Category: Room 12

Room 12 Staff Team

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Countdown To Christmas

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Orchard Brae Advent Calendar: Days 9 and 10

Today we have another festive treat for you with days 9 and 10 of our Orchard Brae Advent Calendar.

For Day 9, Room 12 take you on a magical sleigh ride, accompanied by classical music from Troika. Everyone had lots of fun creating their journey after lots of hard work practising every day in school.

For Day 10, Room 7 undertake a fantastic sensory exploration of snow.

Inspirational Art in Room 12

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Inspired by the work of a young artist called Noah (aka Background Bob) we are going to embark on a collaboration with other artists to create pieces of art.

During lockdown, Noah and his family created some backgrounds which were sent to artists around the world (including our teacher, Gemma).  They painted on top of the background and now the paintings are in an exhibition and a book!

We are going to work with local people and create backgrounds for them to paint on.

We will explore paint and ways of applying it and then contact people to collaborate with.

You can see some of Noah’s collaborations on his Instagram page: www.instagram.com/background_bob

Room 12’s Busy Week!

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We have had a productive couple of weeks in Room 12.

One young man absolutely loved his new trike. It’s been quite a while since he’s been on one and he took to it like a duck to water. Chris Hoy needs to look out for competition!

We did some sensory art work. We did some spice painting. You can do this at home with whatever you have in your kitchen cupboards. Add spices/flavourings to different colours of paint. You can smell the paint, make pictures and in some cases see different textures of paint depending on what you use. We used vanilla flavouring, cinnamon, turmeric, chilli powder and ginger.

We also made some wool wrap leaves. We cut out some leaf shapes in cardboard (Amazon packaging comes in handy here!), making sure your leaves have jaggy or rounded edges. We used pastels to rub/colour in the leaves, then used wool to wrap around them. Some of us went extra fancy and did more than one colour of wool on our leaf.

Room 12: Brightening up the Outdoors!

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Room 12 have been very keen to decorate their new outdoor space. A rummage in one of Anne’s many boxes of bits and bobs turned up some ready to decorate wind-chimes, in the shapes of bees, butterflies and flowers. We painted these and decided that a bit of glitter improves absolutely everything, so we added some of that too. A spray of varnish and they are weather ready and looking beautiful in our “patio area”! The sounds they make are peaceful and musical too.

Secondary Update: Wk Beg 29th June 2020

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Welcome to the final week of term! We enjoyed the sunshine last week, perfect for our Virtual Sports Day activities, and there was lots of fun had by everyone that participated. We also had a range of activities ongoing through our Google Classrooms with remote learning taking place across the classes. If you’ve not yet engaged with Google Classroom but would like more information please contact the Class Teacher. Here are some of the fun activities from the last week.

 

Literacy

One of our classes read the story of the Rainbow Fish and produced some art work in response to the story.

 

Some other pupils have been reading the Picture News each week and completing a range of literacy activities connected with it. This week, the focus was on Zoos. One of our young people designed her own zoo. She also did some research into Sea Turtles and learned lots of interesting facts.

As we move into the summer holidays it would be good to see reading continue. Did you see the post on Friday about the Reading Challenge from Aberdeen City Libraries? It would be great to get involved with, either individually or as a family. Have a look for more information:

Aberdeen Reads: Join the Summer Reading Challenge

 

Science

It was hot last week and we had some appropriately timed Science activities in one of our classes. We painted with ice cubes!

 

Life Skills

We continued our Home Economics. One class made a Caterpillar Salad to practise using a knife for cutting.

Homemade ice lollies were also on the menu, perfect for the sunny days that we had!

If you’d like to try making your own lollies, have a go by following one of these recipes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cnKNWjgH06Q8oRPPCOjZZIeXNxeNp_Vx/view?usp=sharing

We also continued our Life Skills around the home. It’s great to see so many young people becoming so independent!

 

Transitions

Looking ahead, we’ve been putting plans in place for transition of pupils to their new classes, staff sharing information with one another in virtual meetings where pupils are moving on. It may be that there are things about your child that have changed during the time at home. We’d be really grateful if you would share this with us – information such as any changes in likes or dislikes, motivators, sensory needs, communication or diet. These will be passed on to the new teachers.

Aberdeen Reads: Join the Summer Reading Challenge

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Aberdeen City Libraries have announced an exciting new reading challenge for the summer. Starting tomorrow (27th June) and running until 29th August, everyone is welcome to register as an individual or family / group. Register for the challenge online: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=aw-pJD2_E02ip4k2nOs16xSlCSTRm75Nn6t-EpSexzdUN0kySlJWRlpJUEdRSEdZUlhLRTczUDZDTSQlQCN0PWcu

There are 9 reading related challenges and you can choose those that appeal. Full details of all the challenges are on the Aberdeen Reads website:

Click to access Aberdeen%20Reads%20final%20form.pdf

 

There is something for everyone!

