We did it! We have completed our very first year of Secondary School and I couldn’t be prouder of the young men and women you have become!

This year has been different for all of us and each week we have got more independent, more confident and learnt new skills.

This week we have had a ball spending time with our friends, having parties and of course enjoying a McDonalds to celebrate the end of the school year.

We enjoyed party games and party food and made memories together as a class. It was fantastic to see everyone so supportive and encouraging of each other whilst playing pass the parcel.

On Monday we were visited by the ice cream van, we made our way to the front of school where we collected ice creams for the class and enjoyed them in the classroom. A big thank you to NA Cars, they were delicious 😋

We’ve also been showing off our racing skills playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch, I for one need some practice 🏎️

On behalf of everyone in Team Willows I would just like to say a huge THANK YOU for all of our thoughtful gifts, cards and well wishes. It has been a pleasure to be a part of the first year of your Key Stage 3 journey – what a blast we have had! I could not be prouder of you all and wish you every inch of good luck as you make your way into Year 8, not that you need it!

Have an amazing summer holiday, you all deserve it 🌞

Well what another fantastic week at school we have had!

On Wednesday we were so pleased to welcome you into school to watch our Music Showcase Performance. This was our first performance to parents since before Covid and we are so proud of how well all pupils performed for you all – I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house!

This week we have been busy crafters. Making lots of fabulous things to bring home next week and of course our wonderful tiger masks for our ROAR performance on Wednesday.

On Thursday it was our Federation Summer Fayre Andy we have all been super busy baking and decorating biscuits to sell. We had a team of helpers on the night to help set up and sell the biscuits. Everyone in Year 7 worked so hard to create the biscuits and we sold them all! Well done Team Willows!

Next week is our final week of the summer term and we have lots of fun activities planned.
On Monday we will be having a gaming day where we will have fun competing against each other and working together to complete tasks.

Tuesday is our trip to Cannock Chase which we are really looking forward to and keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will stay dry for us 🤞 if you have not returned the form please do so by Monday to secure your place 😊

On Thursday is our party day where we will be dancing our socks off and playing party games until the end of the day.

What a week ahead we have planned – bring it on!

What a lovely two weeks we have had! We have been extremely busy in Willow class over the last two weeks.

Some of us took part in the Singing Fest where we performed our learnt songs as part of the Makaton Choir. It was so lovely to see the confidence the pupils displayed, performing in front of so many other schools! We are looking forward to welcoming you to watch our songs as part of our Music Showcase on Wednesday at 10am 🎤 🎶

We also had a fantastic time exploring our forest, it was much cooler in the forest and we enjoyed exploring our surroundings, building dens and searching for mini-beasts 🐞 🐜 🐛

Of course, the highlight was our Year 7 Disco! 🕺 🪩 What a blast we had – dancing away to some of our favourite songs and even having the odd dance off! Pupils responded brilliantly to this event and they danced until they dropped. We can’t wait for next time – I wonder what our next event will be?! 🤔

We are busily preparing for our Summer Fayre next Thursday 13th July. Year 7 are hosting a stall where we will be selling biscuits that we have baked and decorated as a class so please come along to sample the goods 🍪

Next week, we will be entering our last two weeks of the Summer term before we break up for the summer holidays and make our way into the next school year. We aim to have as much fun as possible over these two weeks with lots of play, crafts and maybe a party or two! Bring on the celebrations!

We have had another fantastic week this week, visiting our local community and engaging in our Sharing a Shell story time activities.

We have made fantastic progress with our physical skills over the year and this term we are putting all this together and practicing them further as part of our athletics sessions. We have been jumping, throwing and running – including changing direction – as part of these sessions.

During our history session this week we started looking at evacuees from World War 2. Our blue group explored what an evacuee might take with them on their cling the bag and exploring the items within. Our yellow group discussed how different sounds and situations make us feel and how we might feel if we were a child during World War 2. We had lots of very interesting conversations and drew upon our own experiences of when we have felt scared.

We have been doing lots of work surrounding habitats this term, particularly under the sea. We have explored different creatures and spent some time looking at videos and pictures of coral reef 🪸 we used pipe cleaners, straws and marbles to make our own coral reefs, using pictures for inspiration and developing our fine motor skills at the same time.

