Redwood School

Redwood School

Preparing For Adulthood: Internship Programme

During the last few newsletters I have referred to our curriculum programme which at its basis is focused on how we prepare our youngsters for adulthood, academically, socially and using independence life skills from Year 7 to Post 16.

This week I had the pleasure of visiting some of our Internee Post 16 students out on placement in and around Rochdale Infirmary. It was wonderful to see some current Post 16 students, Kyle, Mark, Ian and Tanzila working so well on placement within the various hospital departments with support from staff. Indeed transferring skills from the classroom into the real working environment. This is a fantastic programme and the commitment from the staff is high quality. Well done to everybody concerned.

Student Voice: My School Day
During the next few weeks we are introducing a new aspect of student voice in lessons whereby individual students will be selected by form tutors, to complete a review form for one day relating to the following questions in each lesson:

What we did today, What I learnt today, Have you enjoyed the lesson, Did you understand the work, How did you feel about the work?

The views will be collated and fed back to the student council, staff, parents and governors.

Spotlight on Safeguarding
It may well happen that your son / daughter may come home and start to talk about this aspect, Spotlight on Safeguarding. We are currently focusing on how our youngsters understand the role school has in safeguarding them from various forms of danger. We have had numerous assemblies, special lessons and talks on these issues relating to two aspects: 1. What is safeguarding, 2. Who is our Safeguarding Lead in school? House points are being awarded for answers on these issues.

Building extension
School has been notified this week that the selection of a preferred bidder to start the extension project will take place by the end of January with the likely outcome known by half term. Clearly this means that the expected completion of the new build is now likely to be ready for January 2017. I will update more as developments become known.

Extended School Provision
After school clubs and youth clubs are available for youngsters and this is an opportunity to socialize and take part in a variety of activities supervised by staff. For more details contact Nicola Wright, Parent Partnership Co-ordinator at school.

KS3

Welcome to Grant Hirst, who is now a permanent member of Staff at Redwood School, working in The Lilac Base in KS3. Ali is enjoying dance and music in his lesson.

It’s been a busy week for Maths - Didi from year 7 has worked on problem solving and dividing, Jafran has been sorting silver and copper coins in Lilac 2 and Lorraine has been working on place value, using number arrows to form three digit numbers.

Hamzah and Hassan in 8/9 Red have been enjoying dancing and moving to Spanish music in the ‘Around the World’ theme weeks. Jordan has enjoyed pretending to be the Bull in our Spanish dancing in 8/9 Red.

Well done to our new Wheelchair Facilitators: Jake (yr7), Muhammed (yr 9), Evie (yr 7) and Abdullah (yr 9)

The Nurtutre Group have been looking into how we can look after our teeth, keeping our hands clean and how we need to keep our clothes clean. They have been exploring what can happen if we don’t keep ourselves or our clothes clean.

Olivia has made great progress in her V. I. sessions, responding really well to the lights.

In 8/9 Green we have been looking at the ‘Transfer of Energy’ with an experiment looking at how Potential energy can be transferred to Kinetic Energy.

In the Inclusion group, Tia has been working on the ‘Seven stages of Man’, documenting key points of her life.

KS4

Rhianna, Warren, Chebukem, Ryan, Corey, Amelia and Asako made their own cards to sell in the Enterprise group this week. They were each given the different components needed to make their cards but were left to decide how to put them together by themselves.
 
SSC have been taking turns and making shapes using the play dough that they made last lesson. We worked all together learning On, in, backwards and forwards. The student also wrote their initials in the play dough. We had so much fun.
 
Students in 4J have been identifying weeds as part of their accreditation. They are looking after their local environment.
 
This week Cook and Eat made cheese and onion pie and Eton mess as part of their work on the Great British Menu.
 
The ALG group have been busy making flapjack for our fundraising coffee morning.
 
KS5

The gardening group had to use different skills this week in order to demolish a wall for a local resident. Each member of the group worked extremely hard to firstly knock the wall down and then load the skip full of rubble. The resident was in fact Jodie Dyer’s mum and she commented that the group ‘was absolutely fantastic’. Well done to all involved.

We had a great time when we were visited by the Multi Arts Asian Workshop, who played and sang and entertained us. The workshop supported the current Sensory Route topic - World Countries and Continents. There was plenty to explore and the students all joined in with the activities.
 
Student of the week
Jacob for doing exceedingly well at lunchtimes

Most Improved
Alex for independently putting his coat on and increased participation.