Special Schools
Milestone Academy
This term we need to give a huge congratulations to Milestone @ the Leigh students for their participation in the 2023 Coram Shakespeare Schools Festival.
Our brilliant students performed an adapted version of Romeo and Juliet, set on the streets of modern-day London. The script, adapted by Keren Read, tackled issues of gang violence and antisocial behaviour, while remaining true to Shakespeare’s original story. The tragedy was balanced by many moments of comedy, and our students showed off how much they have learned in terms of technique and performance skills. Most importantly, they were confident and professional, supporting each other and fellow participant schools.
The cast was supported by a fantastic student technical crew, who learned their job in just one afternoon!
We are very grateful to our students, their families, all M@L staff, the Coram SSF, and the Woodville Theatre, for an inspirational evening.
In addition to this event five Milestone Academy students were invited to represent our school at a very special service of celebration for Commonwealth Day, a multi-faith service held annually at Westminster Abbey in the presence of His Majesty the King, the Queen Consort, and senior members of the Royal Family.
This year’s Commonwealth Day theme is “Forging a sustainable and peaceful common future,” a topic on which the King spoke personally, noting that “the Commonwealth can play an indispensable role in the most pressing issues of our time.”
Our five representatives represented Milestone Academy brilliantly, and thoroughly enjoyed travelling to London by train and walking past St. James’s Park to the abbey. We are very proud of our students.
You can view the entire Service online, via BBC iPlayer. If you look closely, you’ll spot our students and staff!
Snowfields Academy
Neurodiversity Week at Snowfields
This year Snowfields students and staff were involved in a variety of activities to celebrate neurodiversity in our school community. Our theme for this year was ‘We all need the right conditions to bloom.’
The morning wellbeing time saw students creating paper flowers to fit with the theme, creating designs for new ‘well done’ postcards, providing some feedback to teachers about ways to support their executive functioning skills and writing paragraphs about how our school wellbeing dogs support mental health. The library had a display up all week and hosted a challenge to look up some content in books by authors who are neurodiverse.
A highlight for some of the students in key stage 3 was speaking to Dan from MindJam about the benefits of gaming and how many companies in the gaming industry seek out people who are neurodiverse.
Year 9 students enjoyed a cross college visit where Bearsted students enjoyed some time on the Cranbrook farm and Cranbrook students spent the afternoon doing a horticulture task with Helen at Bearsted. We were also delighted to have students visit Bearsted College from Milestone Academy. The students worked with Helen and some Year 11s to create a pot plant to take home.