On Thursday we were very lucky to be able to have some fun on a bouncy castle! All pupils were sensible when using the bouncy castle and we had lots of fun bouncing up and down and even side to side!

During our first aid sessions, our yellow group have been learning about how to recognise when someone is choking and what we can do to help them. We have been following our key phrases “Cough it out, slap it out, squeeze it out” and learnt who we are to ring in an emergency.

Next week we will be continuing our work on water and the sea. Our focus story next week will be “The Whale Who Ate Plastic”. We will be exploring how we look after our oceans and the wildlife who live there.

This week we have continued our work about the sea with our story “Sharing a Shell”. We have enjoyed reading the story and exploring the sensory tuff tray, using the characters to re-enact the story. We also spent time exploring the pages in the book and using symbols to label our story scenes.

We enjoyed being able to visit our forest area this week, making the most of the shade the trees provided from the sun. We took our nets, pots and magnifying glasses with us and managed to find lots of little creatures hiding amongst the overgrowth. We found wood lice, spiders and even a caterpillar! 🕷️ 🐛

During our art session this week we continue with our work on pointillism, creating pieces of artwork using small dots.

Our Blue Group have been recapping on taking care of ourselves and developing our personal care sills this week by brushing our teeth, washing our faces and brushing our hair. We are getting much more independent with these skills.

During our cooking session this week we made some tasty, healthy wraps using the ingredients we bought from Tesco during our community visit. We practiced our independence skills, cutting up the vegetables and some of us even tried new foods which is fantastic.

Next week we will be carrying on with our work around our oceans, exploring in more detail the creatures we may find. During our maths sessions we will be looking at number and how we collect and display data. We will also be continuing with our work surrounding habitats.

Welcome back! We hope you had a fantastic half term break and were able to make the most of the sunny weather.

We have had a busy week, getting back into our routines and continuing to explore our topic “Exploring Our Waters”. We started a new book called “Sharing a Shell” this week which explores different sea creatures and also ties in with our work on number and addition.

We have been exploring number and addition as part of our maths sessions this week and we have shown our adults how brilliant we are at this. We have worked at ordering numbers correctly to support with our counting skills. We have practiced these skills whilst playing familiar games such as snakes and ladders.

As part of our RE sessions this term we are starting to learn about Sikhism and the power of good over evil. This week we learnt about Guru Nanak, exploring who he was and what he devoted himself to.

We have also made a start on our First Aid sessions this week, some of us have been learning about basic first aid and enjoyed exploring the items in our class first aid box. Whilst others learnt about the signs to look out for of someone choking and how we can help someone if they are choking.

We enjoyed visiting the forest this week for the first time since the beginning of the Summer term. It was interesting to see how the forest has changed over the term and see the trees changing in colour. We are looking forward to seeing how it continues to change as the weather gets warmer and search for any creatures that might inhabit the forest area.

Next week we will continue to explore the ocean and the creatures that live under the sea linked with our story “Sharing a Shell”. Our community visits will continue on Monday, we are gaining in confidence each week which is fantastic to see.

What another busy week we have had in Willow class this week. We started our week with our weekly trip to Tesco to collect the items needed for the week ahead. We are getting so much more confident when with this and we are now much more familiar with the routine of getting our shopping basket before beginning our shop. This week we also had to wait in the queue before paying for our items which can be quite difficult for some of us. We all waited patiently to place the items on the conveyor belt which is fantastic. We are also practicing our road safety whilst out, being careful to stop, look and listen for any cars whilst crossing the car park. We are really enjoying posting the tokens and supporting important charities in our local community which is fantastic.

During our art lessons we have been learning about artist Georges Seurat who used a technique called “pointillism” to create his artwork. We used cotton buds to explore this technique by making colour wheels and umbrellas using the tip of the cotton buds. We focussed really well with this activity and some of us even used dots of different colours to create a desired colour. We are going to look further into this technique during the second half of the summer term and look forward to creating some masterpieces of our own.

As part of our food technology session this week we made some healthy ice lollies. We have been looking at healthy eating and the foods that are good for us and explored how we can make some of our favourite foods healthier. We chopped different fruits and Greek yoghurt to make our ice lollies.

We hope that you have a fantastic half term break and look forward to welcoming pupils back to school on Tuesday 6th June ready for a busy and exciting final half term of Year 7.

