This week, Mrs Holland is bringing us the New Bridge blog..

If you regularly follow our blog, you will have heard the terrible news of the passing of our ‘beautiful soul’ Fabiana. We have spent the past few weeks gathering our thoughts and memories, embracing our New Bridge family and of course, supporting our students through their sadness and loss.

On Thursday at Royton Cemetery, many gathered together to lay Fabiana to rest. We listened to her Primary School teachers from Corpus Christi pay tribute to the life of Fabiana. They used powerful words that described a young person’s qualities as being resilient, determined, funny, empathetic, caring and nurturing. They described a young person’s lust for life, friendship and learning. They continued in their tributes to explain in detail many of the examples of when Fabiana had displayed all of these attributes. As I listened to these words, I realised that within an instant of meeting Fabiana, my class team and I had already identified that she displayed all of these personal traits. They shone out of her and she saturated those around her with love and happiness. We were touched to hear that Fabiana had had the same impact on others as she did on our school.

As a community, we continue to grieve for the loss of this beautiful young lady and the bright future she held with us at New Bridge. I have no doubt that her future would, and should have been immense. All the more difficult to accept!

Fabiana will forever be in our hearts. Our sincere thoughts again turn to Fabiana’s family and friends.

As a reminder, I refer back to Gavin’s previous offer of support for our children. Our form tutors are on hand if you have any concerns, so please discuss these in our weekly phonecalls .

Mr Lyons and the leadership team have been so busy this week, he has asked me to give him a helping hand to write the blog. So, on his behalf, here is a flavour of this week. I really hope I do it justice.

It is no exaggeration to say that, as ever, the learning at home and in school has been hectic. Firstly, I would like to start by commending Eve who has shared some great pictures of her getting her daily exercise by taking her dog Baxter for a walk..

They stopped off for a long awaited toasted tea cake in their local café!

Eve also took part in her Live Music Now lesson with Paul. Mum and Dad are really impressed with how well Eve sits through the sessions and have bought her a ukulele as the guitar was a little bit big to be swinging around the house when Eve gets into full rock mode!

Again, I was pleased to see Cena sharing the wonderful activities he has been doing while at home. He has been following our activities booklet and has been taking taking part in some tin foil painting..

After all this hard work, he managed to help Dad paint the garden fence!! Fantastic work Cena!

In school Georgia, Subhaan and Avram as usual have had a fantastic week. I was particularly interested in hearing that they had made a chocolate parfait. Very yummy! I am sure you will all agree, they look absolutely delicious..

Things got messy during a balloon popping art session as the BFG in their topic, Makes Bad Dreams Pop! You can see Mrs Fletcher, very brave there! Well done all..

They have also made and decorated salt dough stepping stones to put in the sensory garden..

..and taken part in Body Awareness, TAC PAC and rhythm stick sessions..

Katie must have heard the songs from next door and wanted to join in so she took part through the window..

Quite a busy week for them. Again, Mrs Fletcher is super happy with their work this week.

Miss Patchett has kept us updated on the work of her students learning at home. Sean has been working hard on identifying and matching fractions in Maths..

..and he also completed a quiz on oceans and continents..

Josh has shown how creative he can be. He has been busy working on identifying recycling items and creating some lovely models..

Kaif has been busy identifying coins and correctly ordering them according to their value..

Back in school, Xavier has had a fantastic week. Miss Dean and Mrs Cockcroft have been very proud of his brilliant behaviour and hard work. In Science, they have looked at how changing the ratio of water and soap affects the amount of bubbles he could blow. By changing and adding a little more soap at a time to find the perfect ratio, Xavier made big, strong bubbles..

Continuing with the water theme, they looked at water pressure. Xavier used a water blaster to test out how the amount of water and the amount of force changed how far the water squirted..

After the experiments, Xavier kindly used the left over water to clean the staff cars in the car park. I have certainly missed a trick here! I really hope you are taking bookings Xavier?

