We have had a great week in class, continuing to play and learn outdoors…….

On Wednesday we all enjoyed a sing along around the log fire in our new school yurt, as Amy played some of our favourite songs on her ukulele.  Children chose songs and asked for more as we sat with our class friends.  Aaron sang along using key words to join in while Leen rocked a fabulous dance.  Jacob chose his favourite song while Daniel, Conlan and Basheer calmly enjoyed lying on their beanbags listening to the music play.  Yahya used his new VOCA to make comments.  All of the adults enjoyed the session as much as our children.  Lots of cuddles in such a special setting set us up for a fantastic day.

Aaron loved sitting next to our musician

Our fun outdoors……..

We also celebrated Guy Fawkes on Thursday with a whole school fireworks display. Every class was given a safe place to stay safe with their bubbles to watch and listen to the flashes and bangs.  This is the first time the whole school have been able to come together safely outdoors to have fun as one.  We LOVED sharing this time as a whole school again.  Of course every precaution was taken to keep everyone safe: social distancing remained a priority and each bubble took it in turn to return to class to avoid congestion.  Even mid pandemic, we won’t stop giving our children the best experience at school!

This week’s Friday achiever was a very easy choice this week.  Our Leen shared A FIRST in school.  We love to celebrate first times in class and this week was a terrific example.  In the middle of one of her favourite activities, Leen made a request.  She asked for more! While blowing bubbles with Amy, during a pause she leaned forward and touched the more symbol on her core vocabulary board.  We were amazed by this super girl’s progress.  Wow.  She is already beginning to transfer this skill, using other favourite activities. Well done Leen.  We are so proud of you.

تطلب Leen المزيد من النشاط باستخدام رمز. نحن فخورون جدا لها

Have a super weekend everyone.

Stay safe.

WWOOOOOHOOOOOOOO….We’ve  made it to the last week in this half term!  A huge thanks to all parents for your continued support during these unusual times.  Our priority in school has been to ensure the transition to new ‘normal’ routines were as seamless as possible to keep our precious children happy and healthy.  I hope you agree this has been a team effort between home and school.  What a fantastic week to end on……… we certainly ended the half term with a bang.

We celebrated harvest festival in a special virtual assembly on Wednesday.  Thank you all so much for your kind donations for the local food bank.  We were so  proud to be able to support our local community with your help.  We sang harvest songs which are very popular in our class.  After our harvest rock and roll, each class shared with school some photographs showing what they’ve been up to this autumn half term.  We were very proud to show school our outdoor learning sessions, sensory art and our pumpkin exploration.  Here are the photos we shared in our Harvest assembly….

This week our play space theme has been Halloween.  We had lots of spooky fun exploring pumpkins, enjoying sensory play with eye-balls, dressing up as witches and skeletons and exploring our very own DANGER  area filled with boxes of scary    goodies.  Today we had fun dressing up and painting faces in class.  There were lots of scary Halloween faces as we partied the morning away.

We hope you all have a very safe and happy half term holiday and look forward to seeing you all back at school on Monday 2nd November.

OOOOhhhhhhh we all need some lovely celebratory news in these strange times and we are just the class to share some!! What a bunch of stars we have in our class.  Each and everyday our children continue to amaze us with their hard work.  We work hard and play hard in Loveday’s class.

We have lots to tell you about.  First of all well done to Daniel for receiving our achievement certificate in assembly last Friday.  The award was for his amazing engagement and exploration during our jabadao sessions.  Daniel has made so much progress in these movement sessions.  He independently shows lots of interest  in both apparatus and in his friends who play alongside him.  The whole school watched on zoom as he was presented by Mr Rollings with his certificate and awarded an extra playtime in the early years outdoor music area.  This week our star was Jacob….. we all celebrated his fantastic work during his reading sessions.  We showed the whole school a lovely video of our Jacob’s enthusiasm and interest in letters, sounds and beginning to work on sight words in our zoom assembly today.  Jacob’s treat was a choice of dressing up outfits.  He was so proud of himself he even gave us all a bow!! Well done Jacob.

We’ve had a special birthday in class  this week.  Our Yahya hit double digits on Tuesday.  10 years old!! We had a great afternoon enjoying the lovely chocolate cake sent in from home.  We also had fun with the mini water pistols he brought in to share with his friends.  This prompted a water fight in class,  everyone joined in.  Children and adults squirted each other and found places to hide from the wet firing line.  We all enjoyed a boogie to finish the party afternoon off.  Yahya had fun and so did his friends.  Our Theresa also celebrated her birthday today in class.  We enjoyed ANOTHER cake and a dance with our friends.

We have outdoor learning sessions everyday.  We have so many great spaces around school to support our learning.  It is even more essential to use the outdoors at the minute to keep our children happy and healthy in the fresh air.  This week has been no different in class.   We have explored the water wall and mud kitchen, the secret garden with its wonderful music wall.  We have enjoyed outdoor drumming on the decking area and explored the early years playground.  Outdoor learning is very popular in our class.  All of our children love to be outdoors.  This week it rained lots.  This meant we got to don our waterproofs and splash in the puddles!!

A huge welcome back to our Aaron.  He returned to school on Monday after his operation.  Our wonderful boy has not been in the building since March!  He came back very happy and very calm.  It was lovely to see his beaming smile again as he came back into class.  All of his friends in class were pleased to see him too.  Even with both of his legs in cast he is accessing a range of fun activities.  His favourite this week was singing along to our outdoor drumming session.   We are so proud of you.  Mr Rollings is proud too as he gave Aaron one of his special medals in assembly!! Well done Aaron.

