Category: Primary

 

Broad General Education

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.

Making Music In Room 3

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The pupils from Room 3 have been enjoying making music both at music therapy and in class. The pupils have all been exploring music in ways specific to them. This has involved playing hand-held percussion instruments, singing, playing the piano and also walking on the floor piano! The pupils have been engaging in a variety of pupil led and specific ways in music therapy and these have been reiterated in class during a variety of activities! Emmeline is looking forward to continuing making music with Room 3!

 

Using Figure Notes In Music Therapy

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Some of our pupils have been learning to play piano with our music therapist Emmeline using the Drake Music programme ‘Figure Notes’.

Figure notes uses colours and shapes to help facilitate people to learn music in a different way. Our pupils have experienced a wonderful sense of pride learning to play; ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, ‘Frere Jacque’ and ‘Ode to Joy’.

 

Support Orchard Brae via your local Coop!

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If you shop with Co-op, please consider choosing us as your cause to support when you shop.  Join here…

https://membership.coop.co.uk/causes/41483

 

Chapel Chimers

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Many thanks to the Chapel Chimers for visiting us at Orchard Brae yesterday. Although we love our weekly Makaton Choir, this was a lovely musical alternative for us. We all enjoyed hearing the resonance of the chimes and both singing and playing along.

Story Time in Room 3

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The pupils in Room 3 love story time!  Our stories are always brought to life with props, smells and sound effects which help bring the words and ideas to life.  You never know what might happen during story time in Room 3… monsters might come to chase us, Katie Morag could take us on a journey to deliver the mail, a pirate ship to jump aboard for an adventure or even up into the night sky in a rocket to visit the moon with Baby Bear.  Items go flying, the room descends into darkness and there can be very loud or quiet noises – our senses are well and truly awoken and the engagement is fantastic.

During stories we have the chance to practise some of what we learn through our targets or other curricular areas – a really good chance to generalise our skills.  We always leave gaps so that the pupils can join in with signs and vocalisations.  It is really helpful to repeat the same stories so that we become familiar with them and can begin to anticipate what is coming next.  Sometimes we find that things which can be tricky in other contexts i.e. particular textures we aren’t sure of or having to pass on something to a friend which we would rather keep ourselves is much easier to cope with or work on during all the fun of story time.

 

The children’s active participation in story time has developed so much, we are really proud of them.  They are joining in not only during their own turns but also paying so much more attention to their peers, lots of careful watching and listening.

 

We are looking forward to sharing some favourite stories from home with each other and getting to know some new ones while working through our context of ‘All About Me’ and answering the question ‘Who am I and who am I within my class?’.

Scottish Ballet Workshops

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Classes across the school enjoyed workshops with Scottish Ballet last week. They were in Aberdeen for the performance of Swan Lake.

During the day, different classes had workshops and enjoyed lots of fun, sensory activities and music.

Assemblies In Drum Department

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The pupils in Drum have been meeting every Monday morning for assembly.  We sit together in a circle and are becoming used to the routine.  We start by saying hello before singing favourite songs the classes bring.  We then explore a theme or story before finishing our assembly and saying goodbye.

Last week we explored Burns Night.  We dressed up in tartan, had a little taste of shortbread and oatcakes, sang Scottish songs and had a wee ceilidh!

This week we learnt about Chinese New Year and tried on some clothes, looked at artefacts, did some movement and then did a dragon dance.  We opened up some fortune cookies and shared what they told us!  Our youngest pupils in the school are in Drum and there is lots of learning in a busier environment where it is less predictable and noisier than our classrooms.  On top of that we get out of our seats to dance and are learning to return to them so well.

 

We have a great time learning together and there’s lots more assembly fun ahead!

Room 8’s Amazing Trick

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Can you pick up ice with a piece of string?

Impress people with this trick!

Try picking up a piece of ice with a string. Can you do it without tying any knots?

Room 8 will show you how!

What you need is:

  • Ice cube
  • Salt
  • String
  • Glass
  • Water
  • Scissors

How we did it?

  1. We have filled a glass to the top with water (we added some food colouring for more fun).
  2. We have chosen a piece of colourful string around 20 centimetres long.
  3. We have placed an ice cube in the water. What have we observed? It has floated. Anything else? Of course. The ice cube has been cold.
  4. We have laid the string across the ice cube and glass. Nothing has happened.
  5. We have tried a magic trick: we have covered the ice cube and string with a layer of salt (we have tasted it also). Oh, no! Very salty!!!
  6. We have left them for 10 seconds – we have counted the seconds.
  7. Carefully, we have pick up the ends of the string and what do you think? Magic. We managed to lift up the ice cubes! Wow! Well done, Room 8!

What’s happening?

Salt lowers the freezing point of water to below 0 degrees Celsius. When we added salt to the ice cube, the salt lowered the melting point of the ice. The salt is in a thin layer, so it melts a thin layer on top of the ice cube. The water cooled down further and re-froze around the string.

Now we understand why Ray, our janitor, uses salt in winter to prevent the road and our playground from getting icy and dangerous.

It is you turn now! You could challenge your friends and parents. See if they can work out how you did it. Good luck!

Orchard Brae Clothing Exchange

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Thanks to everyone that has sent in items for our Clothing Exchange. Please remember that you’re welcome to pop in and browse any time. It’s a great way to save money and help the planet by passing things on that our children and young people have grown out of.

We’ve got clothing in a wider range of sizes now. All sizes of clothing are welcome as our pupils go from age 3-18.