Welcome back to a new year, a new term and a fresh start for some of you. You might have made New Year resolutions; maybe you have set yourself some new challenges just like me? It’s good to keep focused and to have a goal to work towards; this gives you something to aim for. This year I have set myself a number of challenges both personally and professionally. One of my challenges is to climb the three tallest mountains in Yorkshire. Easy, I hear you say? Not in one day! Yes that’s right, 25 miles in one day. I have already completed the first training walk so I am feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I wonder what your challenge to yourself will be this year or term? It could be to try harder in Maths or to try a new food. I have promised someone in Nurture Group a hamster as a reward if he has a great week, completes all of his work, stays in class and doesn’t have any physical interventions. Surely that is worth working hard for? Watch this space to see if this challenge is met. If so, there will be a new furry friend in Nurture Group next week! ‘EEK!’ I hear Mrs Walters say. So let’s have a look at what the Nurture Group have been learning about this week..

It was lovely to see the boys back after their Christmas break, they started the week, working hard in lessons. This term we are learning to tell the time in our Maths lessons, with the group trying hard to master it. In English the group are practising spellings and handwriting, while reading the book ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. This fits in with the topic of World War 2 and the evacuation of children in our History lessons.

In our craft lesson Jacob and Mitchell started to paint pig money boxes, they are looking forward to painting designs on them next week..

On Tuesday afternoon the boys made the most of the dry and sunny weather and had a trip out to the pet shop. Mitchell wanted to adopt the two rabbits that were looking for a new home..

Jacob wanted a hamster, especially when they were running on the wheel..

Unfortunately the boys weren’t allowed to handle the animals due to them just being fed..

On the way back we called at the local park and the boys had a great time spinning each other about..

On Friday in our food technology lesson the boys made burgers. They worked quickly and safely..

..with tasty results, which of course they enjoyed eating..

Thank you boys, we have finished the week on high! Great effort today in Maths to Daniel and Joshua – I really enjoyed teaching you today boys – thank you!

Over to Miss Price’s class…

In Maths the students have been looking at factors and multiples. They have been using concrete materials to be able to identify the different factors and multiples of various numbers. The boys seemed to have enjoyed using the materials!

This week the boys wanted to make chocolate chip muffins in Food Technology! The boys did really well at measuring out the ingredients and making their mixture. The final product looked and tasted amazing!

We have been reading ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ in English and the students are currently up to chapter 4. They have been showing their understanding of each chapter through answering comprehension questions..

Before Christmas we had a focus on gifting to others who are less fortunate. The boys, Miss Davies and Miss Price created a Christmas box to send to a young boy and completed it with colours, colouring books and much more..

Well done to Namal and Joshua who achieved senior leadership pupils of the week. Joshua went to Tesco and choose doughnuts and Namal has saved his lunch out until Monday – he wanted to think over the weekend where he could go! As long as it’s not the Ritz, Namal. Well done to both of you. Namal has had a great week and Joshua has come back to school very calmly.

Namal enjoyed his ‘hot chocolate with the head Friday’!

Joshua has helped me to choose some new furniture for a new classroom today. Thank you Joshua – great taste! Even though you didn’t want your photo to be taken. I know you will be checking this blog..

Over to Mr Roscoe’s class..

This week SBA2 have been given a great insight into the British Empire and slavery. Kieran and Oliver have found this topic particularly interesting. SBA2 have created their own posters relating to their current knowledge of the slave trade. We have also looked at song lyrics from famous rappers and reggae artists that mention slavery within their songs. The students have used their inference skills to analyse the songs and see how they link to slavery and infer what the artists could mean. On Thursday, we used iPads and dictionaries to research slavery and the definition of key words that will be occurring more often throughout our lessons. This topic has also lead to some fantastic discussions between the full class and Keal has shown great insight into racism and dealing with racist actions.

