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Pentland Term 2

It’s been another very busy and fast term in Pentland!

Our highlight was hosting the Children in Need café. We hope you agree that we did an amazing job, raising over £1000! On the day we all had important jobs to do from greeting all the guests to selling raffle tickets to manning our stalls and activities. We had lots of fun and it was great to see sooooooooo many people supporting us!!!

We also had fun celebrating Halloween through pumpkin sensory play and drama games, going on an adventure with Oily Cart, being silly with the Clown Doctors and getting messy in messy play!

Of course there has been some serious hard work too! Developing our cooking and art skills, working on our understanding of cause & effect, and practising our number and counting skills.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Debbie Green (Acting HT)

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

 

Music Term 1

This term we have had fun settling into our new space in Music. Some of the lessons, the1-1  and small group sessions have taken place in the new GP room while other lessons have been taking place in the classrooms.

Lammermuir have sociably been joining Hopetoun in their classroom and have had fun choosing nursery rhymes to sing together. Lomond and Glendevon had more relaxed afternoon lessons to meet the children’s needs at that time of the day.

Pentland used the giant scrunchie to sing about The Great Big Turnip at the Bottom of the field and it became a big favourite. Tommy and Matthew found it hilarious when the different characters shouted for help and that the mouse had the biggest muscles.

All of the Primary classes also enjoyed the The Wheels on the Bus. This turned into something bigger, with everyone taking turns choosing  the different things that are on the bus from a range of choices on cards. The result was like a different remix of the song each time as the order kept changing.

As we approached Scarecrow Festival time, all of the Primary classes of course enjoyed singing the old favourite Dingle Dangle Scarecrow.

In Secondary, the groups focused on playing tuned percussion instruments to rock backing tracks and there has been lots of interaction and engagement, which bodes well as we head into a musical project together. More will be revealed in due course!

Pentland Term 1

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.

Ochiltree Term 1

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.

Term 1 in Hopetoun

What a fabulous first term we have had in Hopetoun! We’ve been so busy exploring our amazing new school and have especially enjoyed being out in our incredible garden where there is so much to do. We’ve also had lots of lovely new experiences indoors using our new sensory room, soft play, the drama/music room and the art room. It was lovely having you all come to visit and am sure you all think it’s as amazing as we do!

Team Hopetoun wish you all a lovely October break and look forward to all the exciting things that are to come next term. We hope you enjoy our video showing some of the fun we have been having…..

Pentland Term 4

Well folks, it’s nearly the end of another term as well as the end of the school year and our time in the old Beatlie School campus!

It’s been another fun and busy term with lots of activities and we have put together a short video of our 2 favourites…

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy summer 🌞, hopefully we’ll see lots of you at the Beatlie Bash on Friday 🥳 and then it’ll be time for lots of new adventures in our amazing new school! 😊

Team Pentland 💚

Ochiltree Class of 22/23

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!

Term 4 in Hopetoun

We can’t quite believe that we already find ourselves approaching the end of the school year, how time flies when you’re having fun!! It’s been a year full of adventures, experiences and fun in Hopetoun and there’s lots more in store for when we move into to our fabulous new campus after the holidays.

This term we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy lots of outdoor experiences in the sunshine including taking on a whole school walking challenge for the month of May which we smashed! We’ve been practicing lots of useful skills so hopefully there are some helping hands with jobs around the house and we rounded off the term with a trip to 5 Sisters Zoo.

We hope you enjoy looking at our photos and we wish everyone a happy and healthy summer.

Team Hopetoun 💙