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.

Noodles, Reindeer and Remembrance in Outdoor Education

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Room 19 have been looking at preparing food for our Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award.  We tested 2 different brands of noodles, and enjoyed eating them both.  Even those who were not sure, once they tried them, discovered that they were nice to eat.

We assembled and used a Trangia stove to boil water, and add then added to the dried noodles.  Part of our assessment will be making a hot meal, from scratch, using a stove.

We have also cooked sausages outside which were very popular.

This week we even made hot chocolate, heating up chocolate milk on a stove.

We all agree – food tastes better when cooked outside!

 

Outdoor learning has looked at using natural materials like grass, beech nuts and twigs to make textured animals.  We have made spikey hedgehogs from twigs. We also made soft fluffy reindeer for their fur, and small twigs to make their antlers.  Some of our reindeer also had a shiny red nose like Rudolph.

 

We also made poppies to celebrate Armistice Day out of heart shaped pieces of red paper.  We were using scissors, paint, different colours to recreate poppies in the wild.

Orchard Brae Christmas Fair

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A huge Thank You to all those who attended the Fair, Stallholders, Raffle ticket purchasers, bakers and those that manned the stalls, made cheese toasties, cups of tea and coffee or wrapped presents.

Also a big Thank You to Emmeline and our amazing Makaton Choir who wonderfully entertained the crowd with their Christmas songs. They were obviously all enjoying themselves.

It was wonderful to see so many people there and the Friends of Orchard Brae are delighted to announce that the grand total of £4,200 has been raised. We hope the Fair started off everyone’s Christmas celebrations and some presents were purchased or raffles won.

PE With Room 4

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PE is always such a big hit for the children in room 4!

Physical Education offers so much to our children:

Social skills, turn taking and collaborative team work are just some of the benefits of a balanced physical education program.

Room 8 Explore ‘Grandpa’s Handkerchief’

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Room 8 have just started looking at a new story, ‘Grandpa’s Handkerchief’.  The story is about a sociable and kindly Grandpa who plays with his grand-children every day – thus providing us with  a fun way to learn the days of the week.

Red, blue, yellow, green… Grandpa’s handkerchiefs are useful in so many ways!  For waving to trains, making a sailing boat, bandaging a knee, or reminding Grandpa about a special birthday!

Each day focuses on a different activity.  Monday is about trains singing and dancing. Tuesday is about playing at the park. Wednesday we are going to be pirates with hats and swords. Thursday is party with a very exciting and unusual cake. Friday is baking. Saturday is football and Sunday is gardening.

The class are going to be working on this story over the next three weeks as we learn the different songs and actions to accompany each exciting day with ‘Grandpa’s Handkerchief’.

Working together in Class 10

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The children in our room are learning to do lots of activities where they are sharing space and cooperating to work alongside each other.

 

 

 

 

We love exploring the moving world in Room 11

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Children in Room 11 have been exploring different moving things around them. They have been encouraged to use their senses to look, touch, listen and feel sensory environment of the relaxation room. Some of them enjoyed playing with the sensory tunnel, some preferred playing games with catching lights, when some were loving looking at their mirror image. All of the children loved listening to music of their choice too!

Room 5 Visit The Cinema

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The boys in room 5 enjoyed a class trip to Vue Cinema to see Wonder Park. Through “Into Film 2019” we got free tickets for everyone and when we got to the cinema we basically had it all to ourselves.

For some of the class, this was their first trip to the cinema and they all did really well, focusing on the movie and staying for the duration. It was a fantastic day and one which we all really enjoyed and we look forward to returning again.

Technology Time with Room 3!

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The children in Room 3 are all working very hard on their targets in using technology.  We use switches throughout our daily routines and are practising hard to develop our skills while using the computer, switch toys and even fun appliances such as the hair dryer!  We all like iPads and use these to make pictures, create sounds and read stories.  Some pupils are using eye gaze technology via the Grid Pad and concentrate hard while working on this particularly tricky skill.  Each child has their own motivators and using particular games and stimuli encourage them to really concentrate, even when the work is a little bit tricky.  Some recent happy stories include a young man who realised when he pressed the switch his favourite ‘twinkly’ song played and very quickly understood that he needed to wait for the song to finish before pressing again, children joining up together to share operating favourite songs on the screen and a young lady generalising her eye gaze skills to make cheeky sound effects in front of all her friends during a story session!

Room 2 celebrate the 5th of November

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Room 2 had great fun exploring the sounds that fireworks make by using instruments and popping and stamping on bubble-wrap!

Then we created our own fireworks pictures to show the different colours and patterns that fireworks make. We used a few different methods to make our beautiful pictures. Our favourite was definitely using the ‘fly swatter’s to stamp the paint onto the paper. We finished off our pictures by sprinkling some glitter on top.

Out On The Bus With Room 6/7

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Room 6 and 7 enjoyed an outing on Public transport last week.

We boarded the bus at the terminus and eagerly awaited its departure.  We took the bus to the local shops to buy some supplies for our class snack.  We are looking forward to making this a weekly event.