Well, we have had a very busy week at Medtia – that summer holiday seems like a lifetime ago!

Our students have been settling in well and many of them have been out for trials or have now started their placements! So we’ll go straight to our job coach, Anne-Marie for an update on our first two weeks..

Welcome back everyone! We have had a great week getting to know all of our new Future Finders. We have had a mixed week of class work and placement work, all settling in and getting ready to work full time at our placements. This year is a little different and we go out to placements from Monday to Wednesday. Most of us have now been out and met our placement hosts and some of us have even got stuck in to working straight away.

Matthew has joined the Clean Plate Kitchen team and says, “I am loving it. My Mum is so shocked that I have been doing all the jobs that I have been doing and is so proud that I am making my own way there and back from Medtia.”

Reece has joined a Web Design company and says, “It’s great and you don’t realise how time goes.”

Jason has started work at the Old Toll House in Dobcross – this is also a new placement provider for us! So welcome to them and thank you so much for giving our young people an opportunity..

Thank you to Alex for showing Jason the ropes..

The rest of the group have been out to visit their employers and we will have more updates and pictures of them next week on placement. We will also have an update from Oldham Library who have welcomed us back this year and have been able to offer placements to 3 of our students. They will be doing their induction next Monday and it will be someone very special who will be showing them round but you will have to come back to next week’s blog to see who that it is!!

A big focus for us this year is reading, improving our reading skills and embedding them in everything we do, so we have taken our Future Finders over the to library where Anthony, Josh, Liam, Zanub and Fahad all registered as users. The students all enjoyed the visit and selected a book, used the library computer system to sign out their book, took their receipt and even showed Diane how to use the new electronic system -very impressed! She is looking forward to the work placements on Monday with Fahad, Joshua and Liam. Well done and don’t forget to return your books on time!

Thursdays will be our classroom days where we will be focusing on Maths, English and Employability. In our Employability sessions we have been looking at our CVs and Learner Profiles – these are currently a work in progress but we will get them completed soon..

We have also spent some time with Mr Bright learning how to use our new iPads..

That’s it from us for this week! It has been a busy start to the yeat at Medtia but we’ll keep you updated weekly! Have a fab weekend everyone.

Over at Manchester Metropolitan University our job coach Genna has more news of our students..

So this year we have Josh on Bridging the Gap and Luka and Dominic from Future Finders joining us at the university! (I said Luka wasn’t getting rid of me that easily after completing a term last year!)

All the students met me at Medtia on the first week to get used to the travel (which they had been training on through the summer holidays). Congratulations to Josh and Dominic for now being independent travellers in their first two weeks which means they now catch a tram from Medtia to St Peter’s Square and walk up Oxford Road to the university each morning – great work lads!

This week has been getting used to the journey, the classroom and the campus, which is very large! They have been orienteering around campus looking for set places and using their new iPads to take photos!

They have also met the students from the other school Manor High and they are all working together as one Bridging the Gap team. They have now completed their Manual Handling training and are ready to work! You will find out next time where they will be working!

A letter has been sent home (click here to view it) with details of Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission’s upcoming return visit following the Oldham Local Area SEND inspection. As part of the re-visit, they would very much like to have your views which you can give through the online survey available here until 12 noon on Friday 20th September or at an open meeting on Monday 23rd September. You can find more details on the POINT (Oldham’s Parent Carer Forum) website here.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend,

Daniel
Head of College

You can view our previous blog entries here

Click here for this week’s news from Graham