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

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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!

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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

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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

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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:

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Look for sticks and bamboo to

form the chimes:

Drill holes for the string:

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Thread the string and screw in the eyes:

Tie fiddly knots:

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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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Preparing tinder and kindling for a fire:

Fire lighting

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