From the Head
I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable break. As we return for the second half of the spring term, there is so much to look forward to and we are excited to welcome families back into school for some very special events.
Next week, we are delighted to be hosting our Parent Sharing Mornings, where parents will have the chance to come into classrooms and see first-hand all the wonderful work the children have been doing. These sessions provide a fantastic opportunity to celebrate each child’s progress, effort and achievements. It is always a joy to see the pride on the children’s faces as they share their learning with you. Their growing confidence and enthusiasm for their work are a testament to their hard work and the dedication of their teachers. I encourage all parents to come along, take a look at their child’s books and enjoy seeing how much they have achieved so far this year.
In addition to celebrating progress, next week is also a highlight in our school calendar - a whole week dedicated to the joy of books and reading! We have a packed schedule of activities planned, including visits from some fantastic authors, giving children the chance to meet real writers, be inspired by their stories and spark their own creativity. World Book Day on Thursday will be a particularly exciting event, and we can’t wait to see the children (and staff!) dressed up as their favourite book characters. It is always a wonderful day full of storytelling, book-themed activities and a shared love of reading across the whole school.
We are also looking forward to welcoming the Travelling Book Fair, which will be in school throughout the week. This is a fantastic opportunity for children to explore and discover new books, and every purchase helps support our school by earning free books for our classrooms and library. Thank you to Miss Kiely and the staff for organising such an exciting week for the children.
With so much to look forward to, the next few weeks promise to be both enriching and inspiring for our children. Thank you, as always, for your support - I look forward to seeing you at the Parent Sharing Mornings.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Safeguarding Team
This week at St Olave's
Author Visit - Tom McLaughlin
We were very lucky to have Tom McLaughlin in school today working with all our different year groups - he even created us a special St Olave's doodle!
Community MPs visit Roots4Life
Thank you to everyone who donated tins and dry food to our recent Food Drive. The Community MPs delivered all the donations to Roots4Life in our local community this week, and they were gratefully received. Roots4Life holds a community meal on Wednesdays and provides food boxes for our local community every week. They are always grateful for donations.
Times Tables Rock Stars Assembly
On Wednesday, we had two special rockstars in school - Izizz (Mrs Marsh) and Rocco (Mr Lupton)! They relaunched Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS) in school and they certainly needed the help of the children with their times tables. They showed how to use the TTRS website, and also introduced some exciting competitions and challenges we are going to be doing in school. Two children from Year 4 and two from Year 6 did a live play-off showing off their times tables skills - what excellent champions they were! We hope your child enjoyed the assembly, and we can’t wait to hear about all of their times tables achievements.
Year 5 Maths Challenge
On Thursday, three teams from Year 5 took part in a Maths Challenge provided by HLF Education. This was the first heat, and the teams competed against each other and other schools from all across the UK. The children showed great collaboration and communication skills through the hour-long challenge. They were tested on a variety of problems, which they had to compete in a time limit. We look forward to hearing if any of the teams have made it through to the next round! Well done to all of the children who took part. We have also entered some teams in Year 3 and 4, and their heats will be taking place in May and June this year.
Year 6 Debate
On Thursday, 27th February, Year 6 showcased their outstanding debating skills in the highly anticipated Year 6 Live Debate. Working in groups of three, the children were given motions to research and defend, tackling thought-provoking topics: This House would ban junk food for children, This House thinks that children under 12 should not have mobile phones, and This House would welcome humanoid robots into our homes.
To determine the order of the debates, we invited Geetanjali’s grandmother to make a random selection, adding an extra element of excitement. Each debate was led seamlessly by our confident chairpersons and timekeepers, ensuring a smooth and engaging event. Every child had carefully considered their arguments, delivering compelling speeches with passion and conviction. The lively points of information kept us all entertained, with plenty of laughter and fun throughout.
Our Year 6 parents thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, witnessing first-hand the natural debating talent of this exceptional Year 6 cohort. What a legacy they leave behind!
Sports Round Up
What a week of sports we have had this week!
Cross Country
Tuesday saw children from Years 3, 4, 5, and 6 compete in an incredibly challenging ISA cross country competition held at Radnor House Prep School. Children from Years 3 and 4 ran a total of 1.5km, and children in Years 5 and 6 ran a total of 2km. Any children that finished inside the top 10 (out of 90+ runners!) would qualify for the National finals. We had a great afternoon, with all the children finishing their respective races. I was so proud of the resilience and determination from all of our children.
Congratulations to Rosie who finished in an incredible 4th position, and will be representing London South at the National Finals.
Girls' Football League
Girls from Years 5 and 6 continued their weekly league football fixtures on Tuesday. The team we were meant to play did not turn up, which resulted in an automatic 3-0 victory for us. Fortunately we managed to play two friendly fixtures, which resulted in a 1-0 victory and then a 0-0 draw. Well done girls for all your hard work in the league thus far!
Football Friendlies
On Wednesday, children from Years 5 and 6 travelled across to Babington House for friendly football fixtures. Year 5 lost 6-3 and our Year 6 lost 4-1 but it was a really good experience for the children to play on smaller pitches and learn to move the ball quicker to gain advantage over your opponents. Great effort everyone!