 

Some ideas of how you might use the challenge are:

 

Places

Read some of your favourite stories that are set in other countries (real or imaginary). Two of my personal favourites are:

Where The Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak), a lovely picture book for younger readers, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (C S Lewis) for older readers.

 

Get Creative

Across the school we’ve seen lovely photos of our children and young people engaging in Life Skills and Arts & Crafts during our period of remote learning. Why not challenge yourself to bake or cook something new? You might find a no-cook recipe that will encourage even greater independence. Try a new craft project and make something useful, or use some of your old junk to create something inspired by a book. Lots of exciting crafty projects can be done using recycled materials and this helps our environment.

 

Ec0-Friendly

Use recycled materials to create a favourite character or a scene from one of your books. One young man from Room 14 did this previously, creating his favourite scene from Harry Potter.

 

Cover Versions

Some of our Secondary pupils enjoy the Harry Potter books. These are magical stories to escape into and are very enjoyable to read aloud. Why not compare the film and the book to find out which you like best? Horrid Henry is always a favourite and episodes can be watched on TV. Do you like the TV episode or the story best? Popular with many of our younger pupils is Disney Cars or any other Disney movie. Again, see what you like best – the film or the book. There are also lots of E-comics on the library website, including Disney.

 

Favourite Place

Try reading in different places and find out what your favourite place to read is. I like to read in the garden, particularly on a fine day.

 

Let us know how you get on and feel free to share with your teachers the stories that you have enjoyed.

 

 

 

Secondary Update: Wk Beg. 22nd June 2020

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We had a very successful start to the use of our Google Classrooms last week with a large number of pupils getting involved and lots of positive feedback. Some of our Senior classes have very much enjoyed catching up on Google Meets and it’s been lovely for our staff to see you all ‘in person’ and chat with you as we’re all missing the social contact and communication that is such an integral part of what we do at Orchard Brae.

This week is our Virtual Sports Day for the whole school. Running for the whole week there are a range of activities for us to join in with and everyone is welcome to join in the fun. Please do share your photographs through the Virtual Sports Day ‘classroom’. Everyone that has signed up to Google will have an invitation waiting in their Gmail account if you’ve not already signed up to participate.

Over the last week we’ve engaged in a range of activities across the Department.

 

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

Barefoot Books are a favourite of many Orchard Brae pupils. Room 12 chose to base their learning around the Barefoot Book, ‘There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea’. Pupils enjoyed listening to the song and produced some amazing art work in response. It was lovely to hear how focused this young man was and how well he concentrated in order to hold his paintbrush and work on his pictures.

Here is the song if anyone wishes to watch and listen:

 

 

Life Skills

This week we tried making fruit smoothies. Smoothies are a great way to use up any extra fruit. We also made Father’s Day biscuits. I think one Dad is in for a very special treat. These look delicious!

 

 

Enjoying the Outdoors

It’s great to get outdoors and to see the sunshine. We have been exploring a range of outdoor spaces around our local areas. Have you managed to get out and about?

 

We hope you all have a good week. Keep the photos coming and have fun with our Sports Day activities!

Online Learning Survey

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We’ve now been learning remotely for more weeks than we care to remember! This week is particularly exciting with the launch of our Google Classrooms (GSuite) and it’s great to see so many families getting involved with this.

As always, our aim is to support our children and young people as best we can, and we have a Leadership Group working together to focus on how do this as we move towards ‘blending learning’ from August. In order to support their work we’d really appreciate your thoughts on what we have offered so far, any issues or difficulties you’ve experienced, and what you would like to see as we move forward.

All feedback is welcome so please take a few minutes to share your views if you have not already done so. Thank you.

https://forms.gle/oparbBDTDzYbex8Z7

 

Secondary Department: Wk Beg 15th June

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It’s been another busy week for our learners at home and once again we’ve enjoyed sharing the stories of what you’ve been doing. It’s lovely to hear that among the challenges we’re also having fun with our families and enjoying activity together, such as the Joe Wickes PE sessions. I wonder how many of us (adults) will come emerge from this fitter than when we started.

Now that our Google Classrooms are up and running it will hopefully be easier for you to share your learning experiences. If you would like to be on the website please share let us know when you share photographs with the teachers.

Here are a few snippets of what’s being going on over the last week.

 

Science

We enjoy investigating and you’re never too old to learn through ‘play’. We made our own lava lamp and there have been experiments with colour – isn’t it amazing what you can do with Skittles? We have also made our own slime and dough.

If you’d like to try making your own ‘slime’, give this recipe a go and let us know how you get on:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kM11fgB1ZdQp3ffUeTuftcshzOx3KQjM/view?usp=sharing

 

Life Skills

Our work on life skills has continued at home and again it has been very heartening to hear how you’re getting on. Helping with making beds, hoovering, doing the dishes and supporting with meal preparation benefits the whole family.

We’ve enjoyed baking (honey biscuits) and have made fruit kebabs.

Let us know what you’ve done to help out at home this week. Have a good week whatever you do!