In Maths this week we have been introduced to fractions! We have looked at fractions of shapes and fractions of amounts. Oliver and Kieran have worked very hard to complete tasks that they have struggled with. Oliver in particular has persevered and can now comfortably find fractions of amounts and is beginning to look at equivalent fractions.

We also had a great boxing session..

Well done to both Kieran and Oliver who have worked really hard this week. I have popped my head in to your classroom a number of times this week and you both have been heads down and working really hard – I am really proud of both of you!

Last but by no means least let’s see what Year 9 Mrs Young’s class have been learning….

I must admit that I have been very surprised with our boys’ work ethos this week. We all anticipated the first week back might have got off to a slow start but it turned out to be quite productive.

In English we finished our final draft of an agony letter after using peer assessment method. I was quite impressed with the boys as they really tried their hardest to use all the success criteria in their writing. Everybody was checking their pieces of writing thoroughly for capital letters, punctuation and whether they had enclosed connectives, imperative verbs, colloquial style or any ‘wow’ words. Later on we focused on our weekly spellings of common exception words and looked at the use of tenses in English..

Our Citizenship lesson was based on the current affairs related to Donald Trump and the wall he is planning to build at the American-Mexican border. We also talked about the structure of the 3 branches of the American Government and how they operated..

Maths was based on revising our knowledge of multiplication using mental, written and pictorial methods. We worked with Numicon, clip on blocks and arrays. We also made sure we remembered what prime numbers, factors and multiples of numbers meant..

Science was quite interesting as we learnt about the different layers of the Earth and made a start on volcanoes. We even made a model of the Earth out of the modelling clay and showed what it consisted of..

In History, we have been discussing different types of food the Aztecs consumed and how they coped when the food was scarce. They certainly didn’t have chocolate muffins like these..

Mrs Young, I have noticed how hard your class have worked this week. I’m very impressed with their learning and actually their attitude coming back into school after Christmas. Connor I. has been so eager he has arrived at school early every day. Well done for a great start back boys.

Mr Southerington has also been impressed with the work in ICT..

In ICT this term, Key Stage 3 pupils have been discussing ‘Resolutions’ – not New Year ones, but image resolutions. The pupils have learnt that an image is made up of lots of tiny squares called pixels and that these pixels can determine the quality of an image – the general rule is the more pixels per inch, the more detail can be included.

Some of the pupils had a go at making their own Pixel Art and, as you can see from the photos below, they have produced some really good work and are starting to understand how digital images are composed..

Mr Roscoe’s class had the chance to use our iPads to create their Art work. This technology really engaged the learners and I am looking forward to when each pupil receives their own iPad for cross curricular learning when the 1:1 iPad project is rolled out later this academic year..

Mr Hopkins had a very exciting start to the year..

Two days into the new school year and Spring Brook Academy Upper School have already seen their first success of 2019!!
After school on Tuesday three of our pupils – Leo (Year 8), Leon (Year 10) and Rainier (Year 11) travelled to the Radclyffe School to compete in the Oldham Trampoline championships against competitors from other schools in the borough.

After dealing with an intense attack of nerves at the beginning of proceedings, all three pupils managed to summon up the courage to step on the competition trampoline to perform their routines in front of other competitors and the judges. After having only 2 days of preparation to come up with their own 10 bounce routine, remember it and then perform it in front of others, I would have called this a success on its own!

However the boys outdid themselves and performed fantastically with Leo managing to pick up the Bronze medal in the boys category and Rainier winning the Gold overall!!

Well done to the three of you for just putting yourselves out there, let alone getting yourselves medals!

Brilliant boys, well done! Don’t forget to return your form if you’d like to request a place on our new February holiday club or call us if you have any questions.

Well there you go. The first week back to Spring Brook Upper has been a productive week. Thank you to all of the staff who have enabled fantastic teaching and learning here at the academy this week. I will leave you with the positive note on my desk today to think about over the weekend..

Have a great weekend everyone,

Miss Rodgers
Head of Site

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