From the Head
Dear Parents and Carers
As we come to the end of a busy half term, it's a perfect time to reflect on the wonderful moments we've shared. This past week has been particularly special, with several events and achievements worth celebrating.
Our Parents' Evenings have been a great success, providing a valuable opportunity for us to strengthen the partnership between home and school. Thank you to all parents and carers for your positive engagement, insightful discussions, and ongoing support for your child's learning journey. The collaborative spirit during these evenings is so encouraging and we look forward to continuing this close communication throughout the year.
World Food Day yesterday was a delightful occasion, filled with a vibrant celebration of the diverse cultures and cuisines represented by our wonderful school community. The children enjoyed exploring new tastes and learning about food from around the world, all while gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of healthy and sustainable food choices. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed dishes and made the event a resounding success.
Our Year 6 children have had a fantastic half term, showing dedication and excellence in many areas. Their hard work and resilience have shone through, with successes in their impressive sporting accomplishments and excellent results in the first of their 11+ examinations. They have also been awarded their positions of responsibility this week and are off to a flying start, demonstrating admirable leadership qualitites and being excellent role models for the rest of the school. We are incredibly proud of their efforts and wish them continued success as they move forward throughout the year.
As a reminder as we prepare for the Christmas Fayre, we encourage families to create beautiful jars for our popular jar tombola. Please also consider donating good quality, nearly new toys, books, Christmas jumpers, or dressing up/nativity costumes. Additionally, we would be grateful for any voluntary contributions towards a star raffle prize, which can be made via ParentPay. Your generosity and support make these events truly special for our school community.
We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support, involvement, and contributions to school life. It is the strength of our community that makes St Olave's such a wonderful place for our children to grow and learn. Thank you for everything you do to support us, and we look forward to sharing more successes with you in the coming months.
As we break for half term, we wish all our families a happy, restful, and healthy holiday. We look forward to welcoming the children back to school on Monday, 4th November 2024.
Kind regards,
Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Safeguarding Team
Notices
Poppies
We will be selling poppies on the gate before school from 4th to 11th November. Please note that we will only be accepting cash please.
Children in Need
On Friday 15th November we will be holding our charity day this term, supporting BBC Children in Need. The children will be invited to come to school wearing something spotty in addition to their usual uniform (headband/tie/Pudsey ears, socks, tights etc) and will be taking part in sporting activities during their p.e. Lessons. More information to follow.
Young Voices
Thank you for all your support at home with practising the Young Voices songs and dances. If you have not yet secured tickets, please purchase these via your Music Room account as seats are rapidly selling out.
Pupil Achievements
Chloe in 6 Palm has been an active participant as a member of the U11 Sidcup Cricket Club teams all year round! We were delighted to find out that she has recently been selected by Kent County Cricket for their U11 North Region Squad. Congratulations Chloe and we wish you all the best for your future cricket endeavours!
This week at St Olave's
Rights Day and World Food Day
We had a wonderful first Rights Day combined with World Food Day this week. Introduced in assembly by our newly appointed Rights Ambassadors, World Food Day is an annual global observance that aims to raise awareness and take action against worldwide hunger and malnutrition. It commemorates the founding of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO in 1945 and was created to raise awareness about global hunger and promote action to alleviate it.
The children spent the morning exploring article 24 and the right to healthy and nutritious food. They considered food insecurity and what hunger is, explored the issue of food waste and thought of ways to combat hunger around the world. We also spent some time thinking about food insecurity in the UK - did you know there are nearly twice as many food banks as there are McDonalds across the country? - and just how fortunate we are.
This continued into the afternoon with our annual World Food Day celebration. It was wonderful to see so many of you and we are ever grateful for your generous gifts of food from around the world.
Year 2 Trip to the Old Royal Naval College
On Monday, Year 2 had a very exciting day out as we went to visit the Old Royal Naval College. We have been learning all about The Great Fire of London, but have you heard of The Great Fire of Greenwich? On New Year’s Eve of 1779, a fire broke out in the chapel after a tailor knocked over a candle. We discovered that it took over a day to extinguish the fire with all the Greenwich Pensioners helping. We considered the similarities and differences between the fire and that of the Great Fire of London. Using replicas, we explored the tools used to put the fire out and then decorated a fire plaque for the Chapel. Afterwards, we were incredibly lucky to explore the Painted Halls and play skittles in the alley built by the Greenwich Pensioners all those years ago!
