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The Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is Scotland’s education framework for ALL learners; its main aim is to enable children and young people to develop the four capacities; successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. In Orchard Brae School each learner is enabled to become as independent as possible, developing skills for life, learning, leisure and where appropriate work. Our curriculum offer is personalised to each pupil throughout their learning journey, as we maintain a focus on positive future destinations.
Our learners in P1 – S3 work within Broad General Education (BGE) at a level and pace that is suited to their individualised needs. Personalised targets focus core skill development within Literacy and Communication, Numeracy and Health and Well Being. The ethos and life of the school community is structured to enable pupils to learn and practise life skills as part of their daily routines. Through interdisciplinary approaches and specialist courses, we offer real life learning contexts, deepening and practicing knowledge and skills within Expressive Arts, RME, Science, PE, Technologies and Social Studies. Interdisciplinary learning, through ‘Our world’ contexts over a 5 year cycle, facilitates pupils’ exploration, experience and learning which is practiced within community contexts, ensuring confidence and success is generalised and secure. Family learning is a vital part of our pupils’ success and, along with our termly learning challenges, we offer a range of workshops, activity nights and holiday schemes for families. Achievement and success is recognised and celebrated.
For our end of term, we held a pumpkin competition where each class was given a pumpkin and asked to decorate it.
This morning we displayed our pumpkins in the hall and classes had the opportunity to come and see them and vote to see which one we liked the most.
We are delighted to announce in third place were Rooms 10, 12 and 18 with 8 votes each. In second place was Room 3 with 10 votes and the winner was Room 7 with 13 votes!
Today we held our monthly Celebration and Rights Respecting assembly. It was great to say ‘well done’ to so many pupils for their hard work and efforts which included graduating from the MOVE programme, independent walking, building confidence and relationships, as well as developing life skills and enterprise!
We then focused on our right of the month from the UNCRC, which is number 27 – ‘I have the right to a proper home, food and clothing.’
We looked at the changing seasons from summer to autumn, and how this brings about changes in the weather and the types of clothing we need to wear. We also looked at how the change of seasons leads to harvest and the variety of foods available in autumn.
Here is a copy of our assembly slides, if you want to share them with your child at home.
Today we held our first Social Snack of the school year. We were delighted to have pupils and staff join us from across the school and everyone had a super time socialising and eating together. It was great to see pupils from different classes spending time together and mixing with other pupils that they might not come across within their normal school day.
Pupils were actively encouraged to come and choose their snack from a selection of cereals, fruits and toast and where possible, independently prepare them.
Social Snack will be a regular event, being held monthly and we can’t wait to see how it grows over the year – we just need to work out who’s turn it it’ll be for the washing up!
In Room 6, we recently transformed our classroom into a busy bakery, providing a fantastic hands-on opportunity for our pupils to learn about money and the concepts of big and small items, particularly in the context of £1 and £2 coins. We brought the shop into our classroom instead of shopping in a real shop!
Our bakery project was designed to teach the children essential skills in a fun and engaging way. Each pupil received some play money, including £1 and £2 coins, to spend at our bakery. They could choose between big and small loaves of bread, pay at the till, and even wait for their change. This activity helped them practise counting, recognize different coin values, and understand basic transactions.
Moreover, this experience was multi-sensory. The kids used their senses to immerse themselves fully in the bakery environment. They enjoyed the fresh aroma of the baked goods, felt the different textures of the bread, and, of course, tasted the delicious results of their purchases. This sensory engagement made the learning process enjoyable and memorable.
The bakery project also introduced the concepts of big and small amounts of money and the corresponding bread sizes. The children learned that larger loaves cost more and smaller loaves cost less. This practical exercise helped them grasp these abstract concepts in a real-world context, understanding that bigger items often require more money and vice versa.
Overall, our classroom bakery was a resounding success. It was an excellent way for the kids to learn about money management while having fun. They gained confidence in handling money, making choices, and understanding the value of different amounts. Well done, Room 6! This experience has been educational and enriching for all involved.
Room 9 have continued our community focus for this term with a new book study, “Poppy’s Busy Week” by Suzanne Miell-Ingram and Tracey Upton (Singing Hands). In this story, Poppy visits a different place in her community each day.
We started off by exploring the library, setting up our own class library (and library cards), choosing books and cosying up for a story and playing games to see how quiet we could be!
