News, Stars & Spookiness from John & the PHS Team! – 20th October 2023

MOVE to Spook is back! This week students followed a Haunted Percy Hedley School map to locate spooky rooms that were filled with SPOOKTACULAR activities.

Each room had activities that promoted their physical development, for example in the ‘Witches Wardrobe’ students had to practise their standing and sitting to throw hoops over the witches’ hats. In the ‘Skeleton Sitting Room’ students practised their reaching and standing to pin the bow on ‘Mr Bones’, they also had fun wrapping each other up in toilet roll to become mummies! In the ‘Crazy Concoction Kitchen’ students could feel their way through different textures such as slime, pumpkins’ insides and dried out leaves in an attempt to find hidden pictures of witches’ hats and pumpkins. They also had lots of fun getting involved in apple bobbing tasks! Next stop was the ‘Haunted Graveyard’ where students continued to find hidden spooky pictures in straw and pin them onto a board whilst demonstrating good standing and reaching skills. They had fun practising their target accuracy skills by throwing bean bags towards graves to knock them over! Lastly students made their way through the ‘Haunted Hallway’ in the small gym by walking, propelling or looking, and ended up in the ‘Cobweb Corner’ reaching for spiders and playing spider split!

Students finished their adventures in the Pumpkin patch photobooth for a spooky pose, after weaving around pumpkins along a spooky path. Everyone really enjoyed it and some of them said they didn’t want it to end!

Fabulous Spooky work from everyone and some wonderful scary experiences!

Here’s the Squad talking about what’s been going on

 We hope you enjoyed reading the poetry leaves last week, since then the students have added to our ‘Poetree’ as it continues to blossom.

 The lovely thing about these poems are that they can help our students communicate their thoughts, feelings, and interests in as few or as many words as they need, it has been great to see what our students think and feel about their school.

Thank you for reading

-The Literacy Squad

SMSC and British Values

Black History Month 2023 – Celebrating Our Sisters

In the UK, Black History Month happens every October.

It gives everyone the opportunity to share, celebrate and understand the impact of black heritage and culture. People from African and Caribbean backgrounds have been a fundamental part of British history for centuries. However, campaigners believe their contribution to society has often been overlooked or distorted. Greater attention has been paid to the importance of the Windrush generation and the Black Lives Matter movement in recent years, especially since the 2020 death of unarmed African American man George Floyd.

The first Black History Month in the UK took place in 1987, the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. It was arranged by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who came to the UK from Ghana as a refugee in 1984. Like Woodson before him, he wanted to challenge racism and celebrate the history of black people. October was chosen partly because it’s traditionally a time when African leaders gather to talk about important issues, and partly because it was at the start of the school year.

The theme of Celebrating our Sisters emphasises the vital role black women have played in shaping history, inspiring change, and building communities. This year’s commemoration will feature trailblazing black women who have made incredible contributions to literature, music, fashion, sport, business, politics, academia, social and health care, and more. Through the Black History Month Magazine and our online platforms, we will amplify their voices, stories, and achievements, inspiring future generations to carry on their legacy.

Additionally, we will explore themes such as resilience, self-care, and wellbeing, underscoring the strength and determination of black women throughout history. It is time to celebrate their accomplishments and encourage future generations to take care of themselves and their communities.

Black History Month will also include a national poetry competition and an education pack, offering students the chance to learn about and appreciate the contributions of black women across history. The contest invites young people to express themselves creatively whilst discovering the diverse experiences, challenges, and victories of black women.

PSHE – Self Awareness Topic

KS2: Students have been learning about people who are special to them and exploring different ways to show kindness. 2HB are working on something special and next week will be making cookies and giving them out to people in school to say thank you – watch this space next week for photographs!

KS3: Students have been learning about skills for learning, what makes them special and unique s learners and how to set targets. Some students have been making links between achieving goals and how this makes us feel.

KS4 & P16: The area of focus has been “Prejudice and Discrimination”. Some students have been learning about the difference between treating people equally and treating people fairly based on what they need. Most students have been learning about the 9 protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010 – we have even made a rap to help us remember!

It’s great to see these things happening around the school – it’s often quite awe-inspiring! Fab!

Promoting Physical Development is nothing new to PHS, it’s something we have historically been, and continue to be, proud of! Our integrated transdisciplinary approach ensures that we prioritise and optimise opportunities for students to enhance their physical health and wellbeing throughout the school day, and examples of this are already shared in the blog regularly.

What are our Physical Development Goals?

