News & Stars from John & the PHS Team Friday 29th September 2023

Hello everyone and Happy Friday!

I hope you’ve had a good week – we have here! It’s been a great, busy, autumn week, where lots has been happening. There was a post-16 Coffee & Catch-up, we’ve got the Autumn Fayre on Saturday, and lots of great sessions have been happening all over the school; in fact, we are putting links in each week now to the calendar so that you can be as aware of things as possible. The regular things like Makaton are also in. I know several of you asked for that. In addition, the STEAM Team have devised a monthly competition – and I think you should enter it! Or at least think about entering it! And have a look at the three big headings under this bit of the blog for our three big areas of Personal Development, Literacy and Physical Development, as well as Eileen and Maria’s blogs too – they’re great

Incredibly this seems to be the halfway point until half term, and it will be October next week, so we are well underway with all sorts of projects and work. It’s great any time that you can make it to Coffee & Catch-up sessions or any other events – thank you for doing so, especially those of you have less flexible travel or work arrangements, or who live far away

So please do scroll down and find the bits of the blog that interest you, and have a great weekend after that. Hopefully see some of you in the morning. All the best!

J

😊 from John & the PHS Team 😊

Personal Development, Literacy, Physical Development

Personal Development (PD)

Jo and the team work on all aspects of Personal Development

National Teaching Assistant Day!

Our students have been showing their appreciation for learning support assistants by “shouting out” all of the fantastic things they are supported with. We have collated these on our “student voice” display board for everyone to see and celebrate:

We’ve received some parent “shout outs” too:

“We’d like to thank the LSAs in 3TW (Pam, Sophie and Anne) for all their kindness, dedication and hard work to help Lucas settle back into school.”

“I’ve just read this week’s school blog and would like to nominate Branagh for the TA classroom champion. She always goes above and beyond with her support to Charlie and we would be lost without her. She definitely needs recognition for the amazing work she does as well as for putting up with Charlie 5 days a week!”

Thank you to all of our learning support assistants for the amazing work you do!

PSHE

Thank you to everyone I chatted to at the post-16 coffee afternoon, your input really helps us to individualise our approach to teaching what can be tricky topics. I know I didn’t get the chance to speak with everyone, please don’t hesitate to email me at j.ferguson@percyhedley.org.uk and we can arrange a telephone call or a meeting

Literacy! With The Literacy Squad! All Things Literacy!

Now then, what have those fabulous folk in the Literacy Squad been up to recently? Shall we see?

What are we reading at Percy Hedley School?

It’s wonderful to see the variety of texts that our students are exploring this week/half term. Here is a gallery of just some of the books that staff and pupils are reading/listening to including

4KS ‘I am a superhero’ a sensory story about resilience and how we can influence the world around us

4KR ‘Treasury’ a collection of short biographies of including Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg.

2LL/KH ‘The Dot’, a story about trying new and challenging activities

Look out for next Thursday’s blog…National Poetry Day!

Physical Development

Physical Development, alongside Personal Development and Literacy, constitute our three Super Steering Groups this year, and are aligned with our Key Drivers and School Values too. Physical Development includes all the things that we do that come under this heading, such as PE, physiotherapy, yoga, pilates, Rebound, sports development, Outdoor Learning, MOVE, OT, Nursing and a host of other things besides

We’ll be giving updates in the blog on this newly interesting and exciting area, just as we do with Personal Development and Literacy, as the weeks go by – watch out for it! We’ve got great people in these areas, and it’s at the heart of what we are here as a school for, so lots is going to happen under this heading!

Today, I’ve just put something in from Hannah T about Outdoor Learning, to get us going with it all

Safeguarding Update from Rebecca, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL)

And a link to the online safety blog too from Maria

Rebecca is the DSL and has a great team working with her. They are giving us weekly updates, which is very helpful as they cover a range of topics, as you can see from that word logo thing just below here, for us all to get up-to-date on. This is from Rebecca:

Just a reminder this week that we are a nut free school.  We have several students and staff who have severe nut allergies within our school and therefore we need to ensure that, as far as possible, we are nut free.  Our kitchen at school and our food technology department are strictly nut free to help to support this. 

