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BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Weekly Bulletin – Friday 23rd February, 2018
Dear Parents/Carers,
As you will be aware, from 1st January this year our school along with the other
schools in the Radius Trust (St. Dominic’s and Grafham Grange) transferred to
be part of the OHCAT (Orchard Hill College and Academy Trust) family of
schools.
Joining this Academy Trust is proving to be very helpful to us as a school. The
benefits of being part of larger group enables us to have access to a wide
range of expertise. Being able to discuss various challenges and opportunities
with others who are working in similar schools is proving helpful as we progress
on our journey of school improvement.
Regular visits and liaison with others who have experience and skills in a range
of school matters – education, behaviour, safeguarding, curriculum to name
but a few, are really important to us as we aim to provide your children with
the best possible level of support on their journey.
You may remember from my last newsletter, I noted that staff were visiting
other schools during the morning of the INSET on Monday 19th – many of those
visits were to other OHCAT schools. During our team meeting this afternoon
colleagues will be sharing what they gleaned during those visits and
considering whether any of those things could be introduced here.
We hope that you enjoy reading the remainder of this Bulletin and can I take
this opportunity to encourage you to make contact with us if there is any
aspect of your child’s education that you would like to discuss.
Yours sincerely,
Dafydd Roberts
Interim Head Teacher
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Teaching & Learning this week:
Titan: Titan have had a great start to the half term. They have enjoyed
looking at a book about flying frogs and have attempted to write their
own newspaper articles about what was seen by the witnesses. In maths
the boys have worked hard on methods of addition and subtraction,
specifically to add amounts of money and find change. The pupils did
an incredible job of representing the school when we went offsite for
gymnastics. They also produced some wonderful watercolour paintings
of different planets for our solar system topic.
Jupiter: This week, Jupiter have welcomed a new member of staff Miss Deacon.
She is their new teaching assistant.
The boys have shown a good understanding of writing formal and non – formal
letters to various people and on a wide range of topics.
Whilst writing a formal letter, to the Head Teacher Mr Roberts, it was suggested
that the school got some horses and dogs.
Jupiter have had had a great first week back after half term. Well done!
Saturn:
Welcome back to this half term Saturn boys! It was lovely to see the boys
back on full form after last week’s break. The boys all look rested and
ready for some more learning. We have started this half term by revisiting
column addition and subtraction and becoming fluent in number bonds
to 10 and 20. In English, we have completed comprehension acitivites
and we have started looking at different genres; this week was
traditional stories and the boys showed a great deal of maturity when
reading and answering the questions fully independently. Well done
everyone!
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Mercury: This week, Mercury have been learning about puberty and inheritance
in PHCSE and Science learning about the developing body and the passing on of
parents' physical characteristics to their children. In English they have been
learning about structures in writing. They’ve also been identifying subjects, objects
and verbs in simple sentences. They have also been listening to guided reading
on Jacqueline Wilson's Cliff Hanger. In Maths they have been working on their
addition, subtraction and rounding. In RE they have been learning about
polytheism and the reasons why ancient people had gods. In PE they have been
learning how to play tennis and practicing their basic ball skills. In History they have
been learning about how the Black Death spread from Asia in the 14th Century. In
ICT they have been learning about what not to share on the internet.
Neptune: A mainly positive first week back. The boys enjoyed their first swimming
session, learning to use the butterfly stroke. In English we have begun learning a
poem by heart - they have each chosen their own poem to learn. In Maths we
have been learning about inequalities and using these to compare numbers.
Some have even been showing inequalities on a number line. We have begun
our Forces and Motion topic. We have completed the second Bone book, the
great cow race.
Mars: This week Mars class has welcomed a new member - Matteo, who has
settled in really well and the other boys have tried hard to make him feel at
home and show him the ropes.
We have started to learn about our new topic- coasts and are learning about
the water cycle. We have also been learning about how our body changes
during puberty as well as the importance of personal hygiene and we created
some very informative posters.
In Maths we have begun to learn about algebra which has been challenging
but fun and in English we have been learning stories from other cultures such as
traditional Chinese tales. We listened to a story about the Monkey King Sun
Wukong and wrote alternative endings for our big write.
A good start to the new half term
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Brantridge Weekly - Roll Of Honour! TOP OF THE LEAGUE
1st Danny
2nd Felix
3rd Jayden
TITAN MARS
King of the Golds Jayden King of the
Golds
Alfie
Star of the Week Billy Star of the Week Justin
SATURN MERCURY
King of the Golds Danny King of the
Golds
Tyler B
Star of the Week Felix Star of the Week Tyler B
JUPITER NEPTUNE
King of the Golds Christopher King of the
Golds
Joe
Star of the Week Taylor Star of the Week Cody
Resident of the Week Cody Forest School
Award
Tyler H
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Residential News from Galaxy, Orion and Milkyway
After a well deserved rest during half term, the pupils returned on a Tuesday for a shorter
week. We are still struggling with illness amongst the pupils, so it was another calm and
quiet week. The reward trip this week was to Air Hop, where 2 of our pupils had a good
time jumping around! They have also been out shopping this week and relaxing by
watching a film or playing on the computers.
Residential student of the week goes to: Cody Page
Therapies: The whole school has been targeting ‘Check It’ this week in the Social Communication
Programme. I’m sure if you ask your child what this means they will tell you. This target aims to
support pupils to develop independence skills and encourage them to take on responsibility for
their own understanding and learning.
Using ‘Check it’ at home:
if you give your son an instruction and are not sure if they have
understood it. Then say ‘Check it’ and the will try to tell you what they
did understand about your instruction.
If your son says the phrase ‘check it’ to you, they might
want to check for an understaniding of a word you have
used or be teling you that they haven’t understood what you have
asked them to do.
Next week the Social Communication Programme target is: ‘We Prefer Polite’ This target is to
encourage pupils to improve their use of social language and appropriate manners. As adults
we need to remember to model appropriate behaviours, use of words and provide
opportunities for our students to learn and to practice using good manners. This target can be
used to calmly discourage the use of bad language, swear words and or inappropriate tone of
voice. We will tell you more next week.
As always if you have any questions or want to know more about the therapies or the social
communication Programme at Brantridge school. Please do contact Rebecca Williams
(Speech and Language Therapist) r.williams@brantridge-school.co.uk.
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
First day back from half term and we made wind chimes…and it was a windy
day so we could test them out. Making them was a tricky job, testing our fine
motor skills, fiddly knots and using tiny screw eyes to dangle the wood from.
We saw some lovely concentration:
The end product!
So, we had to cut a disc of wood
from a log:
BRANTRIDGE BULLETIN
Our star of the week who cut, drilled,
threaded and knotted everything
himself. Well done Tyler H:
And there were some other
lovely ideas too:
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