Hello everyone, you join us at the end of another action packed week in 11G. 

On Monday we were off to the gym as usual. This week, instead of working against our partner, we had to work with them to complete our team challenge. Each pair had to travel 2km on each piece of cardio equipment, swapping out when they were finding it hard and cheering their teammate on. Katie and Jacob were our overall winners with the quickest times on nearly all of the equipment but everyone put in an excellent amount of effort. We were very lucky to receive a demonstration of how to use the rower by one of the lovely footballers from Fylde Football Club, Obi. A big thank you to Obi for his guidance!

 

In the afternoon we continued with our Community Action unit where we discussed about situations we might encounter when we are accessing our local community and what we might do/say if we find ourselves in certain situations. We had a lot of budding actors keen to show us what they’d do in some role play activities. Next week we will be putting this to the test when we visit Asda and dealing with problems in a real life situation. Before home time, we all contributed to a card for Miss Turner who is a TA who has worked in our class back in September. She is moving to America with her family this week so we wanted to wish her lots of luck on her new adventure!

 

On Tuesday morning we continued our maths work with a brain warm up playing the quiz wheel game. This week we changed things up a bit and increased our team sizes from 2 to 3 and Josh used his boards to tell us his answers too. We split into our groups to complete our work: some of us were consolidating our learning about the differences between squares and rectangles, some of us were taking information from graphs and charts and some of us were answering mental arithmetic questions.

In the afternoon, Mrs Cobham led a Good to Be session in class whilst Mrs Fisher and Mr Crofts took small groups up to the cooking room. In class, Mrs Cobham was asking the group to think about what makes a good person. This discussion then led on to the group talking about what qualities they look for in a teacher/teaching assistant. Mrs Cobham has written a separate blog about this: 

 

In the food tech room, Mrs Fisher and Mr Crofts learners were consolidating their learning from last week about using the bridge and claw method whilst cutting with a sharp knife. Last week they practiced with Playdoh, this week we used cucumbers, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, baby potatoes and banana. We looked at each piece of food and discussed which method would be the best to use when chopping them. We noticed a marked improvement in confidence and accuracy this week, well done everyone!

 

On Wednesday morning we were joined by the wonderful Mrs Mahood! Since Mr Murphy moved to teach 10A after Christmas, Mrs Cobham has very kindly been covering Mrs Fisher’s PPA time. Now we are very lucky to have Mrs Mahood leading every Wednesday morning. It was a sport filled day on Wednesday. 9 of our learners from Y9, 10 and 11 went to a football tournament in Preston accompanied by Mr Murphy, Mr Crofts and Mr Crewe. Then in the afternoon, another 9 learners from Y9, 10 and 11 attended a Panathalon competition with Mrs Fisher, Mrs Banks and Miss Wilkins.

 

On Thursday morning it was time for our weekly visit to Chorley in Bloom. This week we were learning about wild flowers and pollination. We planted some more seeds and Josh did a very good job of emptying and filling some of the planters around the site. 

In the afternoon, Mr Crofts and Mrs Fisher finally started travel training with the learners in 11G. Between now and the Easter break we will be using any spare time at the end of the time to practice our road safety. For those who are working towards achieving their ASDAN PSD certificate, one of the units (Personal Safety) involves travelling (walking) to a familiar destination and back with independence. As we are currently walking to All Seasons twice a week (gym on a Monday and Chorley in Bloom on a Thursday), we thought this would be a familiar journey/route to use for this module. 

 

On Friday morning it was our next English lesson based around David Attenborough’s Wild Isles documentary. To begin with we recapped our learning from last week about orca whales, seals, golden eagles and dormice. This week’s clip that we watched involved foxes teaching their cubs how to hunt, bees pollinating plants in a very interesting way and a lord and lady plant that has a very clever way of being pollinated. We split into our groups to continue working on our writing; building and writing or typing sentences about the animals we had learnt about. 

 

In Golden Time in the afternoon, Mr Crofts and Miss Brown set up the Nintendo Switch and challenged everyone to some games including Mario Party and Just Dance. 

 

A huge congratulations to our Star of the Week this week: Katie! What a week Katie has had- excellent effort in the gym on Monday, very safe and efficient cutting with a sharp knife in cooking on Tuesday, being a valuable member of our Panathalon team on Wednesday and brilliant effort in travel training on Thursday. Well done Katie!!

 

Next week we have a jammed packed week: it is Children’s Mental Health week so we will be completing activities throughout the week. On Monday we are at the gym as usual and all learners have been asked to wear something green for Children’s Mental Health Week. Tuesday is Safer Internet Day and in the afternoon we are off to visit Asda to collect a very generous donation from them for our Valentines disco and also to put our Community Action work into practice in a real life situation. On Thursday we will be visiting Chorley in Bloom as usual, then it is finally time for McDonalds (the winner of the vote from before Christmas!) so we will be walking across to McDonalds and eating inside the restaurant. Then it is Valentine’s Disco on Thursday night and then we will have made it half term!

 

Have a lovely weekend!

 

Mrs Fisher, Mrs Cobham and Mr Crofts