<p>Autumn Newsletter 2017</p><p>Dear Parents and Carers,</p><p>It was lovely to see all the pupils back after the summer holidays and hear all about what they had been doing during the break. All the pupils have settled in quickly and have made a great start to the new curriculum topic. Our overall topic this term is ‘Roald Dahl’. Within this topic we will be learning about the stories and illustrations of some classic childhood literature including The BFG, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and George’s Marvellous Medicine. On Monday mornings students will be engaging in a range of community visits including visiting the Alan Shearer centre and local soft play. Our VI students will be completing a mobility program on Monday afternoons practicing cane work, directional cues and functional life skills. Pupils will continue their individual swimming programmes on Tuesday afternoons. Pupils will continue to do lots of other community based learning, including numeracy and communication. These sessions allow us to access and be part of our local community, whilst transferring the communication and numeracy skills that we are learning in school into functional settings. We will be visiting a range of locations with historical interest in the Newcastle area during humanities. We will be learning about different ways historical information can be presented and documented. This year we will be taking part in Forest School sessions on Tuesdays. Forest School association describes it as “an inspirational process that offers ALL learners regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a natural environment”. Forest School will be running regardless of the weather to allow the children to explore the natural environment throughout the different seasons and weather conditions. We will be able to provide waterproofs for children to wear, however if they have any wellies at home you can send in this will be beneficial. Please also ensure children have appropriate warm clothing and a change of clothes in school as we may be getting dirty! We will also be developing life skills, such as independence in food preparation, in our weekly food technology lesson. Our focus this term will be on making foods which feature in Roald Dahl books including snozzcumbers from the BFG and wormy spaghetti from The Twits. In art we will be exploring a range of painting techniques, sensory art styles, colours, fabrics and textures, all with a link to Quentin Blake’s illustrations of Roald Dahl books and in science curriculum we will be investigating different states of matter, investigating the properties of solids, liquids and gases and changes between different states including freezing, melting and evaporation. We are very excited about term ahead and look forward to seeing the students’ progress throughout the curriculum. If you have any further questions you would like to discuss please don’t hesitate to give me a call. Peter and the class team. </p>