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.

Our Eco Achievements

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Over the last year everyone at Orchard Brae has working very hard on developing our Eco awareness as part of our Eco Schools journey and we have participated in a range of activities based around the topics of Litter, Waste Minimisation and Food and the Environment.

We conducted litter picks in the local area as well as in the school grounds, planted seeds and bulbs and cared for the plants, and made soup from our bumper crop of tatties grown in the school garden. The work that classes put into the Rag Bag scheme and Orchard Brae Fashion Boutique was recognised with a nomination for the Aberdeen City Council EcoCity Waste and Recycling Champions Award and while we were not the winners of the categories, we were rewarded with a certificate for our hard work and effort.

We are absolutely delighted that all of our hard work and effort has been recognised and we have reached the gold standard and been awarded our first Green Flag!

The Green Flag Award is presented to nurseries and schools which have demonstrated a commitment to Eco-Schools Scotland programme and usually takes place over two years. We are so proud that our Eco work has managed to get our first Green flag awarded in just one year!

We have been truly amazed by the comments we received from the Eco-School Scotland Team who noted that our action plan and evidence ‘was innovative and engaging’, ‘demonstrated a true commitment to improve the environment’ and ‘our dedication to embedding sustainability within the curriculum’.  They also highlighted aspects of our work as ‘examples of good practice’ which may be used as future case studies to support other schools.

A huge well done to all the students and staff for their on-going work and effort in enabling us to achieve our first Green Flag in one year.

 

Football Tournament

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The football team recently played another session of matches at Aberdeen Sports Village. They showed great improvement and battled on despite fierce opposition. Congratulations to them all for their sportsmanship. They were all a real credit to the school!

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Room 2

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Room 2 have had a fantastic week discovering about Chinese New Year.  We created Chinese lanterns for our class window by sticking coloured cellophane.  Some of us loved looking at the colours when we shone torches through them and others made a fantastic crinkly noise.

We had a big sensory session where we tried out different outfits and hats and explored various Chinese artefacts.  The biggest hit had to be the Chinese foods such as prawn crackers, noodles, lychees and sweet chilli sauce which some of us loved to taste and eat while others explored with their hands and feet!

We had a special treat on Thursday as one of the ladies in class brought us in a special ornament to look at which will bring us good fortune and some fortune cookies to open which was great fun!

Class 6/7 Celebrate Chinese New Year

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Class 6/7 were very busy last week exploring Chinese New Year.  We enjoyed hearing the story of how the animals became part of the Chinese calendar and worked out what animal we were born under.  There were lots of different crafts throughout the week including colouring in and making paper dragons.  The best bit however, was our Chinese New Year snack at the end of the week.  We had the opportunity to taste a range of Chinese foods and used key vocabulary boards to make requests and comment.  Almost everyone thought the fruit and prawn crackers were the best bit.  YUM!

Exploring Elmer In Room 9

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The pupils in Room 9 are continuing to enjoy listening to, looking at and doing work from our Book Study of Elmer by David McKee. Our herd of Elmer’s has expanded. Some of our pupils enjoy playing with these wonderful models they made – the Elmer’s are lined up, placed in order, grouped altogether and observed.

We have also experimented with water and ink, noting what happens when the two combine. The pupils in Room 9 together made a lovely piece of modern art based from this science experiment.

 

 

Rainbow Fruit Kebabs In Room 5

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Room 5 are reading The Rainbow Fish. One of our class celebrated a birthday. We enjoyed birthday cake and rainbow fruit kebabs for snack. We had red strawberries, green grapes and yellow banana on our kebabs.

Room 8 Meet Jack Frost

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Room 8 have been enjoying this winter weather, inside and outside the classroom. We ventured out into the playground, well wrapped up, to experience how cold and frosty it has been. We brought snow back in with us to feel how cold it was and we watched as it melted during the day.

We dressed up in winter clothes during our winter singing and looked at ourselves in the mirror, just to see how good we looked!

During our art sessions we made ‘cold weather’ pictures using ‘cold’ colours. We used purple, white and blue balloons to print with. We also used the salad spinners to make colourful pictures which were cut into cosy socks, hats, gloves and scarves.

This week we made Jack Frost pictures. We had lots of different collage materials in white and silver to stick on and, of course, no Jack Frost is complete without plenty of glitter!

We all love a baking session in room 8 so this week we made ‘frosty’ cakes. We put in rice crispies and ‘snowball’ marshmallows, stirred it round and then added white chocolate. We then decorated the top with some edible ‘silver’ paper. Lots of tasting, smelling, and touching went on. We kept some for snack in school and took some home for our families to enjoy too.

Exploring Our Local Community With Room 4

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Room 4 have been very busy developing their awareness of our local area.   Every Monday, they have been walking to the HUB community centre, enjoying a social snack together and exploring the different resources on offer – the books that are available are a HUGE hit!

 

 

 

Robert Burns Celebrations In Room 11

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Children in Room 11 have been having fun and celebrating Robert Burns. They have been listening to Scottish music, tasting and smelling haggis, neeps and tatties. They have also been listening to famous poems “To a Mouse” and “A Red , Red Rose”. We were having fun singing Scottish songs and being part of the whole school Ceilidh! All children loved playing the fiddle too!