After that we headed to the dentist, and alongside a focus on our toothbrushing skills we set up a wee dentist practice in class for role play and exploring symbol recognition skills – we enjoyed seeing our reflections in the mirror! We had mark-making activities using toothbrushes and sang about brushing our teeth for our listening activity.
Following on from dentist week we explored the Post Office. We set up a Post Office in class, with posting activities, envelopes, stamps, cards and more. During our expressive arts lesson we designed cards which we have since posted to our home addresses, walking to the local post box to post them ourselves.
Throughout all of this we continue to offer free play options which explore other community roles, including dressing up (Room 9 are fabulous at taking on the role of different emergency services!) and toy figures.
Next week we’re exploring a more familiar community feature, school, before moving on to doctors, hairdressers and then houses and homes. We’re especially looking forward to our end of term community feature – the beach!
The Primary 1 class at Ashgrove have been developing their community skills. We walked to the local shop to buy ingredients for our cooking class. Everyone used visual instructions to look for the correct section in the shop and find the right items.
The next day we used our pouring and mixing skills to make a sweet treat!
Room 9 have started to explore our new community theme for this term with a new book study. We have been reading “Poppy Goes Shopping” by Suzanne Miell-Ingram and Tracey Upton (Singing Hands).
We have brought to life different parts of the story throughout our learning. In numeracy we have had a shop role-play with symbol-supported shopping lists. Some of our class even went for a walk to the local shops to buy resources for our sensory sessions.
Our Makaton song sessions have included “Five Currant Buns” and “Ten Fat Sausages” so as to link to the language of the stories (“shop” and “sausages” both featuring).
Perhaps our favourite feature of the stories though has been the pizza that Poppy bought (and ate!). We have had pizza themed Bucket Time sessions, with Stage Three giving us all a chance to become a pizza! We made our own mini pizzas for snack which we then ate whilst listening to the story. We chose our own toppings – cheese was very popular! We’ve had pizza art, making our own pizza pictures, and pizza sensory play with basil, oregano and tomatoes in dough – the classroom smelt delicious.
We were very lucky to have the chance to meet the authors of our book study when Singing Hands came in to perform at Orchard Brae, they read the whole story with us and were very impressed by everyone’s signing!
Next week we will be moving on to another Signing Friends story, “Poppy’s Busy Week”, to explore even more features of our community.
The past couple of weeks Room 5 have been learning about and celebrating Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. We have engaged in Ramadan-themed sensology sessions during which we tasted dates, enjoyed the visual experience of looking through a telescope for the new moon and smelled incense, as well as other sensory experiences. We painted pictures to depict the new moon in a night sky and enjoyed baking ma’amoul (biscuits with dates inside commonly eaten during Eid).
In Room 9 we’ve been exploring how to bring more play-based learning into our routines. As part of this we introduced a wee “café”, which has been a massive success with our learners. From spontaneous imaginative play, social interactions with our peers, applying new communication skills to building fine and gross motor skills, the café has impressed us all. It has been so popular we have given it a name, and one pupil helped to design a banner to signpost our new classroom highlight!
We have also moved onto our final book study of the term. After several rounds of pupil voting, “Tiddler” closely won against “The Snail and the Whale”, so “Tiddler” is now our story for the next few weeks. We’ve enjoyed joining in with “Oh, no, he didn’t!” “Oh, yes, he did!” as we read along together, signing fish songs, exploring body percussion and rhythm in response to fish songs as part of our listening activities, and made our own fish for our reading records, choosing from painting or collage (or both, for some of our most enthusiastic artists!).
For World Book Day, the whole class team each dressed up as a different emotion from the story “The Colour Monster”, and we made sure to add some additional time for telling the story during the day. Between enthusiastic performances from the class team and fascinating props, engagement was really high throughout.
Last week in assembly, we celebrated Random Acts of Kindness Day. We learned a new Makaton song from Singing Hands about being kind.
We also read a story about spreading kindness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kTsQKccuyY&t=6s
Following the assembly, classes were set a challenge to complete as many Kindness tasks as possible over the week. Lots of classes took part and we were delighted to have 2 winners – Room 9 and Room 16. They won a set of kindness books and colouring set.
We’ve also been noticing other acts of kindness across the school from both staff and pupils. Keep an eye out for some special tokens of recognition coming your way and keep spreading the kindness!