Basheer always finds a place where the sun shines most

Leen exploring the outdoors

Playing together

Lacey loves to work in the green house

Conlan loves to play throw and catch

Yahya loves the secret garden

Look at that beautiful smile, Fatima

Aaron making music and being happy back at school

Jacob matching and naming shapes

Daniel making music

Have a wonderful weekend everyone. Stay safe.

This week we celebrated a very special friend’s birthday in class.  Our Conlan turned 11!! We celebrated with a wonderful Colin the Caterpillar birthday cake.  Thank you very much to Conlan’s parents for sending the delicious chocolate treat in to share with his friends.  We all enjoyed  a party with music and dancing.  Conlan was also treated to a look at Newcastle buses on the smart board.  This is his favourite thing to watch.  All of his friends loved it too.

Happy birthday to you

This week was also the first week the hydro pool has been open since we came back to school in September.  Daniel was the first to try out hydro .  He was super excited.  Some other children may get the chance to go in the pool soon, but as you can imagine, nothing’s quite as simple as it once was!

We pride ourselves at Hadrian in our total communication approach.  Children are immersed in opportunities to communicate in their own way, on their own communication pathway. This could be facial expression, eye contact, gesture, Makaton signing, symbols, a communication aid and speech.  We’d like to share some examples of what this looks like in our class in this week’s blog.  We use what really makes our children engaged and enthusiastic to plan activities which encourage children to make requests or comment, using whichever form of communication works for them.

In class all adults wear a board with core vocabulary on to support children who are on a symbol pathway   Adults model how to request use it, for example ‘more’ or say ‘stop’ by touching the corresponding symbol.  Boards have as many choices on appropriate to  each child.  Many children in our class are working between a 2,4,6 and 16 core vocabulary symbols.  Our children use the symbols brilliantly.  Here are a few examples of the symbols being used in sessions throughout the day.

Yahya has been  very successful using his core vocabulary.  He is about to begin to try out his  own VOCA (voice output communication aid).   This is a new device for Yahya .  He loved his first exploration of it.  We’ll see how he gets on in future weeks.  Well done Yahya.

Every Friday we enjoy a zoom assembly in class.  We want to celebrate our children’s achievements with the school, especially in these uncertain times.  Phil did a great job this morning of co-ordinating everyone’s achievements and giving us all an insight into what wonderful work is going on in other classes.  Our Leen was celebrated in our class. She has been super engaged this week.  Showing us her engagement through stomping in puddles, exploring using her hands and smiling and giggling at favourite activities.

كانت لين سعيدة للغاية في المدرسة. تبتسم كثيرا. إنها تجعل جميع المعلمين سعداء أيضًا. نحن نحب وجودها في المدرسة.

Have a lovely weekend friends.

Stay safe

See you all bright and early for more fun on Monday

We thought you’d like to look at what we have been up to in our exploration this week.  We’ve had fun splashing in the rain.  We are so lucky to have such a wonderful amount of outdoor resources at Hadrian.  We all donned our water proofs and enjoyed the rain.  It very important to us to keep children healthy and happy.  Outdoor play is always popular in our class. It may look like lots of play……thats the trick to happy learning.  We use these sessions to work on children’s individual targets.  We use great motivating activities to allow children to want ‘more’ and make requests using their communication boards.  Look at those smiles!

We have also enjoyed time in our playspace this week.  For those of you unfamiliar with our play space, we use our joined classroom as a purposeful space set up to encourage play and exploration.  We have 4 areas which are changed weekly.  This week we loved the small world farm area.  Lots of children were keen to explore the different animals.  The malleable area was also popular…….who else would love to play with rainbow spaghetti?

Finally, we all worked hard on our physical targets this week in Jabadao.  Look at the photo of our Lacy balancing along the beam! Well done Lacey.

A huge well done to our stars this week.  Conlan was awarded a certificate in assembly for his physical skills this week.  He has been walking independently around school and even climbed the steps in soft play ALL BY HIMSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME.  Well done Conlan.

Our Yahya was awarded one of our head teachers special medals for using his voice during play space this week.  Well done boys.   We are very proud of you.

Rain doesn’t stop our outdoor fun!

Working together with our friends

Look at that happy face Dan!!

Exploration in our play space

Fatima loved our rainbow spaghetti

Jacob knew all of the farm animals

Oink oink. Moo moo

WWWOOOOOOAAA we love to balance in jabadao

Go Lacey go

Leen was initially hesitant exploring our rainbow spaghetti

She soon realised how much fun it was

Sensory art was great fun this week

Yahya loved the small world farm play area

Singing in the rain

Have a super weekend. Stay safe

Our second week back brought us another September summer.  This provided lots of time to learn outdoors.  We have a wealth of amazing outdoor spaces around Hadrian, so we spent this week taking advantage of the great weather.  We explored the water wall and mud kitchen. We used this time to see what motivated each of our children to play.  We loved seeing how engaged everybody was.  Every child explored with their adult co-explorer, using communication boards to ask for more.  We had fun splashing each other.  Children found it hilarious when adults were targeted with hoses.

We used our yurt this week too.  It provided the perfect outdoor shelter for some massage in front of the log burning stove.  We created a calm and relaxed atmosphere to support children to enjoy a massage, independently choosing which parts of their body was next.  This was a great way to explore parts of the body while communicating and supporting positive relationships with children and adults.

We look forward to more outdoor learning in the weeks ahead.  We hope you all have a great weekend.

Stay safe.

See you all again on Monday.

Massage in the yurt with Amy, Leen and Fatima

Conlan loved playing in the mud kitchen

Massage with Dan and Theresa

Fatima loved water-play

Jacob found a different way to make a sound using the boom whackers during outdoor music

Mud kitchen fun

Lacey enjoyed massage, choosing her back and head consistently

Lacey loved massage with Loveday

Leen loved our time in the yurt

Yahya was so engaged and relaxed during massage with Toni