News

Pupils from Matthew Moss High School and St. Anne's Academy will be taking part in this year's BBC News School report on Thursday 26 March 2009.

Staff and pupils from both schools have already taken part in BBC News School Report 'practice days' and the CLC will be sending a film crew to Matthew Moss to document their activities throughout the day. St. Anne's Academy Year 9 students will be holding another practice session on Thursday 19 March and spend News Day itself at Middleton City Learning Centre, making the most of the state-of-the-art ICT facilities and TV studio.

Children from Holy Family Primary School Y5 visited Rochdale City Learning Centre to take part in a literacy based project using 'Comic Life' software. In school the pupils had been learning about different writing styles and as part of this work they had investigated the 'Comic' style. The class had also looked at 'Superheros' and discussed what format the stories take and how they might replicate this.

This week saw the culmination of a 2008-09 project which saw City Learning Centres across the region supporting schools taking part in the Greater Manchester Computer Aided Design and Manufacture (CAD-CAM) competition.

Tuesday 24 February saw Middleton City Learning Centre the venue for many of the nation's media including GMTV, local and regional radio, print and television as the news broke that Middleton Technology School had been named as one of twelve secondary schools highlighted in an Ofsted report praising those schools who are excelling against the odds.

Belfield Y3 pupils recently spent the day at Rochdale CLC creating themed 'Soundscapes' (recorded audio, music and special effects). Year 3 had been learning about Pirates and had read books on the subject as this was as an introduction to learning about Tudor history. They came to the CLC to produce a 'soundscape' to work alongside the storyboards of the Pirate tales they have created.

February 2009 saw a mixed group of Year 1 and Year 2 pupils from Whittataker Moss Primary School produce a multimedia presentation at Middleton CLC. Two classes came to the CLC to participate in a project about the 'Great Fire of London' - a topic they had been learning about in school.

Year 3 pupils from St Thomas More Primary School recently visited Rochdale CLC to develop a project they had been working on in school on the artist Escher and the use of repeating patterns. At the start of the day the children were introduced to the software package 'Revalation Natural Art' and were asked to design a repeating pattern using a mirrored page a selection of shapes and different brush effects. Pupils were then introduced to the 'stamps' facility within the software and spent some time discussing the work of Escher.

Holy Family Primary School Y3 pupils spent the day at Rochdale CLC investigating the use of Computer Aided Design and Manufacture (CAD-CAM) to produce 'Egyptian-style' door plaques!

The new year saw St Mary’s Primary School, Middleton take part in a Multimedia project "Middleton - Then and Now . . ." Children from Y5 came to Middleton CLC to develop their work on the past, present and future of Middleton.

Using a range of source material, some collected before the group arrived at the CLC and other images found via internet searches, the pupils created a multimedia presentation detailing areas of Middleton of the past with those of the present and discussed what they might look like in the future.

The CLCs worked with Rochdale LA and secondary schools throughout 2008 to develop an e-Safety policy in line with Becta recommendations and we continue to work as part of RBSCB (Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board) e-Safety Strategy Group.