This week has gone incredibly fast and I’m in danger of falling behind with my blogs as we’ve been so busy down at Dean Street.

Our new Springboard Project is really beginning to ‘kick off’ and I’ve been caught up with meetings alongside our project manager, Lindsey Stansfield from the Department for Education, Frank from Conlons and our ICT people, Gaia. Myself, Mr Quinn and Mrs Righini spent all day looking at the timeline for the Project which has been slightly delayed. We will now be beginning transition into the building in June 2019. Fingers crossed!

We’ve also been working with the rest of the Trust to look at how we can develop our curriculum to ensure it is ready for Springboard. Next week Dean Street will welcome Ms Dunne, Mrs Righini, and Mr Howard as well as our curriculum advisors. Mrs Hobson (English), Mrs Needham (Maths and previously a teacher at Spring Brook), Miss Wilson (Performing Arts), Mr Bright (ICT) and Mrs Lund (Living Skills) have been in and out of all our lessons looking at some of the fantastic work that’s been going on and we’re excited to be working on further developing our curriculum with them.

Next week we will also see the arrival of some new support staff. Mr Wilkes is joining us from Hollinwood and Mr Oughton and Miss Mellor from New Bridge. We are looking forward to the pupils meeting the new staff and having new members of the team working with our fabulous young people.

Meanwhile Key Stage 4 have been busy with physical activities and new experiences. One of the PE groups went out on an enrichment experience to discover a new activity and learn some golf skills! All the pupils were excellently behaved and enjoyed their tour around the Trafford Golf Centre. They were extremely polite to the Centre Manager, Pete Styles who personally introduced our children to the centre.

Each pupil found it difficult at first (because it is) but with some practice and a little tuition they were soon making some excellent swings and hitting shots that would make Tiger Woods proud!

Thanks very much to Trafford Golf Centre, Pete Styles and the staff there for making us feel so welcome..

[fvplayer src=”http://newbridgeschool.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/golf.mp4″]

I am leaving you this week with a ‘snapshot’ of our intrepid explorers on DofE, delivered by Mr Hopkins and Mr Molloy. Mr Hopkins has all the details..

The Silver Duke of Edinburgh’s Award consists of 4 sections that the pupils have to complete – Physical, Skills, Voluntary and Expedition. The Year 11 Silver group have taken their first steps to completing their Voluntary section. For this section the pupils have to choose a project to complete that gives their time to help people, the community, the environment or animals with no reward and without being paid.

The Year 11s headed to 5th Stalybridge HQ – a local scout group that has been around since 1911! The building is very old and needs regular maintenance from its members and volunteer leaders and so our pupils began their volunteering project by giving the main room upstairs a good clean. The floors were swept, the tables all cleaned, the rubbish bins emptied and the toilets were given a good mop..

Of course, as a reward the pupils were allowed to have a go on the bouldering wall and rope climb up to the hideout in the rafters!!!

Well done everyone, I’m looking forward to seeing what other odd jobs we can do for the group throughout the year.

A group of pupils have also been to Daisy Nook to learn about orienteering. Not only is orienteering great for fitness but it links in with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award by improving navigation skills, teamwork, decision making and responsibility.

The pupils all learned about the sport, how to read an orienteering map and recognise features on the map. As a group we then walked an ‘easy’ orienteering course set up around the park to recognise control points and use the map to find them. Finally, the pupils split into two teams and raced each other around a short course in the park having to draw each symbol they found on the control points to prove they had found them. Remarkably both teams arrived back at the finish at the same time, resulting in a draw..

Well done on a great learning experience everyone!

It’s always brilliant to see learning in the outside environment and we are looking forward to developing this and other parts of the curriculum at Springboard.

Finally, I would like to thank all our parents and carers for the support you have given us in our drive to improve uniform and routines around the school day (including the use of mobile phones). Our mission, it safe to say, is to prepare our young people for the world of work and the rigours of working life.

Have a great week,

Mrs Tootill
Head of Springboard Project

You can find all our previous blog entries here

Click here to read this week’s news from Graham