It’s been a real pleasure this week to receive another batch of updates on how you’re all keeping up your learning at home. I’m so proud of every one of you for your positive attitude towards looking after your learning and not letting the fact that we’re away from school stop you practising your skills and even developing new ones.

We’ll start with some wonderful smiling faces, always a nice way to put us all in celebratory mood, and they don’t get much more smiley than this! Aysha and Hajjrah, it’s lovely to see you both soaking up the sun yesterday and no doubt you’ve been catching a few more rays over this glorious bank holiday weekend..

Dylan on the hand, whilst equally smiley, is feeling particularly chirpy checking out the fish in his marine fish tank at home. He has been learning about marine life as part of his Sea life topic with Miss Ward this week. He loves to watch the fish swimming around and the anemones glow up at night. Can I see Dory and Nemo in there Dylan?

All this time at home reminds us how important those everyday tasks like the weekly shop and keeping an orderly home are. Well done to Corey and Sophie who have thinking practically about just these kinds of things. Great preparation for when they’re older and may have their own weekly shop to do and home to organise. In the meantime, Corey’s been doing a great job of sorting out his shopping list and budgeting how much it will cost him..

..whilst Sophie E. has been considering essential and non-essential items she’d need in each room of any future home she might have. Brilliant work both of you.

Inspired by the book, The BFG, Cena has been making a Dream Jar..

He’s also been making bath bombs..

..planting seeds..

..getting his daily exercise on his trampoline..

..whilst not forgetting to just sit and have a chilled out play in the garden..

Hope you have plenty of fun in the sun this weekend Cena. Someone who’s definitely been making the most of the sunshine is Eve. Just look at those beautiful blue skies and stunning views! Very jealous Eve! Looks like a fantastic place to go for a walk..

As always, Mrs Taylor has been keeping an eye on your English studies and been particularly impressed with a few of her pupils. Nayem has been exploring creating a narrative and sequenced a series of pictures to tell a story..

Rose has also been exploring narratives, this time sequencing sentences she has written herself..

Liam made outstanding progress on the LiteracyPlanet app as you can see by his outstandingly titled certificate..

Ejaz, creative as always, has designed his own card game that he’d like to put into production..

Her star of the week however is Sophie A. who has completed every task and made exceptional progress with her reading books! Superb progress every one of you. Well done!

Maths is clearly a subject many of you are enjoying if you’re anything like Philip who has messaged us to let us know much he loves Maths on his Numbots app..

Louis has been studying very hard on his Mathletics account, you can see how many of the different Maths concepts he’s been making progress on from the screenshots he’s sent us..

Plenty of you love clocking up points for working through the challenges on Mathletics and earning the certificates you get as a result. Two of you who have worked extremely hard to achieve these certificates are Nayem and Casie who have managed to earn their Gold Certificates! This is a huge achievement and represents incredibly hard work as you have to score a minimum of 1000 points each week for 15 weeks to earn this certificate.

Nayem and Casie are the first two pupils to achieve these within the our entire Trust so an outstandingly brilliant well done and congratulations to you both on your achievement. Superb effort.

If there’s one thing that’s going to support your independence as you grow in young adults, it’s being able to prepare your own food. It seems like this lockdown period is allowing many of you continue to develop your catering skills, or even put into practice what you’ve already learnt. I’m guessing there’s lots of appreciative family members out there who’ve enjoyed the variety of culinary treats being cooked up by our pupils across Oldham! There’s plenty more examples this week. Donna has been baking up a storm; lemon drizzle cake, triple chocolate chunk brownies, cupcakes and scones! Think you’re giving Chelsea a run for her money with those baking skills..

If sweet treats aren’t your thing and you prefer something more savoury, then Josh J. is your man. He’s gone with a good old solid curry. Looks great Josh..

Mrs Newport wants to give an extra special mention to another one of our Joshs, Josh R, who has been putting a lot of effort into practising his catering skills at home. You certainly get my vote Josh, with these tasty burgers you’ve been cooking. Here he is creating them from scratch himself, chopping and prepping the ingredients..

..mixing them..

..and moulding them into patties..

..before serving up the cooked version with some nice crispy fries..

You even cleaned up afterward Josh. Amazing effort! Well done.

When he’s not been serving up burgers, Josh R has been exploring how our environment affects our happiness, a particularly pertinent topic in our current situation. Josh has been looking at the homes of his favourite cartoon characters and drawing inspiration from them to create his own design for a happy home. He was particularly inspired by the colours of The Simpson’s family home as has rendered this creative image himself, including features that contribute to making it feel like a happy home such as lots of windows and the yellow colouring. Excellent Josh.

 

Miss Patchett’s group have been taking part in our Let’s Be Creative project that’s running at the moment. As her group have been going on their daily walk they’ve seen lots of lovely rainbows and messages of good hope. Drawing inspiration from there, the pupils have been creating their very own rainbows of hope and Kaif, Sean and Josh have produced some wonderful creations. Kaif took some photos of items around the house that represent the different colours of the rainbow and also recorded a version of himself singing “I can sing a rainbow”..

 

Sean created a rainbow with a poem..

..and also a pixel rainbow..

Josh M. created a beautiful rainbow which demonstrates the development of his fine motor and concentration skills. Beautiful work chaps!

A final quick update from the ever busy Raresh. On top of becoming what seems to be a semi-professional baker (here’s another example of his amazing baking skills, see previous blogs for even more!)..

..he’s been continuing with his learning to support his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award accreditation. Well, this week I can announce that he’s completed the section on First Aid. Brilliant news Raresh!

Don’t forget the 2 competitions that are open now if you would like to enter..

I have also been sent some lovely pictures of some of the VE Day activities you have been doing. Tahamina and Ammaar both made special VE Day sandwiches before getting creative with their own VE Day posters, Cena made VE Day medals and the children who’ve been in school created their own VE Day display for reception, made their own party food and had a celebration in the sunshine with 40s music and dancing (Callum and Xavier wowed everyone with their Lindy Hop!)..

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Mrs Newport and Mrs Hickman have a special message for you..

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You can find their rainbow recipes here! The sunshine has been building this week as the days have gone by and it looks like we’re in for a stunning sunny few days. I hope you all get some opportunity to enjoy the sunshine.

Until next week, take care, stay safe.

Gavin

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

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You can find my previous blog posts here