In September our 19 satellite students walked through the gate of a big new adventure for them at their new school site. The site currently has 3 classes named with a space theme – Hubble, Apollo and Pioneer.
Many adventures have taken place, imaginary sea adventures have taken place on our playground pirate
ship and our scientifically minded adventurers have set up a much loved zip wire. The zip wire project
has brought the students together to show backdoor learning in style.
Students from Pioneer have discussed physics, maths, economics and design technology to build the zip wire using trial and error. Their project also has led them and others in making progress in social skills and challenging nerves in line with the site’s newly formulated Link Priorities. Our link priorities can be seen on the
website curriculum page for the satellite site. Our curriculum page also allows you to explore our curriculum pathways.
Our curriculum at the satellite has 3 key pathways available to our learners which compliments their
balance of learning and demands.
Our pathways allow our students to access the curriculum at varying degrees of backdoor learning.
Backdoor learning is a key pedagogy approach at the satellite which allows staff to work upon exploring
the motivations of our learners and then using these interests to support the curriculum. This allows
our students to reduce anxieties related to learning and be able to focus upon new skills acquisition in a
calm positive manner.
Pioneer class have enjoyed listening to audio books in guided reading this half term, which they then are
challenged to answer comprehension questions about.
They have also enjoyed working upon biographies and each chose a celebrity to study about.
Apollo have a large love of Pokémon, Minecraft and technology and have explored board games for maths
and English generalisation skills as well as exploring academic games such as Karate Kats, Busy Things
and Horrible Histories.
Hubble have a real love for cooking and top trumps and used this to explore their reading and maths
skills. Pumpkins have sparked their interest this week and they put their maths, reading and art skills
to work with a pumpkin design game.
This week we welcomed our new Speech and Language Therapists Holly and Sally to our site and they
have enjoyed us showing them our site and finding out how they will be working with us. Our student council
met for their first official meeting which was a success for many of our students who have not felt ready to
join the council before.
As we dock our pirate ship to have a well-earned half term break, we celebrate our successful voyage in
our new site so far and look forward to our next adventures ahead after half term which include a PJ &
crazy hair day for Children in Need, beginning to venture out in our local community to generalise our skills,
canine therapy and building on our friendships and learning.