Two important visitors to school, PE and fitness, Breakfast Club and The Rainbow Flag Award…
All in one week I am amazed at what we fit into our learning here at Spring Brook. We have welcomed the author, Helen Clarke, who has written a wonderful book called Supporting Spectacular Girls. Helen came to school to visit and to introduce herself to us. Watch this space for future work with Helen in her workshops.
I highly recommend this book, I found it really useful and it has given me lots to think about.
I am looking forward to a good working relationship with Helen and our school in the future.
Mr Mullins’ class have been working hard learning about lots of things from fractions to the Bard of Salford. They were also exhausted after their day on the John Muir Award.
New year, new topics – same work ethic.
“We have been working hard on all things poetry since our return to school. From looking at features and identifying different styles and rhyme schemes, through to up-levelling an existing piece. All this will help the pupils take ideas for a poem of their own over the next few weeks. The class have delved into the works of The Bard of Salford – Dr John Cooper Clarke. The class have pushed on with our chosen reading scheme too, making full use of the interactive features on their iPads.
In Maths, we are focusing on fractions and how this area of learning feeds into our daily life.
Elsewhere, we have explored why the world’s population is increasing and possible consequences of this. The class have taken part in group debates and helped one another with structuring arguments/features of persuasive language. We have also combined our work in PE with Mr Hopkins with our science work on exploring the respiratory system.
All this having spent Wednesday participating in their John Muir Award!
Well done SBU8 – keep up the fantastic work.”
Miss Crossley’s class have been busy this week making pancakes and BBQ chicken. The breakfast club is really taking off with this class becoming increasingly more independent.
“This week, SBU1 have worked hard to develop their ability to regulate their emotions, as well as independence skills and social interaction. The pupils have made their own breakfast each week in class and participated in class discussion, working on speech and language skills, during this time.
On Friday, we had a ‘big breakfast’ to celebrate the week’s achievement and made our own pancakes (from scratch!)
In our food technology lesson this week we focused on knife safety, cutting skills (using the bridge method!) and hygiene practices in the kitchen; making a BBQ chicken pasta that smelt delicious!
We have continued to work hard in Maths with the tricky concepts of multiplication and division – turns out the concept is much easier when it’s sweets being shared out than when it’s blocks!
Next week, some members of SBU1 will participate in the first of their Equine Facilitated Learning Interventions – we luck forward to updating you with our progress.”
Mr Hopkins has been challenging our students with fitness. I watched Mrs Mason-Power’s class lifting weights this week, they did really well. The photos from the John Muir award were brilliant.
“The start to the new year is always fitness related in PE here at SBU. We started this year with an EMOM session last week – That is 10 exercises repeated 3 times with each exercise starting Every Minute On the Minute. It is a brutal HIIT session but very effective and shows our pupils how you can work the whole body in a very short period of time and is a class that is very popular in gyms if they were ever to join one. This week we have been performing our set of strength tests – testing the strength of different muscle groups in the body. Needless to say that this ends up being competitive – against each other, staff and previous performance results. As usual our pupils have responded to the challenge and really tested their resilience in not giving up when things get difficult during our PE sessions this week. Well done to everyone for giving 100%!
Mr Hopkins
Earlier in the week we formed another working relationship with a local gym. The students are working hard to achieve an AQA award in mixed martial arts. A big thanks to Steven and the coaches at Henshall’s gym for making us all feel so welcome.
To end the week, Angela Rayner, our local MP came to visit school council. The students showed Angela around school and asked her a range of questions. Angela made some lovely comments about our school, students and staff on her twitter page. Thank you for your kind comments Angela!
On Friday I spent the day with Mrs Mason-Power on Rainbow Flag Training. This was facilitated by the Proud Trust and was excellent training, as a school we will be working towards achieving this award over the next year and a half. Watch this space about positive change and inclusion.
As we end this week, I have been thinking about our growth strategy for the future. It’s so encouraging to know that more and more students and families are requesting placements here at Spring Brook. I really enjoy introducing our potential new students to our academy. Inclusion and belonging remain of high importance with our values here at the academy.
Enjoy the weekend,
Miss Rodgers
Head of Site