Welcome back to a new year in school! We hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas break, it has been really nice to see everyone this week. Please check your emails to see our new term newsletter with more information about what we will be learning about in class.

 

On Monday morning, 11G walked to All Season’s Gym for their weekly PE session. You can definitely tell that it is January as the gym was much busier than it was the last time we visited! We worked in pairs and spent 5 minutes on each piece of cardio equipment (rower, treadmill, cross trainer and bike). For the finisher, pupils were asked to choose their preferred piece of equipment and the challenge was to travel as far as possible in 5 minutes. Our winner this week was Lily travelling a whopping 1.75km! Well done, Lily! 

 

On Monday afternoon, we started our first new ASDAN unit: Community Action. This week we were starting our new unit by thinking about people who help us when we are in school and when we are in the community. We worked in pairs to take part in an activity involving matching photos of people in uniform to a description of the job that they do. 

 

On Tuesday morning, it was our first Maths session of the new year. We started the lesson with a Quiz Wheel challenge. Pupils worked in pairs and had to spin the wheel and select the correct answer. We recapped using a hundred square to help us to work out the answer to simple addition and subtraction problems. The winning team was Danny and Jacob!

 

When the game had finished, we split into our Maths groups to complete our work. One group were looking at 2D shapes and recognising them in different contexts, whilst the other group were working on their Entry Level requirements by solving word problems. 

 

On Tuesday afternoon, the whole class took class in their first Good to Be Me session led by Mrs Cobham. Mrs Cobham asked her group to explain to the class the reason why we have Good to Be Me group and that we are going to be taking part in some whole class sessions on a Tuesday afternoon. This week we were thinking about our goals for this year and decided on something that we want to get better at, or something new that we want to learn. Please ask your child what they decided their new year’s goal to be.

 

On Wednesday mornings, Mrs Fisher will be having her PPA time. For the next two weeks, Mrs Cobham will be leading our sessions and then we get the pleasure of having Mrs Mahood to join us for the remainder of the school year for a Wednesday morning. This week we started another ASDAN unit: Environmental Awareness. We started by talking about what things we already know about that spoil our local environment. Ideas such as litter being left on the floor and making sure you recycle things were the main ones suggested. Learners then completed a sorting activity involving deciding whether an object was made of plastic or not.

 

In the afternoon, Mrs Fisher led our first Zones of Regulation session of the new year. We learnt about expected and unexpected behaviours that we might see in our classroom and how unexpected behaviours might make us feel. We talked about how our behaviours can impact our friends in class and that unexpected behaviours can be confusing to others. 

 

Thursday morning was our first visit to the Chorley in Bloom hub at the back of All Season’s Leisure Centre. We met Gill and Iris who will support us with our weekly sessions. These sessions will contribute towards the final part of our Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. We were shown around the hub and we sat and chatted about the different jobs that we will do during our sessions there. 

 

As it was Braille Day on Thursday afternoon, we learnt about Braille and how it was invented. We talked about Louis Braille and how he came to invent Braille. We had a go at writing our full names in Braille and then everyone was given a secret message to decipher using the code key.

Our Star of the Week this week was Reece who has been awarded Star of the Week for his excellent work in writing his name and using Proloquo2Go and signing to communicate. Well done, Reece!

 

We can’t finish the blog this week without introducing our new 11G staff member: Mr Crofts! Mr Crofts will be our new TA1 and will finally fill the vacancy in class that we have had since Miss Smith was moved in October.

 

Have a lovely weekend and we will see everyone next week!

Mrs Fisher, Mrs Cobham and Mr Crofts

11G First Week of 2024