Football Festival
On Thursday, girls from Year 4 attended a football festival where they took part in practising some skills and then playing small sided matches. The girls had a great afternoon participating in four games, losing two, drawing one and winning one. The girls worked incredibly hard and showed brilliant team work. Well played girls!
Nursery
Wow, what a great first week back! The Little Acorns have bounced into school and had so much fun with a huge smile on their face. We have loved hearing about all the adventures the children have got up to over the half term.
This week, the children have focused on working as a team. Our socks have been blown off as they have worked together beautifully to build the M25 with roadworks, spaceships and a range of animals. They have really enjoyed thinking and learning about different modes of transport, whether it be getting from A to B on a motorway or travelling into space.
During special time this week, we have focused on strengthening our fine motor skills, learning phonics sounds and exploring numbers and the children have been learning to subitise numbers to 6 on a dice. They have played games with their partner and called out the number they have rolled.
We are really excited about visiting the library on Thursday. Please remember to bring back your books before then :) We hope you have a lovely weekend!
Reception
Welcome back! We have had a fabulous first week back in school. The children have LOVED sharing their pictures on Tapestry and telling their friends all about their half term break.
As it is a new week, this means that we have read a new story in our drawing club sessions. We have been reading ‘Paper Dolls’ by Julia Donaldson. The children have created their own paper dolls and designed them to make their friends or members of their family. We then thought of a place that the paper dolls could go to. Some went to space, Legoland, the beach, under the sea and even to Ninja Land. The children then wrote codes and imagined that magical things would happen to their paper dolls. We have absolutely loved listening to their ideas and we are so proud of their creative vocabulary.
This week, we have looked at the different coins we use when spending money. They children have really enjoyed sorting different coins out and using coin stamps to create patterns and to write the amount. We have also been busy making purses to store our money in.
We look forward to using our knowledge of money to buy fresh produce on our trip to the local shops next week.
Year 1
We've had a busy but lovely first week back for Year 1, we can’t believe we have reached the halfway point of the year!
We are working hard to develop our understanding of numbers in maths, we are now working to 50. We have practised learning how many ‘tens’ and ‘ones' are in our numbers and how to count in tens.
In English we have been really enjoying our books ‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late’ and ‘Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus’; they’re hilarious! We have used the books to help us think about writing commands and rules.
We ended our science unit on materials with an investigation into the absorbency of different materials, the children experienced how to make a test fair and how to use a pipette accurately in order to collect a small amount of water.
Year 2
What a brilliant return to school! We’ve had huge fun exploring poetry this week in English, first reading and enjoying a variety of ‘happy’ poems to spot key features including rhyme, rhythm and verses, before planning and penning our own poems all about a magic pebble - from turning broccoli to ice cream and being a mini transportation device, it could do everything! In maths we saw off our topic on multiplication and division - for now - but please continue to practise this at home by using Times Table Rockstars, a great way to boost fluency and confidence.
We produced our final clay piece in art, using our plan to create a house inspired tile, investigated the life and times of Queen Elizabeth I in History and thought about different stages of life, creating a human life cycle in Science.
Our highlight was meeting author Tom McLaughlin on Friday. The children listened so well to him talking about his books that he may have even inspired a plethora of new authors!
Year 3
What an exciting start to this half term! The highlight of the week was our swimming lessons. Year 3 behaved brilliantly in and out of the pool. This week everyone undertook their initial assessment and played some games designed to show off their swimming ability. It was a great start and we can’t wait to see the progress they make.
Many other topics were introduced this half term including our new Maths topic - Fractions. The children enjoyed discussing what fractions are and how they can be used -in particular, how the larger the denominator is, the smaller the fraction. We reinforced this idea by discussing how we want to share with more rather than less people and applied our knowledge physically by cutting up models of pizzas and chocolate bars.
In English we were introduced to our new author, or should I say poet - Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson’s imaginative and childhood themed poetry already captured the attention of our students who discussed and compared two poems as well as drawing what they imagined when they heard them. Each of our focus poems feature rhyming, as will our final published work this term and so we spent some time discussing how to find and create rhyming couplets. You may find your child rhyming all sorts of words at home!
To light up our knowledge of Science, Year 3 delved into their new topic - Light and Shadows. We began by learning what a light source is. The children particularly enjoyed discussing what made a light source natural or artificial. We had a lot of fun debating whether fire was natural or man made and whether the moon is a light source. The answers may surprise you!
We had a musical treat this week as one of our Apple class members performed with their clarinet this week. After a rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’, Emilie may very well have inspired many more children to take up a woodwind instrument! We can’t wait to hear her progress later in the year…
Finally your child may be 'erupting' with questions about our new Geography topic - Volcanoes and Earthquakes! We have begun by learning all about the inner layers of the Earth and how these relate in volcanic eruptions and formations. This is sure to be an exciting topic with lots to discuss and we look forward to sharing our knowledge on the topic as we go.
