This week the main focus of the blog for Springboard will be on Maths lessons and the cultural capital that students are experiencing at Springboard Project.

Over this half term, in Maths, the students have been focusing on developing their skills around time, including reading time (12 hour and 24 hour), finding differences in time and building towards planning their own journey using time skills. This has helped the students build on skills that can be taken out of the classroom and used in work and everyday life. In the most recent lessons the students have been working on developing their problem solving skills.

Each day this week the students have been given a different problem of the day (based on skills we have been developing across the year) and they have been given a time limit to solve these problems. Students have worked in different ways to solve these; some have used mental arithmetic, some have used manipulatives to aid their learning, others have used the bar method to break questions down. It has been really interesting to watch the students work in their own ways breaking these problems down; as the week went on students became more comfortable approaching these problems with each other.

Another part of the Springboard curriculum is for the students to develop their cultural capital and we are approaching this through completion of the Oldham Passport. This week’s activity has been based around community activity, the students have been producing packages for the homeless to help support them. They used money that they have raised in their tuck shop to purchase food and toiletries that were used in the packs.

Here is a write up from one of our students explaining what they have done:

‘Today our class has gone to get some food, dog biscuits, toiletries and much more to the give to the homeless people to help them be happier and feel loved .

We are going to buy it and pack it all up individually into separate bags and deliver round the town centre of Oldham.

We are trying to give back and help our community in there needs of time. We hope they feel grateful off our kindness.

The way we are doing it is in 2 group’s of 4 students in each group and going to different shop’s around Oldham to find the correct items.

We hope we can Motivate other people in the community and to support the homeless people.
And we hope the Oldham council can help the homeless people to find homes to live in.’

We are aware that the current situation with the COVID-19 virus is very worrying for parents and carers. We would like to reassure you that we are monitoring developments closely and we continue to follow the latest official guidance to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep our young people safe. Please see the update on our website here for more details and advice – we will be keeping this page updated daily from Monday (at 2.30pm) and we will inform you of any developments.

Have a good weekend,

Mr Ward

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