• To promote a healthy and active lifestyle
• To optimise engagement in learning
• To improve access to learning
• To ensure the physical health and wellbeing of students is optimised

Why is Physical Development important?

Apart from the obvious benefits such as improving fitness, health, mobility and independence, there is strong evidence to support the benefits of physical activity on an individual’s cognitive function such as academic progress, through for example improvements in concentration and memory. Engaging in frequent physical activity has a positive impact on individuals’ ability to develop positive social networks, resulting in comradery, teamwork & friendships. In addition to all these benefits, it can further improve mental health and wellbeing through enhanced self-esteem, improved sleep and reduced anxiety. Many of our students face significantly greater challenges than most, therefore improving their physical development becomes even more of a priority for us to ensure they reach their full potential and remain as healthy as possible.

How can we achieve this?

We have an array of skilled therapists, therapy assistants, teachers, support staff and health practitioners who work at PHS, and we are very lucky to have a bunch of these guys who are part of the Physical Development Steering Group, driving this forward! Some of which include our fabulous Physiotherapists who love all things physical: PE, Rebound therapy, Hydrotherapy, MOVE, Respiratory and Postural health (and much more!). We have skilled Occupational Therapists who are dedicated and creative in their approach to ensure students’ access to the curriculum and community is not bound by their physical limitation.  For those who don’t know, we also have our very own Qualified Teacher of children with Visual impairment (QTVI) and outsource a Qualified Teacher of Deaf Children and Young People (QToDs). Their job is to ensure our staff have appropriate knowledge and skills to work effectively with children with visual and hearing impairments, and to ensure those students access to learning is optimised.

The promotion of physical development in school is varied and multifaceted, and we can’t wait to share what this looks like in greater detail in coming weeks. We have some very exciting projects in the pipeline (which may or may not include a brand new trampoline….shh!!).

VI

Now, Physical Development covers a huge range of things, and we’ll be exploring them over time in the blog. We’re starting here with Emma, who is our VI teacher – Visual Impairment. Let’s hear from Emma now

Did you know that Percy Hedley School provide sensory services for children and young people? This includes support for children with a visual impairment, hearing impairment or those who are multi-sensory impaired.

Let’s take a look at what our Vision services look like.

Children and young people with vision impairment are entitled to support from a specialist teacher known as a QTVI.

Did you know that vision provides about 80% of the information we need to learn about and interact with the world around us. It is therefore paramount that children and young people are given the right support to ensure that they can fully access learning, social and therapy-based activities and of course meet their outcomes. If your child is registered as having a visual impairment, they will be allocated support in school from a teacher for children and young people with visual impairment (QTVI).

What does the QTVI do?

• Assess children and young people’s functional vision, as well as their development and learning, identifying needs, outcomes, and provision as part of their EHCP.
• Provide advice and training to staff working directly with children and young people to ensure they are fully aware of the implications of the individual’s visual impairment upon their learning and understand modifications required to improve access to education and therapy delivered in school.
• Identify specialist equipment required to improve access to learning as well as maximise independence.
• Teach strategies to compensate for vision loss, to promote the development of skills and improve learning outcomes.
• Work alongside therapy teams within school to ensure that students can fully access therapy-based activities and achieve therapy goals.
• Liaise with external health and social care professionals to ensure that a full and accurate assessment of your child needs is completed, and needs are reflected accurately between professionals.

We are currently looking at the curriculum framework for children and young people with visual impairment which will enable us to effectively support students on their journey throughout education and into early adulthood. You can find out more about the curriculum framework here.

If you have concerns around your child’s vision or feel that they may need an assessment, please get in contact with either their class team or myself directly.

e.douglas@percyhedley.org.uk – QTVI Percy Hedley school

Here is 1HW completing some wonderful visual skills work! 

This week we have been thinking about online safety within our Leading Parent Partnership meetings and how best we can meet any training requests from parents within this area.  The world of online safety is huge and is very different for our population dependent upon their independent access to the online world, their age, stage and interests.

 To help us to support you as best we can we will be creating a series of short training videos to add to our website for you to watch if you need some support in specific areas.  In response to previous feedback from parents that they cannot always attend training sessions we thought this was the best option to allow parents to access them in their own time and then ask and relevant questions of our specialists.

 Next week we will send out a form with a variety of online safety support we could complete for you to choose what would be most useful to you.  From this we will  draw up a schedule to create them and add them to our website.  We will also create a form which you can use at any time to ask questions of our team if you need any advice or support throughout the year.

 We hope that this will be useful in an ever-changing world of technology to go some way to support you with your child’s journey through safe use of technology.

