End-of-term-itis is not a myth - the last week of a half term comes with a rush of deadlines, assessments, administration and the like. Factoring in the general fatigue of staff and students alike after six weeks of hard work and the promise of a week off seems all the more wonderful. It is of course preferable for all if we can come back refreshed and work at our best! And so here we are - ready to go again!
Having some of our sixth formers mentor our pupils during morning registrations has been a big success, with pupils showing great enthusiasm and one making sure her mentor is provided with a mug of water from the staff room each session in thanks. Now that the unofficial trial period is over, we are looking at ways to add structure to these sessions to make the most of the time we have. We will start planting seeds in the new half term and nurturing some sweet peas, which the children will be recording in video diaries using our iPads. Travel Safe continues to garner a positive response, and hopefully this term we will see the return of the travel safe dog in SCALI. Last academic year this was - understandably - one of the most popular sessions in which everyone (staff included!) had the chance to stroke a furry friend while learning about when and how to approach pets in public. Halloween is as good a time as any for some creative output from our students, and out year 7s and 8s have made some excellent paper pumpkins with their own designs on them, and also some 3D paper witches. We like to make the most of festivities, and the second half of the autumn turn is the best time of year, given Halloween, Guy Fawkes’ Night and of course, Christmas. Even the best of us need cheering up in the coldest days of the year. Stay tuned for more of what we get up to on the creative front! Tate gardening with Victoria is a popular prospect and we’re all looking forward to watching the progress of sweet pea flowers in our garden area. Hopefully we can add a bit of colour to the winter! All the best, The SCALI Team (2018/9 Post 3, Week 8/39here to edit.
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And just like that, another two weeks pass us by in the blink of an eye, and we’re onto week five of the academic year already. The mornings now have that pinch of coldness to them, and the evenings are starting to darkly draw in. Within school, though, sheltered from the elements as the end of summer fades, we are as busy as ever.
On the subject of this change in the seasons and temperature, we recently took some of our SCALI pupils on an afternoon out. Our Year 7s and 8s went along to Sutcliffe Park as part of our Tate Exchange project. For those of you are who are unaware, Tallis is one of the Tate Exchange Founding Associates, and we are very proud to be so. As an Associate, we plan and deliver various projects for three years. Our current one is based on the theme of “Movement”, and SCALI are happy to be getting involved. At the park, they looked at movement in nature. Students were able to make pressing of leaves and trees using chalk and get creative! They enjoyed this a lot, and they’ll be more trips to follow. Travel Safe is now in full swing. This involves students being taught how to navigate public transport and routes safely. We have an external company come in to deliver this professionally, and it’s proved very successful in recent years. We know it’s working well this year because on the way to the park, our students crossed the roads and used the traffic light crossing very sensibly, so well done! We have more plans for the upcoming months to go out into the wider community with our pupils to do further Travel Safe work. On not such a high note, however, is the fact that illness has hit us – both staff and students alike. It’s that time of year – the weather is colder, we’ve all come back together again after the summer break, and it becomes the perfect environment for illness to become rather popular! We do understand that this can cause anxiety for our students, and we have been understanding of these needs, giving sensory room time-outs when needed and been accommodating to our pupils when they have felt under the weather. We all know ourselves what it is like to work when ill, after all. Hopefully everyone will feel much better soon, fingers crossed. In our first post of the year, we introduced the lovely Angela, our latest staff member, and Charlie and Adam, our brilliant new Year 7 pupils. Since then, we’ve been joined by Dylan – he’s new to Year 9, and is settling in well so far. So a quick hello and a warm welcome to him! We hope you enjoy your time with us at Tallis. We’ve also been doing some painting. Some of our pupils have been doing an ‘All About Me’ project, and part of this has been to paint a poster which reflects them. As we’ve been having a little tidy-up and shuffle of our SCALI rooms, we’ve updated the displays – keep an eye out to see some of these paintings! Talking of displays, our one in the corridor is having a re-vamp too – this is to compliment the new ‘Word of the Week’ intuitive that has been introduced at Tallis, and we are bringing this into SCALI. This year, we are going to be looking at how we can bring new vocabulary and the learning of it into the provision. The Word of the Week this week is ‘Establish’. All in all, things are going very well and we’re continuing to have a successful and very busy first half-term of the academic year. If you ever have any questions or queries, then please do not hesitate to get in touch, and we look forward to posting again in two weeks time! All the best, The SCALI Team (2018/9 Post 2, Week 3/39) And just like that, it’s as though somebody had pressed play after six weeks of pause, and we all come back to school filling up the corridors and classroom with learning and laughter, almost as if the summer holidays never really happened.