Year 5 and 6 Cross Country Event
This week saw children from Years 5 and 6 travel down the road to Avery Hill Park for a cross country tournament. There were 21 different schools competing on the day, and our children were a credit to the school and themselves. All the children who competed, completed the course and showed outstanding determination and resilience throughout the race. Our Year 6 girls demonstrated brilliant stamina and endurance, as they won the Year 6 girls trophy! Rosie achieved an individual bronze medal for finishing 3rd in her race! Well done to everyone for a great day of running!
Nursery
So our Little Acorns have completed their first half term of school and we are so proud of how well they have settled into life at St Olaves. They have made new friends, tried new activities and taken every new experience in their stride. Well done.
The children were so excited to show us their special World Food Day clothes, and we think you’ll agree they all look very smart and a little bit cheeky!...
It was so lovely to meet up with you all at our Parent Meetings this week. We hope you all have a wonderful half term and we look forward to sharing your news on Tapestry after the break.
Reception
And that’s a wrap!
The first half term in Reception has been completed and it’s been completed with confidence, happiness and so much fun. We are absolutely loving teaching Pine and Spruce class and we have been blown away with how much they have learnt!
This week, we have been consolidating Phonics sounds and applying them to our writing. We have sent Phonics videos out onto Tapestry. It would be great if you could watch these over the half term to reinforce the learning happening in school.
The children have been using their gross and fine motor skills to hammer pegs into pumpkins and made herb stew from the herbs they collected from the allotment. We also met our Year 6 monitors, who will be helping out in the classes during their lunchtime. The children were very excited to meet them.
It was so lovely to see the children dressed in their traditional clothes for World Food Day. They had lots of stories about the food they had brought in and they were so proud to share their traditions. We had a great time tasting all the delicious foods. It sparked lots of great questions!
Mrs Binfield really enjoyed catching up with you all during parents evening and Mrs Carey is looking forward to meeting up after half term.
We hope you have an incredible half term and please don’t forget to add lots of pictures into Tapestry. We love sharing them with the class and it’s a great opportunity for your child to speak about their lives with their friends.
Year 1
What a wonderful half term it has been. The last 7 weeks have flown by and the children have achieved so much. We are very proud of how well they have all settled into the routines of Year 1 and their enthusiastic attitudes towards their learning. It was lovely to meet with you all this week and celebrate their hard work. We are sure you are all very proud and looking forward to a well deserved rest over the half term.
This week in English the children completed their very own books using their writing skills to compose their very own humorous poems. We were amazed with the childrens’ creative and funny rhyming abilities. We have also been consolidating our understanding of using correct punctuation. The children are well practised in using capital letters and full stops and their writing is becoming much more fluent.
In maths we have continued our unit on addition and subtraction. It has been great to see the children applying their number bonds knowledge to their learning and the sense of achievement they have felt in being able to do so. We will continue this unit after half term, so please continue to practise these skills.
In science we have been focussing on our sense of hearing. The children carried out their very own science experiment to investigate where the noisiest place in our school is! They measured the level of sound in decibels in various areas including the playground, the library and the EYFS building, and compared their findings. It was interesting to hear their predictions and analyse the data they had recorded.
Thursday was such an exciting day for the children. World Food Day is loved by everyone at St Olave’s and the children enjoyed being able to invite their families into school and to share their cultures. Thank you for coming. The children also enjoyed creating their very own rockets and space stations as part of our transport topic. We hope they were able to share some of the discussions we had about the new breakthrough made in space travel over the last week!
We hope you have a wonderful half term.
Year 2
And all of a sudden it’s half term! We are so proud of all the children who have settled into their new year group and worked so hard already!
