Great Oaks Weekly Friday 18th January 2019

Celebrating the successes, providing advice and guidance and

highlighting what’s coming up in the Great Oaks Community

English week

21st – 25th January

English week dress-up day Thursday 24th January Parents / Carers Coffee Morning Friday 25th January 10.15 – 11.30 INSET Day Monday 28th January – School closed to pupils RE Day – Change Tuesday 29th January Half-term 15th – 22nd February Rock challenge Tuesday 5th March End of Term Friday 29th March

Coming up This term

In preparation for our English week starting on Monday we have been thinking about books this week. Pupils across school have been choosing, writing about, and in some cases, dressing up as characters from their favourite books. In Assembly on Wednesday 11VK showed us and got us to join in with the evolution of books from the early drawings on cave walls to writing on parchment through to using wax to make marks and the development of paper making. They also told us about some of their favourite books.

Next week will be English Week. The theme for this year is Sci-Fi. Pupils will be discussing and writing about their favourite Sci-Fi books and characters. We will also be investigating mysterious unexplained events happening around the school.. Please check Class Dojo for further details.

Books

Thursday 24th January will be a Sci-Fi themed fancy dress day for English Week. Your child could dress as a robot, an astronaut or an alien for example. There will be prizes in assembly for the best costumes!

Parent / Carer Coffee

Morning

English

week

Next Friday 10.15 – 11.30

We will be looking at the subject of anxiety this time. All welcome

Great Oaks College

Great Oaks College has a new public Facebook page where they will be publishing information about what is going on in Post 16 and pictures and reports of learning in the College. It is easy to find on Facebook but if you want to know more contact Jo Allen (Deputy Head Post 16)

Sea City Visit

Year 10s visited the Titanic exhibition at seaCity Museum this week as part of their AQA coursework looking at ships and the history of Southampton The classes did a great job finding out about different facts about the ship including following the story of Mr Walther Fredericks a relative of a teacher at the school.. We also discovered Melissa Parker really seems to fit the bill when trying to look like a maid from the 1910s!

Peer to Peer visit

The 8 special schools in Southampton have been working together over the past few years sending colleagues into each other’s school to help us review our provision and provide support and challenge to each other. This week we were visited by Nell (Head of the Hospital School), Lisa (Head of school at Springwell), Ben (Deputy Head at Polygon). They met with groups of Governors, staff, parents and stakeholders. Thank you to all of those who met with them and for your positive comments and constructive ideas. One of their highlights of the day was a visit to the Student Council who had some great insights into the school and what they liked and what could be improved.

A few of our favourite books To celebrate our book week we have been quizzing pupils about some of their favourite books: Brandon in Year 8 likes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because he really likes chocolate. Adam in Year 9s favourite book is Dragonlogy because he likes anything to do with Dragons Charlie in Year 7 likes Pop-up books because they show what is happening if you find it hard to read

Sara in Year 10 likes True crime novels because she likes to guess who done it.

Ben in Year 7 is a Harry Potter Fan and particularly like the prequels like Fantastic Beasts Luke in Year 8 has loved Billionaire Boy ever since he went to see it at the Theatre Billy in Year 10 doesn’t read many books but does like the Argos catalogue as he likes buying things

Christopher in Year 8 likes Blob because it is really funny and makes him laugh