Despite this, it’s been a busy but happy start to the new academic year. In SCALI, we’ve been joined by some new faces and we must therefore give them both a big welcome– we have the delightful Adam and wonderful Charlie in Year 7. They’ve been part of the Tallis community for almost two weeks now and have settled in well. We also welcome the lovely Angela to the SCALI team – donning brilliantly-coloured hair, Angela has become a true asset to the staff body already, and has been working excellently with the Year 7s. We also said goodbye to our two previous Year 11 pupils, Aaron and Baha, who both did themselves and SCALI very proud in their GCSEs. We continue to wish the pair of them good luck with their futures, and we miss them lots! It’s been a very successful start to the school year for the students within SCALI. We continue to meet the needs of our students through effective interventions at KS3, which include social skills, an emotional literacy programme (All About Me) and travel safe, and specialist PSCHE sessions. Another project we have starting very soon is our Tate project. As a school, we are one of the Tate Exchange Founding Associates, and are very proud to be so. As an Associate, we plan and deliver various projects for three years. Our next one is based on the theme of “Movement”, and SCALI are looking forward to getting involved. At KS4, some are starting, some continuing, or near finishing their options. All students at KS4 have had an outstanding yet calm start to the year. We are very proud of you all! As for break and lunch times, students are generally catching the last of the good weather outdoors. For as long as the nice weather lingers around before ice settles and frost creeps in, we hopefully can continue this trend. Our pupils are really striving in developing their independence, which is not only important, but a great attribute to see growing all the time within them all. Talking of the outdoors, we’ve going to be doing a spot of gardening! Mrs. Hodgson will be taking some of our pupils out to the garden as part of a new scheme, and one that will help develop new skills, increased independence, and, of course, get us some fresh air too – which is always a good thing. We’ll make sure to post some photographs to show you how it’s all going and growing! Also looking forward, we’ve just had our Year 11 pupils visit Ravensbourne University London. A digital media and design campus, they hosted an event for students to look at a variety post-16 options. They were able to access a huge mix of sixth forms and colleges across the Greenwich Borough, which hopefully gets them thinking about what they want to do next once they have left school (even if the year has only just started!). So it has definitely been a busy start, but it’s been a positive one – and we look forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings. If you ever have any questions or queries, then please do not hesitate to get in touch, and we look forward to posting again next week! All the best, The SCALI Team It’s a busy time in SCALI, as it is in any school at this time of year, ensuring that we finish off the academic year before we break for the summer holidays with heads full of everything that we have learned and happy faces to go along with it all.
As I write this, at my desk in SCALI, there’s a delightful atmosphere buzzing in the air. It’s the Reward Trip – we’re going to the cinema to see Jurassic World and the park to make the most of the sunshine! Each and every one of them has worked extremely hard this year, and they haven’t showed any sign of slowing down as summer approaches – it’s always a tricky term, this one; nearly the longest one of the year, seven weeks long and complete with hot classrooms, you have to take your hat off to them. At the same time, we’re looking ahead to September, when the air will feel cooler and on the breeze will come a fresh start. New stationary, new faces, new things to learn and new activities to do. In schools, September is like New Year’s Day. And we’d love for you, at home, to share that excitement with us in SCALI. That’s why, from September, we’ll be running this page – entitled SCALI Scribbles, we’ll be writing every other week during term time, letting you know what we’ve been getting up to! For example, we’ve had a few trips lately – London Dungeon and Seaford Beach, just to name two; Sports Day – which they have the perfect weather for; and No Pens Day – an all-school event which SCALI took part in, to encourage verbal communication – and that’s just the start of it. So, although we don’t finish for a few weeks just yet, we would like to wish all of our pupils a happy remainder of the term, and a happy summer holidays – they have certainly earned the break. To those who are venturing to new places, such as our Year 11s, we wish you to best of luck for the next chapter. We look forward to seeing you on September 5th. The SCALI Team |