Clothing Exchange

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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

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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

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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.

The Self Portrait

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The topic, All About Me, provides children with the opportunity to answer the all-important question “Who Am I?”. Activities as Self-Portrait, Facts About Me, My Opinions, Me Poem, My Hands Can, and Me Recipe are just a few of our planned activities for this term.

One of our favourite activities has been The Self-Portrait.

We needed several photographs of people from magazines or internet pictures, scissors, glue, card.

STEP 1:  We pre-cut the body parts of the people from the magazine or internet pictures.

STEP 2: The pupils took a ‘look’ in the mirror and determined what they like best about themselves – a great exercise for building character and self-esteem!

STEP 3: The children got a piece of card and glue. They created a cubist-inspired collage by assembling and gluing eyes, noses and lips from multiple angles.

Have fun!

Life Skills in Room 15

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In Room 15 we have been working hard on applying our learning to recognisable contexts that will support our functional independence in the wider community.  In particular, we have been making fantastic progress with our shopping skills.

Each pupil uses a symbol shopping list to know what they need to look for, with a personalised focus – whilst some of us work to match the shop items to the symbols, others are counting, labelling colours, comparing big and little or choosing flavours from the available selection.  Our symbol-shopping lists are relatively recent but the class are already demonstrating familiarity with how to use them as we promptly and accurately find the items we need to find.  This also gives us an opportunity to develop our reading skills as we identify information from (symbol-supported) text and apply our communication skills including using our communication devices.

Once we have found all of the items on our list we go to pay for our items.  As before, each of us has individual targets – some are working on matching one coin with another, but some of us have recently progressed to beginning to label a small range of coins.

The whole class has shown notable progress in recent weeks in these skills which we can take with us as we explore our wider world.

Friends of Orchard Brae Fun Run: 28th April 2020

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Many thanks to the brother of one of our pupils who has asked if he can fundraise individually through sponsorship for the 5k Fun Run for Friends of Orchard Brae. If anyone else wishes to raise money through the Fun Run or any other sponsored activity in future, sponsor forms can be obtained via the Friends of Orchard Brae by contacting school, or a sponsorship page can be set up at: https://wonderful.org/charity/friendsoforchardbrae

Lisa Thomson (Chairperson of the Friends) is the normal point of contact for any fundraising. Clare Russell can also be contacted regarding the Fun Run.

Full information regarding the Fun Run can be found here: https://scottishrunningguide.com/race/fun-run-for-friends-of-orchard-brae

or check out the Friends of Orchard Brae Facebook page.

Please remember, all participants must be over 12 years of age to enter, and must be accompanied by an adult at all times if under 16. Donations are optional – the event is free to run for everyone!

If we have wheelchair users who wish to participate, an adapted course that avoids the rooty / muddy trail section will be available.

PE With Rooms 6 & 7

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Rooms 6 and 7 have been joining together for PE.

They have been enjoying a variety of activities developing their gross motor skills, co-operation skills and body awareness.

Duke of Edinburgh Award

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Our pupils in Room 19 and Howes Hoose having been working hard on their Duke of Edinburgh Awards. We have some pupils doing their Bronze Award and some working towards the Silver Award. We have now completed our Skills and Physical sections and continue to work on our Volunteering.

Our sandwich enterprise has in Room 19 has been very successful and we have made lots and lots of sandwiches!

We have been playing table tennis and practising yoga for our physical section.

We have volunteered at Airyhall Community Centre and helped in various roles in and around school.

Well done to everyone involved!

Exploring Tartans In Room 11

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Last month, we had great fun participating in Robert Burns celebrations in class. The pupils spent time choosing different tartans to paint .

I chose the Black Watch which is very similar to my family’s tartan which we looked up too.

I chose the Royal Stuart tartan which apparently has rock’n’roll status and is worn by pop and glam rock stars.

I liked the Balmoral tartan which traditionally it can only be worn by those of royal lineage.

I fell in love with the MacLeod tartan which is bold, vibrant and commands attention!

Other pupils also liked the MacQueen tartan which is the most striking and with its links to the bold red tartans in Jacobite portraiture and it has taken a rebellious reputation!