Category: Citizenship

Citizenship

Orchard Brae Achieve Bronze!

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We are delighted to share that we have just gained the Bronze Rights Respecting Schools Award from UNICEF UK. This is the first official step in our ongoing Rights Respecting Schools journey.

The Rights Respecting Schools Award promotes understanding and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in schools. The convention itself consists of a range of articles that place a duty on governments, local authorities and all those supporting children to be ‘duty bearers’, upholding the rights of the children and young people in their care and ensuring that all those under 18 can access their rights, children being the ‘rights holders’. The convention underpins everything that we do as a school to ensure that all children and young people are valued, heard, and given opportunities to develop fully.

To gain our Bronze Award, a small group of teaching staff evaluated our progress against key outcomes before developing an action plan for moving forward as a school. We will look to sharing more news as we progress on our journey and would welcome involvement from families and associated professionals in taking things forward.

This poster provides an easy to read overview of the UNCRC. We will be sharing more information on these rights as we go forward on our journey, learning together.

Flying High In Room 12

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The pupils in Room 12 have been collecting data and making charts about the planes and helicopters we have seen flying overhead. We did this for 4 weeks. It was a great opportunity to talk about the idea of “more than”.

During Steam Week we had an amazing opportunity to visit a helicopter hangar, to see the size and scale of real helicopters as well as the details. We got to sit in the seats, try on their ear defenders and experience the noises and smells of the heavy machinery. Thank you to the welcoming staff at NHV!

Celebrating Burns Day In The Ladybird Room

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The Ladybird room children and staff had great fun celebrating Burns Day.

They started off the week by making special Ladybird tartan pictures. On the day itself they had the traditional meal of vegetarian ”haggis, neeps and tatties.” Some children appeared to enjoy it more than others.

We rounded off the celebrations on Friday with children and staff dressing in tartan and dancing to ceilidh music in the hall followed by having a very Scottish teddy bear picnic. All the children had taken in their favourite teddy or soft toy and were able to join us for an indoor picnic of traditional Scottish food such as shortbread, oatcakes, and cheese.

A great end to the week and lots of fun.

Futures Event

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Thanks to all parents, carers and partners for supporting the Orchard Brae Futures Event last week. It was great to be back in person for this annual event and there was a lovely buzz in the hall as you took the opportunity to network and chat informally to the providers in attendance. The presentation from the event is below. Feel free to get in touch if you wish to discuss anything further.

Orchard Brae @ Ashgrove Platinum Jubilee Celebrations

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The sun rose brightly on the day of our Platinum Jubilee Celebrations making for a fun and sun filled afternoon for our families. This was our first meet up with parents/carers since Covid began. What a wonderful afternoon was had by all – the children made Jubilee Crowns and there was a sensory activity with British coloured rice. They enjoyed British cupcakes, refreshments and strawberry marshmallow kebabs. The children and families participated in a singalong and then it was time for the certificates to be handed out: I Celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Drake Music

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Abi Sinar, a musician with Drake Music, has been working with students at Orchard Brae for the last two years, even throughout lockdowns, in developing the North East Digital Orchestra project. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a digital orchestra for school leavers and young adults, enabling them to develop their musical skills and create new music using a range of inclusive music technologies.

Pupils who have been involved in the project have been supported by Abi to develop their musical skills using a variety of accessible instruments and have created this video for you to enjoy, where they play Ode To Joy as well as their own additional compositions to the song.

Many thanks to Abi for her support and in making the film. If you would like to find out more about Drake Music and their work, please follow the link below:

https://drakemusicscotland.org/

Red Nose fun in 15

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This week Room 15 have been busy learning to play Boccia in class. It has been so much fun getting to play all together as a class. We’ve been taking turns and practising our throwing skills and trying to get as close to the white ball as possible. 

On Friday, we celebrated Red Nose Day by making some squishy red noses of our own. We filled bits of tights with red pom poms and then glued on some googly eyes and wool to make them look funny! Some of us used really big eyes, some used small and some used a mixture! Then we made some red gloop to play with. It was so sticky!

Christmas Jumper Day 2021

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To celebrate Save The Children’s Christmas jumper day, the pupil council challenged classes to make real Christmas jumpers using as many recycled or sustainable materials as possible.  Room 12 used it as a learning opportunity to “respect other people’s choices”. And I’m sure you will agree the results are fabulous. 

Up-cycling in Room 16

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Room 16 have been preparing their up-cycled Christmas jumper for Christmas Jumper Day next week. We made a Christmas tree template and stuck it onto our jumper then used our hands to paint on with green for the tree, red and yellow for the baubles and lights then we used a pom-pom to bad some gold sparkly paint for the star on top. When we peeled off the template we could see our beautiful tree!  It gave us the opportunity to practise turn taking as we had to work one at a time on our jumper. We are excited to display it for all our friends to see and to see the other classes creativity with their eco-friendly jumpers.