What a lovely way to end the week – snow! Alyssa said that it was every child’s dream to play in the snow. I don’t know who was more excited to see the snow, Alyssa or me?!

I also spent some of this afternoon making chicken tikka masala and rice with Lewis. We left the upstairs floor of the school full of wonderful aromas. Lewis also made Christmas cookies with his class earlier, what a great cook.

I need to say a special well done to Jacob K today who achieved Senior Leadership Pupil of the Week. Jacob also achieved Form Pupil of the Week and was nicely surprised with his efforts. It hadn’t gone unnoticed Jacob.

Let’s have a look at the learning in and outside of the classrooms at the academy, starting with Mrs Young’s class..

In Maths, we are finishing the topic of additions. We are going to focus on subtractions with regrouping, which the boys are quite apprehensive about 😉

We have also learnt about the origins of St. Nicholas and other Christmas traditions.

We have started working on some Christmas decorations for our classroom.

In Geography we learnt about the main rivers in the UK and where can we find their sources and mouths and in Science we designed our own planet..

Mr Coldwell’s class have been cooking up a storm again in the kitchen, as you can see..

Now let’s find out what Mr Hopkins has been up to this week..

For PE this week Mr Coldwell’s and Mr Stewart’s classes went out exploring the Huddersfield canal and the 188m long Scout Tunnel. There were many activities to have a go at: Beth showed some great courage in jumping the overflow of the canal! They all overcame their fear of the dark by managing to get through the tunnel – particularly a well done to Cameron for this as he was certainly struggling half way through but with some encouragement from Beth and myself he did it! And Mr Coldwell’s class even found a swing out over the river and once we had tested its safety, challenged each other to swing out as far as possible! Well done Alfie for managing this as you are new at Spring Brook and are only just building the trust and relationships with us staff members and other pupils.

As the weather turned later in the week, Miss Crossley’s class and Mr Mullins’ classes were tasked with ‘The 100 Challenge’ in the school gym for their PE lessons. This involved a series of mainly upper body exercises (7 for the year 7’s and 8 for the year 9’s) to complete a 100 of each before their lesson ends. This was a real challenge and not just for fitness. It takes real mental strength and resilience to complete a challenge like this as the number of exercises seems impossible at the beginning. In this challenge our pupils learn how to focus on encouragement, motivation and breaking the big task into many smaller tasks to be able to complete it. Those who nearly managed it in the time limit were Ellie, Alyssa and Lewis and those that completed the whole challenge were Harry, Conor, Amaan, Jack, Jacob and Mr Bocking!! Well done to everyone!

For the John Muir Award Mr Coldwell’s class had their turn completing 5 challenges at Pule Hill near Diggle. These challenges included beating me up the hill to the quarry, exploring the quarry, finding a poem engraved on the quarry wall, crawling through a very tight cave entrance and ‘gully running’ down the side of the hill. All of the class were amazing and so encouraging to each other, especially when it came to getting through the cave entrance! It was also great to hear Kyren saying how peaceful it was and how beautiful the views were from the top of the hill. It really is so important for all of our mental health to find those peaceful places in the outdoors.

Well done the Spring Brook Team for another amazing week! ~ Mr Hopkins

With only two more weeks left of term we will still keep students on timetable and keep the structure. Christmas lunch will be on Wednesday 16th December – students and staff to wear Christmas jumpers or festive clothes. Last school day is Friday 18th December at 3pm.

Please keep the attendance up as we have a few surprises planned and I would hate for you to miss out on them. You never know, we might get a visit from Father Christmas himself…..

On that note, stay safe and enjoy the winter snow this weekend.

Miss Rodgers
Head of Site

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