Please can you support us with this by ensuring that products sent in for packed lunches or for cake sales, birthdays, or gifts for team that they are nut free.  We appreciate that many products state that they may contain nuts and it is very difficult to find products which do not say this to protect companies. We are happy with these products being in school if we are aware so as to protect our young people and staff who have known allergies.  Birthday cakes and treats are especially hard to get nut free (as a nut allergy parent I appreciate this), so please ensure that students are aware that some of their friends may choose not to partake. 

We unfortunately cannot accept homemade cakes within school to ensure that there has been no cross contamination, thank you for your understanding on this.

Rebecca Fletcher  r.fletcher@percyhedley.org.uk

And don’t forget Maria’s online safety blog. That tends to go live on the Thursday. This week it’s about another huge issue – online safety gaming.

Safeguarding is lots of different things!

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! The Trampoline!

The trampoline features heavily in a lot of work that goes here – how marvellous is that? Nieve obviously likes it, as so many of our pupils do, and I’m the physios obliged! And I can’t wait to share our new Rebound Centre with you when the time is right either! Well done, Nieve!

Monthly STEAM Challenge – a new and recurring item!

Now, I know you know what STEAM is, right? Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths. Yep, thought you did. OK, well Joel and the team who do this exciting stuff in school have come up with a great idea – a monthly challenge. Woohoo! This is exactly what we want! Challenges in the blog! This is from Joel

This year we are looking to send a STEAM challenge home on the blog at the end of each month taking turns from multiple steering groups within the school, Science are going with the first one

The Percy Hedley STEAM Steering group would like to invite you take part in our first STEAM challenge of the year

Percy Hedley STEAM Challenge 1: Create your own marble run

Suggested materials: small paper cups, plastic cups, bulldog clip, paper clip, pencils, wooden spoon, wooden ruler, masking tape, coat hanger, string, cardboard

STEAM is an approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics as access points for encouraging students to remain curios and develop their inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking skills.

Send pictures of your challenge to STEAM Steering Group, joel.hall@percyhedley.org.uk

See the photo below for an example:

Class of the Week! Post-16 Hobbycraft Option!

The post-16 Appropriate Accreditation Hobbycraft Group explored different types of natural materials in this week’s lesson. The students explored the school’s sensory garden and outdoor areas gathering their natural materials. These materials were used along with their creative imaginations to create some wonderful artwork. Well done Hobbycrafters, you opened your imaginations and created some wonderful, natural and colourful unique artwork. Go Hobbycrafters!

Some wonderful work carried out by the Hobbycrafters

Outdoor Learning!

OK, well Outdoor Learning is one of our favourite things here, and all part of Physical Development. Hannah’s class have been doing some lovely work on this the past week…..have a look, this is from Hannah

Enjoying Little Red Riding Hood in the photos above.

Kingfishers have been enjoying Outdoor Learning before the autumn storms hit! 

Our story this term is ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and we have enjoyed meeting the main character and exploring the different sensory elements of the story.

We love the colourful ribbons – watching them spinning in the breeze and reaching to catch them as they flutter on to our laps.

Part of the story includes making a cake for Grandma…..out of mud!  We have been getting our hands onto the soil to feel it squelch.  Some of us like this feeling more than others! 

At this time of year, it is good to get out and about to experience the change in seasons – so many interesting things to see, hear, touch and smell!

Beautiful stuff there from those Kingfishers, combining so many good aspects of our work in the curriculum there. That’s what the blog is all about. Thanks guys!

Message from Engagement

The team in the Engagement Pathway, more properly called Learning Skills Through Engagement, are going to send a letter inviting those of you to access the Earwig Evidence Platform. This is a very exciting way to share information between home and school. There also will be an opportunity to explore Earwig in a parents’ Coffee & Catch-up afternoon on the 26th of October, so please do try to come to that! Thank you Kasia!

And finally…..

Hope to see you at the Autumn Fayre tomorrow, even if you can only pop in for a short visit!

Also, don’t forget Eileen’s Family Liaison blog, as well as Maria’s one about online safety, so you can get your full taste of PHS this weekend both online and in the real world

You can view them here:

There are always a lot of things on the Foundation website too

And please do support the FoPHS!

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