Category: Secondary Department

Welcome to the Secondary Department

The secondary department has 8 classes and pupils follow the principles of Curriculum for Excellence: a broad general education in S1-S3 and the Senior Phase in S4- S6.   The curriculum is varied, relevant, challenging, enjoyable and adapted to meet our pupil’s individual needs.  Pupils also visit a range of specialists, have access to relevant therapeutic inputs and participate in wider community events.

Animal Discovery: Live Webcams

  By , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some of our pupils show an interest in animals and nature. There are Live Webcams at Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park that the children may enjoy.

https://www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk/webcams (Highland Wildlife Park)

https://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/webcams/ (Edinburgh Zoo)

For our Secondary pupils, the National Geographic Kids website can provide more information. Although not all pupils can access it fully independently, there are pictures to look at and discuss, and some interesting video clips to watch:

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/category/discover/

Have a look and find out what your favourite animals are.

 

 

Navigating the School: Room 14

  By , ,

Room 14 have been working on their Geography skills as part of our ASDAN work. Their task was to give directions to find familiar parts of the school. We found lots of places including the nurses office, the P.E cupboard and soft play.

 

Room 18’s Green Fingers

  By , , ,

Room 18 have been developing their green fingers. We had a wonderful time planting bulbs and vegetables. We potted some bulbs by adding soil to the pots and putting the bulbs in them. We watered them and put them outside Howes Hoose. We have been checking on them and watering them, hopefully the spring weather will make them grow quickly! In Outdoor Education, we have also been planting carrot tops and celery to see if we can grow them from our snack leftovers.

Sport Relief 2020

  By , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Many thanks to Amanda, Salvi, Sam and Scott for organising fun activities for us all to join in with to support Sport Relief 2020. We kicked off the morning with a select band signing up to Run a Mile. Thanks to Room 19 for braving the cold throughout our challenge, the spectators that cheered us on from the warmth of the classrooms and those that came out for playtime, supporting with cheers as we ran our loops. Each of us did 5 loops of the playground in total.

At lunchtime we enjoyed dance sessions with Sam. We all had lots of fun!

Finally, the whole school joined in for the afternoon to Walk a Mile with a Smile. We were grateful that the sun came out and warmed up the playground nicely for us. We also had some special visitors – the sumos!

Our day was just for fun, but we also received generous donations towards Sport Relief, raising a total of £165! Well done to everyone for taking part!

Aberdeen Art Gallery

  By

On Tuesday some of the students from our class went to have their first look around the Art Gallery.

There were lots of interesting things on show but they were most interested in the exhibit of the glass case containing cobras!

They also had a snack at the café and were a credit to the school.

Room 17 ASDAN

  By , , ,

Pupils in Room 17 have been working very hard on their ASDAN courses. One course required us to explore a range of food textures through touch. We tried a variety of different textures, including: rough, grainy, hard, sticky and runny. Interestingly, no one enjoyed the texture of sticky, and only one person liked the runny texture!

Everyone did really well to touch the textures and communicate how they felt about them.

Preparing Healthy Snacks in Room 16

  By , ,

In addition to weekly H.E. lessons, we have been working on preparing healthy snacks and meals in class.  We have been using small appliances as well as developing our cutting skills.

Clothing Exchange

  By , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Room 16 have been doing a great job, supporting the Clothing Exchange scheme. Pupils are regularly tidying up the area, washing, sorting and folding new clothing. It’s good to see an increase in sizes available too. Please keep sending items in if they’re in good condition and no longer of use to your child. Do also feel free to pop in and browse any time or let us know via the home school diary if you’d like the class team to have a look on your behalf.

World Book Day 2020

  By , , , ,

We have been very busy celebrating World Book Day this week and classes have had lots of fun with a range of different activities taking place.

This year’s theme was Share A Story and we have had great fun sharing our favourite books with each other.

 

Room 3 have had a very busy week celebrating World Book Day.  Some of the pupils have been trialling a new bit of software on one of the brand new GridPads called Look to Read.  Here is a wonderful video of one of our pupils who is accessing the GridPad with Eye Gaze reading a story on it for the very first time!

As you can see, she understood very quickly that she had to look at the words as they turned red to hear them and then watched the animations closely.  This is very hard work and despite this, this young lady then proudly shared this work by reading the whole story to her friends in class.  We are excited to share this software with more friends in school.

They also enjoyed a trip to our local library, where they had the opportunity to look at and share lots of new books.

Room 15 were exploring stories using Attention Autism.  They enjoyed finding out about The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Super Tato and The Very Hungry Caterpillar and they also had a wee competition to see how high a tower they could build with books.

Some of our pupils have even been sharing stories at home too!

We hope everyone has had a fun week and enjoyed sharing a story as part of World Book Day!

Room 12 Experiment with Art

  By ,

Room 12 experimented with different media during an art session in class. We had tin foil folded over a square of cardboard to keep it secure and solid. Instead of paintbrushes, we used cotton buds which are great for our fine motor skills. We dipped these into the paint and swirled and dabbed patterns all over the tin foil.

The pupils were all very engaged in this activity and one pupil especially amazed us all by doing the activity all by herself.

The object of this activity wasn’t to display the picture (the paint tends to flake off when dried) but to be able to hold, use and manipulate the cotton buds through the paint and seeing what our actions do.