A huge thank you to Create, who visited us in school yesterday to perform their show ‘A Voice Under The Sea’.
The show was lots of fun and we all enjoyed singing and signing along!
We are pleased to be able to offer a new training programme for professionals and families. The sessions will run until December 2023 and we are planning to run some more sessions after January.
Training sessions are bookable on Eventbrite and start on the 2nd October. All training will take place at Orchard Brae School.
Do not miss an opportunity to learn more about autism and emotional regulation, autism and anxiety, classroom environment, understanding autism and more.
We look forward to seeing you there!
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Howes Hoose Fundraising Champions
Over the past month the pupils in Howes Hoose have been taking part in a fundraising project to raise money for those in need as a result of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Pupils were shown a variety of causes and videos to explain each then voted which one they wanted to raise money for. The majority chose the earthquake.
We did an Easter themed ‘guess how many in the jar’ fundraiser where we filled a huge jar with tasty chocolate treats and went round classes asking to make a guess at the total and collect donations. The last few pounds are coming in but we have raised roughly £60 which we are very proud of! Incredibly one member of staff guessed the exact number of eggs in the jar so that very fortunate person is all sorted for Easter!
One of our main aims is to support families across the city through creating safe space where like-minded parents/cares could meet, have a chat and feel understood. In order to make it happen we have been liaising with schools and setting up Parent Support Groups in 5 primary schools (Stoneywood, Fernilea, Kaimhill, Glashieburn and Woodside). All groups are led by AOR staff and they meet monthly. Parents make suggestions what they would like to discuss and if they would like to have guests (SALT, OT, School Nurse, SW, charities). We are looking at setting up more similar groups in different schools in the future.
If you would like to join one of the groups and meet parents, have chat and enjoy a cuppa, please get in touch with Alex Polanska.
We’ve been as busy as ever in Room 10, with core focuses on sensory regulation and communication throughout our daily routines. We’ve been exploring organising activities as part of a sensory circuit, and did a brilliant job engaging with tasks which required more planning and thought to complete. Alongside our immersive communication approach with our existing AAC, we’ve also recently been using the Sounding Board app more – this has been great for supporting engagement and has enabled more opportunities to share pupil voice. We’ve also been loving free movement and dance activities, including dance with specialist Katie and class discos, giving sensory regulation opportunities through movement breaks as well as a brilliant means to build relationships with those around us.
We’ve been continuing our Book Study with the Supertato series, which has provided lots of fabulously fun and messy opportunities to engage with the plots – we’ve had mashed potato sensory play, frozen pea sensory play for “Supertato: Veggies Assemble” (oh, the smell!), which alongside being fab to run our hands through we also discovered made for a slippery slide to walk through! For “Supertato: Carnival Catastro-Pea” we had paint messy play, with paper down across the whole classroom floor – however, aside from a few exceptions, we were impressed how reserved everyone was for this!
Any Room 10 families wanting to can find out more about any of what we have been up to on our Google Classroom.
All of these have been fab opportunities to link back to our communication aims too – making choices, sharing likes and dislikes, requesting more and naming what we can see around us. The progress with speech and AAC use has been phenomenal, and we look forward to continuing to build on this in the new term.
We are currently experiencing issues with the school phone lines. If you are needing to contact the school in the meantime, please call us on 07990540349
We play music with Scott, experimenting with different instruments and the sounds they make. One of our pupils is really fond of the drum sounds what this drum machine makes. We practice to identify emotions and how to recognise them. This will help us to better understand how others and we feel.
We are ordering the numbers from one to ten to practice our numeracy skills.
Orchard Brae have restarted the clothing bank. We can provide preloved school uniform items for our pupils. This can also include warm jackets and blankets, depending on what we have in stock. Please either pop into school to view our collection or contact the school office directly if you wish us to send something home with your child. Alternatively you can email Ru Mason or Gill Moffat directly.
We are also gratefully accepting donations of good quality school uniform items that your child might have outgrown. Please send these into school and ask for them to be passed along to the office or Room 17.
gw20masonruana@ab-ed.org – Ru Mason
gw09moffatgill@ab-ed.org – Gill Moffat
In room 18 we have been trying to get out enjoy the best of the weather before the cold weather sets in. Here are some of the activities that we have been participating in.