Addition and subtraction continued in maths with our teachers seeing just how many times they could talk about the importance of numbers bonds in a week! In English our focus was on developing our stamina for writing with a super recount of our trip and a new adventure for the Loch Ness Monster! Science had us exploring the impact of exercise on our bodies and the importance of hygiene to stay healthy and in art we found out just how changing eyebrows can reflect different feelings in a face! Phew!
We hope you enjoyed reading about our wonderful trip at the beginning of the newsletter - the children really enjoyed their day out! Rights Day was a super end to our week and the children demonstrated huge maturity in thinking about what being hungry actually means and the impact of food insecurity - we asked them to consider how they would feel getting up in the morning with no food for breakfast and no shop to go to. They showed great empathy and compassion for children who live in unfortunate circumstances.
Thank you for all your support this half term, we hope you have a wonderful break and we look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks.
Year 3
To round off the end of a brilliant first half-term as Year 3s we have had a fab week. In English we worked on putting all of our skills we have gained throughout our first two topics together and planned a festival poem of our very own! We thought about how we wanted each stanza to be themed and nouns, adjectives and verbs that could relate. We are very much looking forward to turning these into shape poems to match our festivals of choice.
In maths we have been continuing our addition and subtraction topic by learning how to use column method to add and subtract three digit numbers with and without exchanges. Our fluency is increasing everyday and we are becoming more confident using column method to show our working out when faced with word problems too.
This weeks Science lesson saw us investigate different types of soil and their purposes. We learned about the different properties of soils and their purposes. We then explored four different varieties of soil as we attempted to categorise them by their texture, appearance and even smell.
A busy week was rounded off by plenty of discussion during Rights Day on the importance of all things food. What fun we had celebrating all of our favourite types. We even had the chance to mix our English topic in and create a fab alphabet poem about food, glorious food! Lastly, we considered what life would be like if we did not have enough food and all the consequences this could have for a child’s future.
The Year 3 team would like to wish you a restful half-term break. We look forward to seeing you back in November for more fun and excitement as we build up towards Christmas!
Year 4
What a fantastic half term we have had! The last seven weeks have flown by and we are already so proud of everything the children have achieved. It has been lovely to see you all during our Parents’ Evenings this week, and during World Food Day on Thursday.
In English this week, we enjoyed publishing our haikus for the corridor displays, and also learned about cinquains, which are another form of syllabic poetry. They include five lines and follow the syllable pattern of 2,4,6,8,2. As well as this, we have focused on our handwriting and comprehension skills.
In maths, we have concluded our addition and subtraction topics by learning about efficient methods to carry out subtractions, and also how we can use the inverse to check our calculations. We learned about how addition follows the commutative law e.g. 8+2 = 10 is the same as 2+8=10. This helped us when using the inverse operation.
We concluded our science topic of ‘States of Matter’ by recapping the water cycle and doing our end of unit assessment. On Thursday, we were treated to a wonderful World Food Day and Rights Day. We discussed how important it is to consider how much food we waste, and we research five countries around the world that are leading the way in reducing food waste.
We hope you all have a lovely, relaxing half term!
Year 5
What a great start to Year 5! We can’t believe that it is already half term, the children have really impressed us with all of their efforts and commitment to their learning already! It was lovely to see you all during Parents’ Evening and World Food Day.
In English, we have been reflecting on the perspective of characters from The Jungle Book. We have been using the text to plan and write a diary entry in the role of Mowgli, using our inference skills from the text to help us. In maths, we have concluded our addition and subtraction topic by practising our skills on using the inverse to solve missing number problems.
In geography, we explored how climates affect vegetation in different biomes. We were really impressed by the knowledge gained from our trip last week, and applied it when thinking about how plants have adapted to suit the needs of their environment.
On Thursday, we enjoyed World Food Day, linking closely to our Rights Day about world hunger where we discussed what it could feel like to not know when our next meal will be, how it feels to be hungry and how we can help by reducing food waste.
We hope you have a lovely half term.
Year 6
What a busy, challenging but rewarding half term we have had in Year 6! We could not be prouder of how hard everybody has worked and the achievements the children have had!