The learning didn’t stop there. In school, they began a new topic around Holidays and Summer. In English, Xavier has completed themed word searches and code breakers..

In Maths, he worked out the cost of air fares for his family to various parts of the world..

In topic time, he created a fantastic picture of a suitcase filled with all the things Mrs Cockcroft should pack for her holiday!

I knew there would be a fabulous book hidden in there Mrs Cockcroft!

It’s great to see students being rewarded for working so hard in school so that they earn some extra free time. Throughout the week, Xavier has chosen to challenge Mrs Cockcroft and Miss Dean to a games championship. They held competitions to find the daily champions in Pairs, Uno and Connect 4. The staff didn’t stand a chance against Xavier!

Mr Hanif and Miss Foster wanted the pupils to have fun with their home learning for Geography and History in the last two weeks of the school year. Each day there is a Humanities challenge. This is in the form of a virtual field-trip. Pupils can pick which trip they want go on and then are tasked to write a report, fact file, picture file or poster on what they experienced.

This is an example of Sulaiman taking on us a trip through the Amazon Rainforest. Sulaiman has done amazingly well with this challenge. I especially like him talking us through his journey, I think we have a ready-made replacement for when David Attenborough retires.

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Lucy in Year 8 has taken on us on 2 trips. One to Coombe Abbey and the second one to an Italian Coral Reef..

Mr Hanif is very impressed by Lucy’s research on this as the findings are a very recent, exciting scientific discovery. In 2019, only last year, researchers in the Italian Adriatic coast found the country’s very first coral reef, one which they believe may be unique to the entirety of Europe. Amazing work as always Lucy, it’s something new that I have learnt about as well.

Year 7s have been exploring The Romans. Pupils had to research clothing that Roman soldiers would wear. Katie produced a brilliant example of a fully labelled Roman Soldier..

Year 7 pupils were also tasked to find interesting facts about famous London landmarks. Rhys researched and presented some excellent facts on the British Museum, Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament..

Mrs Goddard was pleased to share a lovely picture of Millie who has been for a walk around Dunham Massey this week..

Mrs Fitzsimons was proud to share some photos of the learning happening in school within her ‘pod’..

The learning in English has also been non-stop and the progress continues to amaze us all. Mariam B, Michaela, Jaydon, Lucy, Katie and Khadir are regularly working hard on improving their spelling on Spellzone. Khadir and Katie remain top of the leaderboard on Literacy Planet. Although, catching up are Mohammed J and Iona. Absolutely superb all of you!

Daisy has completed another book reflection to share her thoughts with us on Seesaw. I like how Daisy has really thought about all of her senses when writing this piece..

She has also written an insightful response to the book ‘The House that Jane Built’ by Kieran Shipka. How reflective Daisy! You certainly are a tough cookie!

Katie went on a virtual trip to Disneyland and completed some great work around the Disney characters..

Writing book reviews.. all in agreement, we love Flat Stanley!

Kyle W in Year 8 has been using technology to practice his spelling and writing sentences..

Lucy has written an email to a friend to invite them to her house. What beautiful handwriting Lucy! Sounds fun too..

Sophie E was keen to share with us the outstanding work that she has completed this week. She has researched, planned and written her own recipes..

She then made and presented her own afternoon tea. Mrs Newport told me that Sophie has worked on this project each week for the last 4 weeks!

We are so very proud of you Sophie!

What a week! Before I end the blog, could I ask parents if they fit the criteria below to contact Leanne Holland via email. The Co-op have sent some information though to school which may be of help to some of our families. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask: leanneholland@newbridgegroup.org

• You are currently employed in grocery and have been for at least 12 months or more
• You are in receipt of Child Benefit which is paid into your bank account
• Your household net income meets GroceryAid’s criteria for financial hardship
• Your household savings are below £1000

Finally, a reminder that the Hub will be closed next Friday 17th July which makes Thursday 16th our very last day of term.

Take care, stay safe.

Mrs Holland

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

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 Gavin’s previous blog posts here