News & Stars from John & the PHS Team Friday 22nd September 2023

Hi everyone

Good afternoon and Happy Friday – I hope you’re all ok. It’s great to have the term in full swing now, with the pupils getting used to their new classes and arrangements if they have them, and the term settling down – I always prefer it that way too. A great, busy, lively blog for you today! A blogbuster! (sorry about that – dad joke!) There are a lot of interesting and exciting lessons, topics, projects, options, trips and plans happening at the school right now, and a lovely atmosphere around the place

One of the things that make a nice atmosphere of course is food! The latest themed day we had this was for lunch was Indian Day, which was brilliant, and I couldn’t resist putting a few photos in there today. The themed days are great to try out new foods, see what you enjoy, and there are often spin-offs in class too with topics and other learning. Have a little look at these! And have a little look at that great team too

Lovely Indian-inspired food and a great team! Thanks guys! I had veggie curry, rice, samosa, bhajis and a cheeky bit of rice pudding to finish – marvellous!

Elsewhere today, there are Maria’s and Eileen’s blogs too, some great stars of the week, Personal Development things and some Reading, so I hope you can find something that you’re interested in. Otherwise, all the best and have a great weekend together. Hope to see you soon – there’s a few of those Coffee & Catch-up events soon and I hope you can make it! All the best

And hey, don’t forget the Autum Fayre on Saturday Week! Be great to see you! And join the FoPHS!!!!! 😊

J

😊 from John & the PHS Team 😊

Personal Development (PD)

Jo has been working with the team on aspects of Personal Development, and there are some really important aspects of this that Jo’s talking about this week

National Teaching Assistant Day – Friday 29^th September

Nominate your classroom champion!

Let’s recognise the contribution TAs make across all of our curriculum pathways in Percy Hedley School. If you would like to “shout out” about someone who goes the extra mile in your child’s class, please email me j.ferguson@percyhedley.org.uk , and I’ll display here on the blog next Friday.

Recycling Week

We’ve been getting into the spirit of recycling week with a jolly old poster campaign. After hearing about the damage humans are causing to our precious planet from the man himself, David Attenborough, students also learned about the scale of the food waste problem we are facing. They designed their own posters to advise others on how to improve their wasteful behaviours.

School Values

We have revisited the importance of our school values with students this week, reminding them how we can all demonstrate these in everyday life. The accreditation pathway had a celebration assembly for all of those who earned star of the week last year. Watch out for this week’s stars later in the blog

PSHE

I’ll be around at all of the coffee afternoon events next week, please come and have a chat! I will bring along our PSHE curriculum, the topics we have planned for this year and what that looks like for your child

Literacy! With The Literacy Squad! 

Well, the fab Literacy Squad have hit the new term hard with all their stuff, and last week celebrated Roald Dahl Day. I’m afraid I ran out of time last week, but it’s nice to read it this time. Lots happening in the world of literacy, reading and English – another great team

Wednesday 13^th September commemorated the work of Roald Dahl. It is an annual global celebration of all his stories, characters, and worlds from Matilda to Charlie and The Chocolate. We have a range of his books in our school library as well online.

And if Roald Dahl isn’t your favourite author then here are a few recently published books by other people – there’s always something for everyone when it comes to reading!

The Literacy Squad

Thank you to the Literacy Squad I noticed some great staff training going on this week, a lot of great reading in class, and there are books all around the library and school Important stuff!

Safeguarding Update from Rebecca, the Designated Safeguarding Lead

Rebecca is the DSL and has a great team working with her. They are giving us weekly updates too, which is very helpful as they cover a range of topics for us all to get up-to-date on and know what’s going on in this crucial area that we have to think about every day. This is from Rebecca

This week the safeguarding team have had a visit from our Link Governor Paul Cook.  We spent some time looking at our filtering and monitoring systems in school to ensure they are robust to support our school population.  We also looked at our action plan for the year which includes areas for support for staff, students and parents (more to come on this).  

Myself and Aylisha (Safeguarding Officer) have also met up with the student council this week, and some other students from around school to get input and student voice within our ‘Student Friendly Safeguarding Policy’.  Our student council last year spent time designing the document, so we checked through it, added some new information and updated some bits within it.  This will now be live within the Safeguarding section of the website and will be up around school for pupils to reference.  We will do the same with our ‘Student Friendly Anti Bullying Policy’ and our school safety map in a few weeks.

Huge thanks to all of the pupils who were involved – Joe, Owen, Josh, Josh and Santi!

Rebecca Fletcher

(Designated Safeguarding Lead, or DSL) r.fletcher@percyhedley.org.uk

And don’t forget Maria’s online safety blog.

It’s about catfishing this week, and an essential read!

Don’t know what catfishing is? Have read right now! You need to know!

Attendance!

Attendance is a big focus right across the country, and it’s been a focus of ours for a while now. It will almost certainly need to be for a while. Mark our new Attendance Officer has been very active so far, and some of you may have been in contact with Mark

Again, thanks for your support with this whole area. Onwards and upwards as ever!

Therapy Focus of the Week!

One really good thing that happens here are our VOCA Groups. I absolutely love sitting on on these sometimes, or just having a nosy as I walk past. They’re really quite inspirational. This is from Julie (LSTE is our Engagement Pathway, which is more properly called Learning Skills Through Engagement)

In the LSTE VOCA Group, Christopher, Ameen, Jay, Louis and Nat have been using their VOCAs in a shared activity to make choices and direct favourite activities such as songs and stories (The Hospital Dog is a firm favourite closely followed by Shark in the Park!). The students are making fantastic progress with their VOCAs and enjoy getting together in group for a chat every Tuesday.

The VOCA Groups are one more thing to be very proud of here. Well done to those students Julie mentions above!

More Great Therapy this week! And it’s MOVE!

Here what happened at this MOVE to Fight Fire Session – it sounds awesome. Here’s Mary to tell us about it!

This week key stage 2 MOVE students were fire fighters in their MOVE session. They completed great activities such as reaching to poms poms as the flames of the fire, reaching and balancing to put cones on their heads as their fire fighter helmets, passing the rope to their peers as the hose to put out the fire, pushing the water down the ramp to put out the fire and walking round or bridging to knock off a fallen brick. They all worked together well and really enjoyed themselves

And especially as it’s MOVE, we need to have some pictures. Here you go!

Class of the Week! Hannah’s Class!

And they have been super busy! This is Danielle, their S&LT

This half term in Hannah’s class we are working on understanding some of our feelings. We have been listening to different music, such as Pharrell ‘Happy’ and Lionel Richie ‘Endless love’. All of the students have had opportunities to practise their switching skills to press a Big Mac and hear sounds associated with different feelings.  We got a bit of a shock at the loud scream for scared! We have thought about how to represent feelings to help us understand them more, the Big Mac playing a crying noise and tiny drops of water on cheeks to represent tears made some of the students feel sad, but everyone enjoyed being wrapped up in warm blankets to represent love to end the session

Wow, amazing stuff by this wonderful class. Let’s see a few pictures of them

And finally…

Don’t forget Eileen’s Family Liaison blog, as well as Maria’s, so you can get your full taste of PHS this weekend if you’re in the mood, and there are a lot of things on the Foundation website too if you still want more! And do go on the FoPHS part of the website too!

You can view both blogs below:

Come to the Autumn Fayre! It’s on Saturday 30^th September! Lots of stalls, a raffle, food and everything!

All the very best to all of you at home, from all of us here at the school. Happy Start of Term!

…..from John & the Team here at PHS