2023 Leavers

Our Secondary Awards and Leavers Ceremony was held in school on Wednesday. Congratulations to all of the Award winners and thanks to the families that joined our celebration.

Today we bid a final goodbye to another fantastic group of young people who have all made huge progress over their years in Orchard Brae. It was an emotional day all round as we celebrated their success and wished them well.

Thanks to Nadine of Elm Music Therapy for making our Leavers video this year:

To our leavers, it’s been an honour and privilege to work with you all and we wish you all every success in the next stage of life. We will miss you all!

Room 19 Working Hard

Coming into the last weeks of term Room 19 are continuing our good routines and embedding those relationships with both staff and peers. The pupils have been working hard to follow the class timetable this term and take part in all activities throughout the day around the school. 

We have been focussing our efforts and looking at Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood. We have been utilising resources from the https://rshp.scot/ website. For more information about supporting or reinforcing these lessons, adults at home can follow the link which provides a vast range of resources. 

When some of our peers were away in Bendrigg on their residential trip, we took the opportunity to come together outside for class novel time, music and enjoyed some fun in the sun. 

During the second last week of term Room 19 engaged in the Whole School Event of Safety Week. This focus was on valuable lessons before the summer holidays focussed on Water Safety, Fire Safety, Internet Safety and Road Safety.

Room 19 Life Skills

As the term progresses all pupils have had a chance to try out different work experience tasks in school.  They are becoming more comfortable with their roles and responsibilities and are clearly concentrating on their tasks. 

PE SQA

Our pupils from Howes Hoose have taken part in the Nat 2 course Factors Affecting Performance. In this course they have been identifying what parts of the body are involved in different exercises and how exercise affects their body.

Pupils from Room 13, 16 & 18 have taken part in the Nat 2 course Taking part in Physical Activities. During this course they choose different activities that they would like to take part in, and they are learning about the equipment that they need for it as well as setting up and tidying up after using it.

Enjoying our Learning in Secondary

Burns Celebrations to start the week

We’ve had another busy week of remote learning. Starting on Monday with our whole school Burns Day Celebration, the week was started with great enthusiasm!

Daily Circle Time

To keep our routine going, many classes continue to do daily circle time. Some of our learners have their own circle time packs at home to support the familiar routine, others use the class slides to provide structure. It’s great to receive feedback on how our learners are getting on: ‘He thoroughly enjoys circle time.’

For one young man, circle time is also an opportunity to practise his bench sitting.

Personal Independence and Life Skills

We continue to develop independence in personal care. Staff take time to support us in doing things for ourselves. Handwashing is very important during a pandemic!

We’ve been cooking and baking. There was some delicious French Onion Soup on offer this week and beautiful golden shortbread. Look out Masterchef, here we come!

Expressive Arts

We enjoyed art, PE, drumming and music through Makaton Choir. A very detailed drawing was done to decorate a drum for a music session with Keith – the drawing is of a hunter being chased by an African lady that is protecting the animals!

We also took time to relax, both indoors and out.

Working Hard

We worked hard on a range of learning activities and tasks, some online and some more practical.

One of our senior pupils made an amazing cat house as part of her SQA work. I think you’ll agree, this is for one very lucky cat!

Assembly

Finally, to round off the week we had an Assembly. We talked about mental health and the theme ‘Express Yourself’. Staff shared the ways that they express themselves and show that they’re unique. The slides are available to view in the Google Assembly classroom for anyone that was unable to join us. Our challenge for the next assembly on 12th February is to share a photo of us doing something that we enjoy – anything goes!

Remote Learning in Secondary

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for both staff and pupils in our Secondary Department. With a new round of remote learning we’ve slipped back into things a little easier. We’ve got lots of activities on offer within our Google Classrooms and we’re seeing more pupils engaging with this. Circle time and stories are proving popular and it’s great to see our young people getting involved in helping around the home.

Although we have some sessions ‘live’, such as Makaton Choir (every Monday at 2 pm) and Assembly (1:30 pm on Friday 29th January), other activities are in the form of pre-recorded video or materials that can be accessed at a time of your convenience. We do appreciate that family life is busy, everyone juggling remote learner(s) with other commitments, so we invite you dip in and out when it suits your schedule.

Here are a few photos from our remote learning over the last couple of weeks. If you’d like your child to be featured, please let the class teacher know that you’re happy for your photographs to be shared.

We’re learning in everything we do. Please ask your class teachers if you need any further support.

Secondary Assembly: 14th January

Tomorrow (14th January) we will be having our first Secondary Assembly of the New Year. Our assemblies have been virtual since our return after the initial lockdown due to having to restrict the numbers for gatherings and our young people have responded well to this.

Tomorrow we would like to invite both our remote learners and those staff and pupils in school to join us. If you have not yet signed up, please do so by accepting the invitation sent via Google Classroom. If you are having any issue, please contact the Class Teacher for further support.

The link will go ‘live’ in Assembly Classroom a few minutes before we start. I hope you can come along!

Room 13’s Intrepid Explorers

Room 13 has been able to access the school bus and use it to take our students out and about and find out what’s happening in our city.

The students take it in turns in the bus, as per covid rules, to find interesting things that are going on and take back some photos for the rest of the school.

Our two intrepid outdoor correspondents this week were finding out what has been happening around the city coastline.

Secondary Update: Wk Beg 29th June 2020

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.