Willowbank School, KilmarnockWe all had a fabulous time at our annual Burns Supper this year.
Special thank you to Sean Good (Beech), Blake Milligan and Jack Hughes (Oak) and Patrick McCready for their fantastic reading, speaking and signing during our readings.
Another special “well done” to the Transition boys who helped to serve our meal!
Here are just a small selection of our favourite photo’s from the afternoon, where we were all very effective contributors.
Sean and Skye completed an obstacle course this week as part of our SQA unit on communications skills. Sean and Skye had to listen carefully to instructions from staff at each station and respond appropriately. At first, both pupils needed physical support at each station to follow the instruction but after a few times round the course Sean and Skye began to use their initiative to try each station independently with only verbal prompts. Well done, guys! Two successful learners!
The Beech pupils were responsible citizens this week as we made a shopping list for our Burns Supper and took a trip on the public bus to Asda!
The pupils took turns to find an item on the list using the signs and symbols around us to help us. We then checked each item off our list and used a self-service check-out to pay for our items. Staff were very impressed with the our young people’s independence!
Our Prom 2020 committee was hard at work this morning getting prepared for our special event in June. Ethan and Hayden were creating personalised placemats, Milly and Oliver were helping to create a shopping list of decorations and the girls were busy making some of our own decorations!
We were effective contributors as we all took on special roles and responsibilities.
The Beech class have been working on different communication skills this week. Sean and Skye worked on their listening and responding skills by completing a sensory cookery session using picture prompts to help follow instructions.
We also worked as a class to explore and identify the different signs and symbols around our school and decide what the signs were telling us to do or think about and how we would respond. We were very responsible citizens when thinking about the safety signs especially.
“The Beech class have enjoyed organising and preparing for our annual Burns event this year! W£e helped to make the menu’s, programmes and some of the decorations. We have been successful learners as we learned about the life of Robert Burns and explored his poetry through song. We have created a giant, sensory red rose, to commemorate the poem “A Red, Red Rose”.
The Beech class loved numeracy time this week! We confidently explored number and number processes through a variety of games and activities while working with a partner.
We played giant snap!
We played giant dominoes
We fished for number ducks and used the numbers to practise number recognition and matching or adding the two numbers from two ducks together!
Gemma worked hard on her addition skills.
We all practised using numbers and mathematical language by playing a ‘counting machine’ game.
The Beech class have had a very Scottish themed week as we begin preparations for our annual Burns Supper!
We started of the week learning some Scottish words, we had to listen carefully to the Scottish words and found the image to match the sound!
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We then listened to some body parts spoen in Scottish slang and had to match them to the body of ‘Oor Wullie!’ 
Later on in the week we made our very own Scots Broth! We were very responsible citizens making sure to be healthy and hygienic throughout the food preparation stage and then used different bits of equipment to peel and chop our vegetables.
Here are some of our favourite snaps from Christmas 2019! We have had a blast and been responsible citizens and confident individuals by embracing all experiences offered to us.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Christmas Jumper Day 2019
Knitting stocking gifts!
Meeting Santa (mid-rehearsal!) 
Designing ginger bread houses!
Meeting Santa (take two!) 
We made snow globe ornaments to take home as well as salt dough decorations and melting snowmen biscuits!
We all took part in circle time this week which had a communication focus.
We played games which required us to listen carefully to instructions, respond appropriately and deliver communications to others. We played charades, ‘Apples and Bananas’, parachute counting games and a games called ‘spider web’ where we had to pass a ball of string to each other but holding onto our own piece and use verbal communication or signs to indicate who we want to pass the string to. We then had to listen carefully to each other as we tried to untangle ourselves! We were effective contributors as we all took part in every game!