What another fantastic week we have had at school, developing our independence and self-help skills.

We are getting increasingly independent when visiting our local community and our confidence is evident when navigating the shop to find the items we need.

During our History sessions we have been learning about the Royal Family. This week we explored what a coronation is and everyone took it in turns to have their own coronation ceremony. We have retained lots of information from the recent coronation of King Charles which is fantastic.

On Wednesday some of us, alongside some pupils from Butterflies class attended an athletics event. It was fantastic to see pupils engage in a variety of activities, developing their physical skills as well as their independence and social skills.

We have been exploring how we all start off as babies and grow into children, young people and adults. This week we explored what we need in order to care for babies and ensure they are happy and healthy when growing up.

During our cooking session this week we made some healthy pizzas using tortilla wraps as the base. We chopped our peppers and tomatoes into slices before choosing the toppings for our pizzas. Of course the best part was the tasting!

Given that our topic is “Exploring Our Waters” we have been learning about rivers as part of our Geography sessions. This week we made our own rivers using tin foil and soil for the river banks. We watched the water flow down the river we had made whilst discussing what we might find in the river.

Next week is our last week in school before our May half term break. We will continue to explore our topic “Exploring Our Waters” whilst looking at the water cycle in more depth.

We are also looking forward to welcoming you to our swimming session on Friday morning for our sports showcase event 🏊‍♀️ 💦

This week we have been reading the story Once Upon a Raindrop and exploring the journey that our water takes.

As part of our Science work this week we have been looking at living things and their habitats. We have been exploring the animals that live under the sea and those that live in different habitats, working to sort these according to where they live. We explored some underwater creatures in our sensory trays and enjoyed naming the animals we found.

We visited Tesco this week to buy our cooking ingredients. Again, we followed our shopping list and navigated the aisles looking for the things we needed. We are learning to look up at the signs overhead for clues about where the ingredients we need might be. Next week we will be making healthy pizzas – I wonder what we will use to make our pizzas this week?

During our cooking session this week it was our Yellow Group’s turn to make a pasta salad for the group. We followed the recipe well and practiced our safe cutting skills whilst chopping the vegetables. Meanwhile, our Blue Group were exploring how we can stay healthy by eating healthy foods. We sorted the foods into healthy and unhealthy and discussed the importance of eating a balanced diet.

Thank you so much for all the lovely baby pictures sent in over the past couple of weeks – it has been lovely to see how we have all changed over the years and seeing if we can guess who the babies are as part of our PSHE sessions. We will repeat this game next week but this time we will be guessing who the adults are as well!

Next week we will carry on with our story Once Upon a Raindrop as part of our English sessions and we will be learning sounds “k” and “ow” as part of our phonics lessons. In maths we will be continue to explore 2D shape and their properties and begin to introduce some elements of symmetry in our Yellow Group.

Our community visit will return to a Monday next week 🏬 🚌

We have had a fantastic week this week celebrating and preparing for the Kings Coronation this weekend 👑 We have made paper chains, bunting and designed our very own coronation flags ready for the occasion. We also designed our own crowns using paint and sequins. In preparation for our cake competition we designed our own class cake as well as our own cupcakes which were judged in class. The winner within the class was Bella for her fantastic cake design including a cut out of a dog that she had chosen specifically. Across the school our friends in Robins class won the cake competition and we are very pleased for them.

Whilst out in the community this week we went searching for our cooking ingredients. We were making a very healthy pasta salad this week and we were all able to successfully locate the ingredients and pack our items away.

Today we had a Royal get together alongside our friends with Rushall Young Voices Choir. We have been practicing our songs “Proud” and “A Message for the King” for some weeks now and we were finally able to showcase our hard work. We sang alongside our friends from Rushall school and all did fantastic singing and signing – well done to all involved!

This afternoon we had a Royal tea party in our garden area where we were able to enjoy the sunshine, games and party food before the rain started.

Thank you so much for all the baby photographs we have received so far – there is still time to send any more in if you haven’t managed to do this yet 👶

Don’t forget that our community visit will be taking place on Tuesday next week as school will be closed for the bank holiday on Monday.

We hope you have a fantastic long weekend whatever you may be up to and we look forward to welcoming the pupils back to school on Tuesday.