my previous blog posts here