Duke of Edinburgh success

On the 27th of April I joined Sean and his family at the annual Duke of Edinburgh Awards Presentation Ceremony. The event is an opportunity for all the young people in West Berkshire who have completed an award to come together and celebrate. Mr James Puxley DL (Her Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of the Royal County of Berkshire) was the guest speaker and presented all of the Gold awards. Sean was presented his award by The Mayor of Newbury, Jo Day. We are all so proud of Sean and also Ashley, Bruno and Haddon who also gained their Bronze award but were unable to attend the celebration event.

James Whybra (Assistant Headteacher)

 

Sean being presented with his award by The Mayor of Newbury

Collaborative Collage

This wonderful inspirational picture, displays the self-collages which some of the pupils made during our Friday afternoon Inclusion For Learning sessions - ’Let me be creative’

The group consisted of pupils rom Foundation Stage and Key Stages 3 and 4.

During the 9 weeks it took to complete, the pupils worked independently, in pairs and as a whole group.

We spoke to the children about what the school means to them.  The answers included; friendships, being happy and helping each other.

We started by the pupils looking at their own reflections and smiling into a mirror, followed by a self-portrait picture. Next, they teamed up into pairs and helped each other to draw around themselves.  Over the next few weeks, the pupils chose their materials and colours to personalise their collage work.

We then spoke about our surroundings and the pupils said “trees, flowers, birds and they all said rabbits and moles, lots of moles!!”

I think we can all agree that this work needs to be celebrated and seen by all who attend and visit our school.

Fantastic trip to Marwell

This week students in the Primary House visited Marwell Zoo. The weather could not have been better and they had a wonderful day. Here are two quotes from pupils who went:

"We saw penguins. We saw giraffes. One not have a tale. We saw hippos playing with a ball in the water" - Duncan

"My favourite thing was the hippos" - Jensen

Here are some picture form their wonderful day out:

Terrific Trike!

On Wednesday this week we celebrated getting our new fully accessible trike at our Nursery. The trike is a technical marvel and is very expensive, but thanks to the lovely people at The Spring Charity and their financial support we have been able to get one. This amazing piece of equipment will enable all our young learners to experience the benefits of cycling whatever their abilities. These are photos from the handover celebration:

Jon singing "The Wheels on The Bus" to get Molly in the mood for cycling! 

 The wonderful folk form The Spring Charity with Molly on the trike

 

Molly after completing her lap of the nursery playground

 

 

I would like to say a huge thank you to all the guys at The Spring Charity, especially Jane Wells, for this most generous gift - something that will make a huge difference to the lives of our students at The Castle Nursery.

Welcome back

I would like to warmly welcome back all our wonderful pupils to the start of the summer term. It is lovely to return to such wonderful weather.

As you will know, this term is very short ( we break up on Friday 22nd May 2015) and we have lots of exciting things happening, not least starting work on our whole school performance which will be performed in July.

We will keep you up to speed with lots of exciting news throughout the term so please keep checking out the website for new content.

I hope everyone has a lovely term.

Jon Hewitt
Headteacher

Enjoy your Easter

After a very busy term we wish all our students a wonderful holiday. As always the staff and students have worked immensely hard this term. We are very excited to see what wonderful things our students get up to in the summer term.

In the meantime, here are some key dates:

Sports Week - W/B Monday 5th May 2015

Primary Sports Afternoon - Tuesday 6th May 2015

Secondary Sports Morning - Thursday 8th May 2015

Open Day - Thursday 21st May 2015


Have a good Easter and we look forward to seeing our students back on Monday 20th April 2015.

Thanks,

Jon Hewitt

Easter gifts galore!

The wonderful people at  the Diamond Enablement Team at Greenham Park have been busily making Easter gifts for our Nursery and Richmond pupils. These gifts were overwhelming in their generosity. Our pupils enjoyed cakes, Easter eggs, Easter gifts and a sensory garden in a box! We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to the team at Diamond. Click here to find out more about what they do.