News, Messages & Stars from John & the PHS Team 14th July 2023

More great things that happened at MOVE Fest last week

Friday 14^th July 2023

Hi all, Happy Friday!

Well, it’s the penultimate week of term and things are so busy! But they are good busy, with lots of really lovely and great things happening. Hopefully you can get a flavour of them below. And there are even things that I haven’t managed to put in and will have to wait for next week!

So please do check out the trips that have happened, the fabulous festival-type things, the news from FoPHS and others, including an Allotment Special that covers the whole year!

There is also a more serious message referring back to our letter about school lunches next year, so please do see that too

Wherever you and whatever you’re doing, thanks for your support and have a wonderful weekend. We’re looking forward to our Junior Prom this afternoon, and our 2^nd Prom tonight. It’s also been great to see some of you in school for the Summer Fair and Engagement Assembly, and hope to see you again! Come to the Leavers Assembly too, if you have someone leaving!

All the best!

😊 from John & the PHS Team 😊

Duke of Edinburgh Award

Do you remember last week when I mentioned the DofE sleepover that happened at the school last week with Helen and the Team? Well, David has sent on some more words and pictures, so please do enjoy.

Twenty students this year have successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Awards. Our KS4 group, with a few guests from Post 16, was the latest to complete, this included doing an overnight stay as part of their expedition. Here are some of photos of their adventures during the expedition and some of their remarks:

Jayden commented, “The DofE Award was great. The expedition was tiring but I enjoyed staying in school with my friends.”

Joseph remarked, “The award has helped teach me a few different skills. It also gave me opportunities to socialise with people. They were hard times in it, but we got through it.”

Jack stated, “It was very interesting to learn more about nature. It taught me life skills and how to survive in the wider world, such as how to camp.”

Laiton said, “I enjoyed spending time with my friends whilst completing the award.”

Lovely stuff there – and here are some pics of it to enjoy as well.

Absolutely super stuff from all involved – well done the DofE students!!!!!

Trips of the Week – RE!

As part of their Humanities work on our multicultural society, 4JF and 4AJ travelled into the city to observe aspects of different cultures that operate within a small geographical area. They looked at buildings that are important to The International Society For Krishna Consciousness, Christians and Chinese, Irish and Japanese people

The highlight was a tour of a Sikh gurdwara. Pupils exhibited one of our school’s core values, respect, when covering their heads and removing footwear. We listened to information, watched videos, observed the religious practice of others, listened to live music, experimented with the instruments, asked questions and shared food while sitting on the floor alongside practitioners. It was wonderful!

We were very thankful to the friendly people there that were so generous with their time.

Allotment Shenanigans!

Newcastle City Council councillor Steve Wood and local government officer Beverley visited the allotment today to see all the good work 3BE have done over the year.

A Year in photos at the allotment with 3BE……..

Planting, weeding , painting, watering, building, sowing

Assembly of the Week – Friends with the Engagement Pathway!

Thanks so much for coming to the Engagement assembly this week. It was a really lovely atmosphere. Hannah has written a few words about it.

Huge thanks to all the parents, aunties, uncles, friends and carers who came to join us for the Engagement Pathway’s Sensory Celebration Assembly.  It was so good to see so many of you there, and we’ll be inviting you along again in the Autumn Term.  It was great to see everyone singing and signing to our assembly songs, and it felt really joyful!   We run the same assembly for six weeks in a row, so that the students can practise the skills of anticipation, initiation, and realisation.  It has been fantastic to see the progress they have made throughout this half term, and we’re looking forward to a new assembly in September.  Let us know if you enjoyed it! 

It was really great stuff and I can’t wait for the next ones!

MOVE Fest

Another great thing that happened last week was the MOVE Fest. We saw some pictures last week, and here is some writing by Mary too. It was such a great occasion!

This year’s national MOVE Day was themed MOVE Fest. This gave the pupils three days of lovely outdoor activities, with our ‘This is me’ festival on Friday 7^th. Each station (10 in total) were linked to a festival theme and were located across the grounds of Percy Hedley School (see map). Some activities included throwing wellies, chilling out in the chillout zone, feeling mud and straw, reaching to weave a coloured fabric of their choosing into a mesh, shooting water pistols at rubber ducks, standing to step over hurdles, playing Connect 4 and Kerplunk …. the activities were endless!  Everyone seemed to have lots of fun with each station providing different activities for all our students with a range of abilities. The pictures show all the fun enjoyment all the students had, some students even achieved some of their communication and social interaction targets as they worked with their peers to undertake games and compete against each other!

Well done everyone!

Thanks

MOVE Team

This is Me Festival

We were so happy to see all of our young people enjoying the activities and coming together to march to celebrate everyone for their own unique wonderfulness!!!!!

Next year we aim to go even bigger and better again, with more singing, dancing, acts and visitors to our special day.

We want to thank everybody involved for all of their help and support in putting this day together, and we look forward to next year’s event. Here’s a few pictures to give you the flavour

Another great trip of the week!

3RM have been working with their Occupational Therapist this term to develop their community  skills.  This half term they have been working on planning and organisation skills and  worked together to plan a trip to Beamish. This week they attended their trip after all their hard work! They all had a great time; riding the buses, visiting the school, seeing steam engines and of course buying sweets! Well done 3RM you are all superstars! 

School Dinners

I hope you all managed to see the letter we sent out this week about school dinners next year. It’s obviously been difficult to move away from what the school has been doing for several years, and we do appreciate that it may be unsettling for some of you. Apologies for that. Unfortunately, we have been left with no choice given costs across the board. As you will have seen from our letter, which is elsewhere on the site, we have done our best to stagger the costs to you, and to think carefully about the more complex meals produced, which we will continue to address and problem-solve in the autumn. Again, thanks to so many of you for your support in this and other matters that are difficult, as we do come across sometimes in our work

And finally…..

LEAVERS ASSEMBLY!

For parents of Leavers, we would love to see you at the school at 1.45 so that we can celebrate our fabulous leavers! It would be great to see as many of you as possible, just like last year

All the very best to all of you at home, from all of us here at the school – we’re pushing on now with the second half of the school year, with the weather getting a bit better as well, and hopefully seeing you here some time at Consultation Evenings, Coffee & Catch-up afternoons, or other funky events

Respect…Teamwork…Resilience

from John & the Team here at PHS

Around the campfire for the DofE – fire and stories!