This term in Lammermuir we have been busy celebrating lots of different events – From Children in Need to St Andrew’s day, World Children’s Day to Christmas. We have taken part in cooking and baking activities, arts and crafts activities and some relaxing activities.
We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year!
From everyone in Lammermuir
Another year and another term over just like that!
What another wonderful term with the children of Ochiltree. We have been a busy bunch being involved with whole school events, Asdan challenges, Learning for Sustainability activities and having lots of fun!
We are so glad we invited our friends to join us for our St Andrews Day Ceilidh and we had a blast! We have continued to go outside in all weathers to make use of the Drive Deck, the playground and also the environment – nothing puts this lot off!
We are continuing to develop our independent skills during cooking activities, class jobs and our communication challenges throughout our school day and we have been lucky to add horseriding to the list too!
From all in Ochiltree have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and we look forward to seeing you all again next year!
Progress so far!
As you will be able to tell we are delighted with our new school and the amazing resources that we have access to. As part of our school, improvement plan this year we are working to maximise the use of these different areas and resources ensuring all pupils are safe, included and achieving. The outdoor space is fantastic and we have been making great use of all areas to learn through play and exploration. Staff have been trained in the use of our new Drive Deck which allows our wheelchair pupils to independently travel round the garden using a switch. We plan to explore how to make use of this within the school next. The multi-sensory room is being used to great effect, with pupils being immersed in different exciting stories and able to explore the images and lights with their bodies and through switch use. Pupils are also enjoying regular rebound sessions supported by trained staff and attending regular art, cooking and messy play sessions in our new art and cooking space. Staff are working hard to develop new and innovative ways to use the life skills technology to allow our children to control their environment.
After the October week’s break, we will be starting up with our swimming and horse riding sessions. We will also be starting to use our hydrotherapy pool which is very exciting. We are working alongside one of our physiotherapists to ensure the benefits of this therapy can be maximised for each individual.
We have started working on the communication section of our new life skills framework. We asked our teachers to describe their thoughts (in three words) on this new curricular framework:
I will keep you informed of further progress throughout the rest of this year. It was lovely to see those of you who were able to make it along to the café this morning and look forward to seeing you at events across the year.
Have a lovely October week.
Debbie Green
Acting HT
What an exciting first term we have had in our new school. Everyone has had great fun exploring all the new areas of our school. The garden has been a particular favourite with all the children and they have enjoyed making full use of all the new equipment. Everything is so accessible for all the children. Another favourite of the children has been the multi-sensory room, it’s been a favourite of the staff as well with the ability to either a calming environment or a more interactive space where children can move around frequently to pop bubbles or squash ants!
Have fun looking through some of our photos of us enjoying our new school.
Well that was certainly a VERY busy and fast first term in our new school!
We have some new pupil and adult faces in Team Pentland this year and have been enjoying making friends and getting to know each other better.
Team Pentland this year:
Class Teacher – Louise
Advanced Pupil Support Workers – Alison, Caroline, Julie, Linda & Louise (yes, 2 Louises!)
Our pupils
We also have Linda (yes, another one!) for art, Gordon for music and Catherine for drama
Here are some of our highlights…
We have also been busy creating our Class Charter and Global Goals displays…
Hope everyone has a fun and well deserved holiday.
October already!!!
We cannot believe how quickly the first term has passed – and how much we have squeezed into the time we have had!
Of course much of it was getting to know our new school and environment- and we are loving it. We have been so lucky to get to experience so much outside with the weather on our side. The children are experiencing all the wonderful playground resources as well as the natural environment and of course the bikes and wheelchair track. We have also been busy doing some Autumn gardening and hopefully we will have lovely blooms in the spring to bring some colour to our class garden areas.
Moving inside and we have been trying out all the lovely new equipment and areas around the school – a favourite being the multi-sensory!
We have all been working hard on our life skills and Asdan qualifications through fun and meaningful activities. We are enjoying lots of interaction with the senior class and utilising our secondary area for getting together for snack, dinner and cross class activities.
We will continue to keep you updated in all we do through our Learners Journals but don’t forget to check Twitter and the Blog for whole school updates.
We wish you a happy holiday and look forward to continuing into the next term with new challenges ahead.
Ochiltree Class of 22/23 have had a very busy, fun and challenging year and all the children have given it their all to be confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective contributors and successful learners.
For our last term we continued the theme of working hard and playing hard. For the walking month of May we went on our daily walks enjoying different sensory experiences of the different areas we visited. We also physically challenged ourselves to walk in/on different areas we would have avoided!
We were able to complete our Asdan, SQA and Duke of Edinburgh work of which I am sure we will get positive feedback for.
Our cross class activities were brilliant this year and all enjoyed each others company and interacting with each other for all the different activities such as assembly or outdoor play.
We have had lots of health and wellbeing activities from bike riding to mindfulness, gardening to rebound and boys/girls group for personal care. Some of the pupils also participated in a health group which was amazing! showing their resilience and bravery for accepting medical routines.
We have continued to have an effective whole school and community approach to Learning for Sustainability weaving together global citizenship, sustainable development education and outdoor learning to create coherent, rewarding and transformative learning experiences such as Earth Day, Fairtrade Tuck, gardening, outdoor numeracy activities, forest trails, walks and Eco activities.
We will be saying goodbye to our friend Duncan who will be moving on with best wishes from us all. We will all be saying goodbye to our building but look forward to new beginnings.
Have a fantastic holiday and see you all again for 2023/24!