At the beginning of the week, we found out our long-awaited responsibilities for the year and we were all very pleased with what we were given. The children have already begun using their knowledge and demonstrating why they were chosen for their roles by taking part in a Rights assembly, a Black History month assembly and visiting classes to help younger children in their free time. They have spoken out with clear, expressive voices and shared both their passions and strengths to the rest of the school.
In maths, we have continued with long division which has been tricky but we have shown great resilience and even managed to answer word problems related to division. In English, we were able to link our reading of the Northern Lights to watching the film The Golden Compass. We loved relating it to the book and seeing how the characters were portrayed in a different way!
We have continued with our Mayan history project, where we are creating a slideshow of different information. It has been very interesting finding out such obscure things about the Mayan culture!
Our busy week was finished off with a fantastic Rights Day linked to world hunger where we discussed what it is like to be hungry, how it would feel to not know where our next meal is coming from and how we could help by reducing food waste. Being able to take part in World Food Day after this made us feel very grateful for everything that we have and are able to provide to others.
We hope you have a relaxing half term!
Outdoor Learning
This week the children have been busy clearing a lot of the beds and polytunnels in readiness for the winter. They dug over and removed the weeds, stones and glass and then added some leaf mulch from last year. The leaves that all the children collected last year have rotted nicely in their bags and we can use this to feed our beds. Some of the children picked our chillies and were brave enough to try some. Hopefully you were able to take some home after World Food Day to use in your cooking. The younger children have started to sow our onions and garlic for next year. As the weather will be more unsettled after half term, could you please ensure your child has a pair of wellington boots as it is already becoming very boggy down there. Have a wonderful half term break.
Languages
What an amazing week to end our first half term! Nursery and Reception learnt how to count up to 15 and they listened to a story called “What’s for supper”, in which Molly cooks dinner for her mum. Year 1 worked on “How old are you?”, reading out some sentences about age and writing down how old were the people mentioned. The children also did some number bonds to 10 in French. Year 2 practised saying their birthdays and their friend’s birthdays and also asked each other how old they were.
Year 3 carried on the topic of holiday and the children learnt some core vocabulary on holiday places. Year 4 children had a cultural lesson on Paris and started to learn the most famous landmarks of this city.
In Spanish, Year 5 learnt how to say when their birthday is and they have revised all their learning done this half term. Year 6 children also revised their learning, with some translation and writing a paragraph about themselves. In Latin, the children were invited to a Roman banquet and had to put up with the strange food that Romans used to eat! Have a lovely half term and see you all in November!
Design & Technology
Year 3 Cardboard Castles
This week pupils attached the castles to their bases, curtain walls and they added wall decoration to their designs.
Year 4 Torches
Pupils in Year 4 completed the assembly of their torches and tested these for flaws and wiring issues.
Year 5 Pop Up Books
This week pupils completed the assembly of their pop up books by installing the final background and pop up feature. Their final task included adding the front cover and evaluation of areas for improvement in their work.
Year 6 Playground Structures
Year 6 pupils continued to make the moving 3D structures that they planned for their playgrounds.
Music
As the children arrive and leave their Friday assemblies, they enjoy singing ‘feel good’ songs about a variety of topics such as feeling empowered, friendship, kindness etc. In our lessons this week, the children have been adding to our bank of assembly songs! We revisited one of our current favourites, ‘I Am’ and checked that the rhythm and rests were carefully noted, as well as learning ‘Lean On Me’ and ‘Count On Me’ - the children enjoyed creating some actions of their own too!
The children in Year 4 had a great grasp of the ukuleles this week. We learnt how to hold them correctly, tune them and play three of the most commonly used chords. The children in EYFS learnt a new song called ‘Animal Fayre’ in which we discussed some of the song lyrics, including what a ‘baboon’ is and what colour ‘auburn’ is - it would be great if the children could share this song at home with you too! We also became investigators! The children experimented with instruments and had a go at trying to make sounds from new instruments they hadn’t tried before. We described their features and how these instruments can be played. We also discussed the origins and purpose of some of the instruments including the kalimbas, the chatterbox, the castanets and the cabasas.
When we return to school we will be getting ready for our festive concerts and performances! Have a wonderful break.
Postcards of Praise
Community News
Half Term Fun at New Eltham Library