 From Rebecca  r.fletcher@percyhedley.org.uk and the DSL Team

It’s a great team. And check out too Maria’s Online Safety blog – it’s always about very important stuff. This week it’s all about the online safety bill, and so a crucial topic.

Read the report here.

For me, the real news was that it was lovely to have people come in again and see and say how well the pupils are doing, and how well our community works together – of the pupils themselves, you at home, us here, people in local authorities and the like. At times it’s difficult, because what we are all trying to do in our own areas of that community can be difficult, but it overwhelmingly works. Thanks for your part in it, it’s much appreciated by us here, of course. It’s also very interesting that of all the many many things that inspectors can give action points on – on all the things that constitute a school community – there was only one, on attendance, that is a national issue for most schools right now. So I think that’s a pretty big vote of confidence in all of us in that PHS Team at home and here in Killingworth.

The most important thing is that we can continue to improve on the good work that already happens here, and when you get encouraging judgements from outside, then it makes it easier to do that. Cheers and all the best.

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. It was interesting that attendance was the only thing that arose from the inspection as an Action For Improvement. This is what they put into the report

Too many pupils are frequently absent. This limits their learning and has an impact on their academic progress. The school should strengthen its attendance systems and attendance strategy to promote regular pupil attendance. The school should provide challenge and support for parents to help them to overcome any barriers that may prevent their child from attending school regularly

So it’s good that we have Mark now, and that we are working with Local Authorities and, most importantly, you about this. It’s one pf those issues I think that is all about partnership, because working together is the only way to have success. As I say, it really is an issue right across the country! Thanks for your support with this piece of work

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

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

I hope you have time to have a read. In my experience these things don’t come into play very often but it’s important that they are there, and most schools have them

The fabulous Friends are always looking for volunteers for events!  If you can offer any support, please contact Eileen at e.robinson@percyhedley.org.uk

I was fortunate to present LPPA information to our Governors this week, who in return provided me with some positive feedback and suggestions. Two of our parent Governors have also kindly ‘volunteered’ to support the work we are doing in order to achieve LPPA. Thank you to Kate Hellens and Ros Holden.

We have the date for final verification visit: Tuesday 12th December 2023.

Just to remind you that I will be sending out another survey to gain your opinion about any improvements you have noticed with regards to communication between home & school, since we started LPPA objectives in November 2022.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me anytime on the email below, the team and I welcome your thoughts and ideas.

Tracy and the LPPA team Contact t.smithson@percyhedley.org.uk

Thank you to Tracy and the team, and all parents supporting us! We know that there is always lots to do, but we are interested in working as hard as we can to create the best kind of partnerships we can with you at home

They are all stars this week. The boys in 3RM worked as a team to empty the water from the parachute in their session, they discussed ways they could move the parachute to remove the water. AMAZING TEAMWORK 3RM!!!!! STARS ALL!!!

Leon! Joe! Zakaria! Joshua! Sam!

Teamwork and Parachutes from The Starlings!

Our star of the week this week is… Millie!

Millie has been very resilient during her Positive Looking sessions showing increased visual awareness and attention skills. Millie has been extremely engaged and happy at school! Well done, Millie!

What a STAR!!!

Respect

Daniel for providing coffee and brownies to parents at the coffee afternoon! STAR!!!

All students have made gorgeous progress in their PSHE lessons learning about prejudice and discrimination, learning how to be kind and fair, particularly towards those with protected characteristics! AllStars!!!

Resilience

Jack has engaged lots of lessons and activities this week! STAR!!!

James & Owen for coping well during our first fire alarm of the year! STAR!!!

Ella Rose for overcoming every obstacle with a smile! STAR!!!

Teamwork

Our students working with the Live Theatre who have been nominated for a culture award! STARS!!!

Drae for improving his turn-taking skills! STAR!!!

STAR QUALITY ALL ROUND!!!!!!!!!

Respect – 2 STARS!

Harrison for his knowledge and enthusiasm towards equality. Well done!

George for politely welcoming the new members of staff. Fantastic!

Resilience – 3 STARS!

Shannon for working so independently making biscuits in life skills. What a STAR!!!

Katie for reading a whole book in English. Amazing!

Alex for being alert and joining in lessons. Great Work!!

All 5: STARS!!!

The link to the calendar is below.

• the ELTBA one is on 20.10.23 at 2-3pm – THAT’S TODAY!!!!!
• Engagement, 26.10.23 at 2-3pm – THAT’S NEXT WEEK

More to follow! As ever, it would be great to see you if you can make it. Appreciate that everyone is very busy!