News, Stars & a Careers Fair at St James’ Park from John & the PHS Team Friday 2nd February 2024

Hi everyone, Happy Friday and Happy February!

Well, that’s the back of January! As I write this, it’s warm and windy, and getting a bit lighter in the evenings. I do hope you are all ok wherever you are in the North-East

There’s loads and loads of good stuff in the blog this week, from the marvellous Careers Fair this week, to Forest school stuff, with some amazing therapy and brilliant STARS!!! in between. Something for everybody I hope

Also, please do look down to the LPPA Award, as the guys have worked so hard on that to try and make communications and other things better between the school and home, and that work was recognised – still a long way to go to be great in that regard, but a lovely piece of recognition

Al the best for a lovely weekend when it comes for you! Cheers!

😊 from John & the PHS Team 😊

Literacy

Personal Development

Physical Development

Our three Super Steering Groups deliver our curriculum, Key Drivers and School Values – there’s a paper on it on the website if you want to read further. The Groups deliver the right curriculum for our pupils. This is where a lot of exciting stuff happens. Here’s the latest from them

Literacy!

First up, the Literacy Squad. Sarah is here to tell us about what’s happening in the first part of this year in the world of Literacy. 

What is Storytelling Week?

National Storytelling Week takes place every year and is a celebration of the power of sharing stories. This year it is being celebrated between 27 January and 4 February 2024.

Sharing and making up stories with your child is a great way to help them relax, develop empathy, and learn about the world. It also boosts their vital literacy skills.

Dream up new worlds inspired by the everyday objects around you. Maybe a favourite teddy has unbelievable adventures whilst you sleep, or a pair of old shoes gives you magical powers when you wear them! The possibilities are endless.

Explore free activities below, designed to support your child’s creativity, empathy, and literacy skills.

Activities include story sharing, puppet making and visual and audio stories.

Personal Development

Jo looks after all Personal Development, including PSHE, Careers, Wellbeing, Online Safety, Social Moral Spiritual Cultural stuff and many other things. Let’s hear from Jo and the team!

SMSC, British Values, Citizenship and RE

In Engagement, we like to find out about the world around us.  The Engagement Department SLTs have been working hard to think of ways that we can share our own news in a meaningful way.  In the past few weeks, Sensory News has been introduced in some of the classes and has been a big success!  Students have an auditory cue (the Newsround theme) so that they understand that we are about to share our stories.  Then we use sensory objects to support our understanding of different events.  This week, one student had been on a country walk, so we felt the grass with our hands and feet.  Another student had enjoyed a lovely hair wash at the weekend, so we smelled the shampoo, sprayed water, and felt the soft, fluffy towel.  Some of our students enjoy watching sport, so we listened to the theme from Test Match Special and felt the cricket bat and ball.  It is really important that all of our students have opportunities to share their experiences with their peers and the team around them, and we all enjoy hearing what everyone has been up to!  Parents can email Engagement teachers or therapists, or write in the diary to let us know any important newsflashes!

Here are pictures of Emily, Jay and Matthew sharing their news:

National Puzzle Day

Monday the 29^th was National Puzzle Day and some students took part in a selection of puzzles. These activities were used in a relaxation session where they had the opportunity to pick problem solving tasks such as word searches, sudoku, I spy and colour by number. Students also enjoyed haring some riddles,

Can you answer this one?

It belongs to you, but other people use it more than you do. What is it?

 (You can find answer at the end of PD blog)

On National Puzzle Day, 2RC celebrated the joy of problem-solving together in class. Engaging in various puzzles not only challenged our minds but also fostered teamwork and creativity. Happy National Puzzle Day!

4JH had a look at sudoku puzzles and gave some tarsia puzzles a go to help get their brains working and develop our problem solving skills… To add, have ended up looking at some little maths problems.

In 4JF we have been using LYFTA to learn about young people living in Jerusalem. Using story world we met Afnan, who lives in East Jerusalem and is Palestinian. Afnan has trained with her football coach and teammates all year against the odds of a difficult situation at home. Competing in the Kids’ Cup event in Norway is an honour. Explore how for Afnan’s team, raising the name of Palestine is more important than winning.

Holocaust Remembrance Week

In English classes 4CT and 6PH have been analysing the diary entries of Anne Frank as part of the National Holocaust Remembrance Week. The analysed the extracts for features of diary writing such as tense, first person writing and self-reflection. There was a strong focus on identifying how Anne felt in her time of hiding. They reported on how difficult it was for Anne to be isolated from the outside world and how upset she was that a race of people could be persecuted just for following their religion

Answer: your name!

Physical Development

And it’s Steph with all aspects of Physical Development

Here’s Heddy now with some lovely OT stuff

Students in Level 5 skills group have been working on functional reversing and hazard awareness!

Therapy STAR!!! Of the Week!

Benjamin from Andy’s class is the well-deserved Therapy Star of the Week. Benjamin’s target is pool-based, and as this shows he is working hard, having fun and making amazing progress

Sport Thing of the Week!

Here’s Nathan with a great message

We have some exciting competitions coming up in sports/PE so we felt at Percy Hedley School it’s important that we have a display to show of each of our students sports achievements throughout the sports competitions and rewards so we have an amazing gold cabinet trophy and award display in our Rookery room for all our visitors/ parents and staff to see.

Look at the awards and trophies on display and recently a new trophy has been added to the cabinet, here is a lovely picture of Richard handing Robyn Tunstall her trophy for winning gold at her swimming events last week.

Myself (Nathan) and Richard are really looking forward to helping students to achieve more trophies and awards over these coming terms.

Go Percy Hedley 😊

Careers Fair! At St James!

A big group went out to do this this week, and had a great time. This is such an important thing for our pupils, thinking about the future. It was great that they engaged and took part

On Tuesday the accreditation and Post 16 students took a visit to the My future, My Choice Newcastle Careers Fair at St. James’ Park. At these events different employees, education and training organisations come together to provide information and advice to those planning their future careers beyond school years.

Students were able to meet and explore different types of educational and career opportunities available to them when they leave PHS.

Here are some thoughts our students shared about the event:

Faith “It was great, and I got lots of information.”

Ella “It was good and interesting, but it didn’t have any art.”

Callum “It was good and very fun.”

Aidan “The was really good and had a lot of stalls.

Take a look at some of our pictures showing the wonderful time our students had….

Excellent Therapy Session of the Week!

Some excellent stuff here from Beth during some Speech & Language sessions this week. Great stuff! Well done, MM, indeed – a really good lesson and session!

Students in class 4MM have been working on their community access skills during therapy sessions. They have been practising a number of important skills, such as communicating with less familiar people, using a shopping list, sequencing and functional money skills. This week the students practised these skills in a role play ‘shop’ set up in school.  Well done 4MM

Finally…Outdoor Learning with Hannah!

What we do on Wet and Windy days!

I feel like this week we have had all the weathers in one, but no more so then wet and windy. So if Forest School we have been looking a building bridges over the biggest puddles and looking at the affects the wind has! 3RM have been working on their problem solving, teamwork and communication to help build the bridge and developing their confidence to cross it, but then the wind picked up we got hold of some bubbles and gave them a wave. We discussed what direction the wind was blowing, and that we could tell this by looking at the way the bubbles blew away and we looked at the different colours within the bubbles and that it looks like a rainbow, which in turn led onto talking about how rainbows are formed. The students loved the bubbles and gained so much joy and happiness from this, and not to mention so much science involved simply by blowing bubbles into the wind!

Fantastic Outdoor Forest School stuff there with Hannah and the boys and team from 3RM

…..from John & the Team here at PHS