Year 4
We have hit the ground running this week, and are delighted that the children have returned to school full of energy and enthusiasm for the coming term. In English this week, we read examples of Kenning poems and List poems. The children then wrote their own versions of these poems, using noun-noun phrases and expanded noun phrases. A Kenning poem doesn’t have a title, but the subject of the poem is implied by the content. The children wrote poems about Taylor Swift, football, guinea pigs, rabbits and megalodons! They also really loved compiling lists of all the icky, sticky items you could find in a child’s pocket.
In maths, we have continued our topic of fractions, placing mixed numbers on a number line, comparing equivalent fractions and converting mixed numbers into improper fractions and vice versa. In geography, we explored animal adaptations, focusing on how certain animals have adapted to thrive in the rainforest. In our RE lesson, the children explored features of Buddhist places of worship using a thinking frame to display their learning. We look forward to seeing you at our Parent Sharing Morning next Monday, and of course, the highly anticipated World Book Day!
Year 5
Year 5 has had a great first week back. We have been really impressed with the children’s attitude, continuing to show their commitment to their learning. In English, we have explored how to use inverted commas and adverbs to enhance our use of dialogue. Using inspiration from a text, we then wrote our own short story and diary entry, imagining what it may have been like to find the missing piece to the famous Mary Rose.
In maths, we have looked at how to write fractions that are equivalent to decimals and percentages. We have used our understanding of place value to add and subtract decimals as well as compare and order them.
On Friday, we were fortunate to receive a visit from Tom McLaughlin, the author of the series of books ‘The Accidental…’. The children thoroughly enjoyed the author workshop, learning about his inspiration for writing and the techniques he uses to bring his writing to life!
We are thoroughly looking forward to World Book Day next week and cannot wait to see what book characters come to life!
Year 6
This week in English, Year 6 explored persuasive speech, analysing Barack Obama’s techniques and applying them to their own writing. They stepped into the role of King Malcolm after Macbeth’s death, crafting speeches to convince Scotland of his just rule. Using rhetorical devices and persuasive language, they showcased creativity and critical thinking. Their enthusiasm was evident, and we are incredibly proud of their efforts. Ask them about their speeches!
In Maths, they have been mastering ratio and proportion, focusing particularly on solving word problems and developing their reasoning skills. Science lessons saw them working collaboratively in teams to investigate voltage and its effect on electrical circuits, deepening their understanding of the difference between voltage and current while learning how to measure volts using a voltmeter. In History, the children continued their exploration of great orators by studying Winston Churchill’s life and achievements, with a lively Horrible Histories episode bringing the topic to life.
The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the first-ever Year 6 Live Debate on Thursday afternoon, where every child took part and impressed the audience with their confidence and eloquence. It was a truly memorable event, and we are certain that many of our pupils will carry these valuable debating skills into the future!
Outdoor Learning
The allotment has shown the first signs of Spring approaching as our daffodils and tulips have started to flower. The outdoor classroom has had new flooring put in over half term and Nick, our helper, has begun work on the new fence by the Wellbeing Garden. As I hope you will agree from the photos, it looks fantastic! Work has continued on clearing a new area at the back of the plot but it has been slow going due to the amount of rubbish we have found. The children have continued their projects but it will soon be time to get out to the allotment in our Carousel times. Bring on the nicer weather!
Languages
Welcome back everyone! After a week of rest, we dived straight into our learning in the Languages Department. In Early Years, both Nursery and Reception have revised body parts and the children started to draw faces with features on their boards. We have also started our series of La Fontaine’s stories and this week we read ���The Wolf and The Lamb”.
Year 1 has put together age and family with possessive adjectives: the children can now understand the difference and say in French ‘a sister’ and ‘my sister’. Year 2 has worked on what they look like and the children can recognise the difference between feminine and masculine adjectives.
In the Upper School, Year 3 has revised numbers, with different games and songs. Year 4 started a new topic: we are still talking about hobbies and this half term is all about television. The children learnt and practised the new vocabulary and started to build sentences using the verb 'to watch'. In Spanish, Year 5 worked on their creative writing and the children built sentences talking about family members: their names, age, personality and physical appearance. Year 6 children have also practised creative writing and they focussed on building sentences about school subjects. In Latin, Year 6 children learnt the importance of the Roman baths and the role of the doctor in Roman Britain.
Design & Technology
Year 3 Electro-static game
This week pupils in Year 3 explored how static electricity works and how it can be used in a range of experiments to move objects without touching them.
Year 4 Pavilion Structures
Pupils in Year 4 continued to join their pavilion parts together to make stable and rigid structures using curves and triangulation.
Year 6 Automata Toys
Year 6 pupils cut their final wooden pieces and assembled the frame for their toy. This week pupils also used hand drills to start the assembly for the cam mechanism that will add movement to the characters in the toy they are building.
Music
In Music this week, we’ve been talking about all the exciting musical events we have coming up this half term.
The children in the Upper School were introduced to the songs they will be learning for their Easter Concert at the end of this half term and on Tuesday after school, the School Choir began rehearsing songs for their Easter Concert performance too.
The majority of the Upper School children learn one or more instruments and they are looking forward to showcasing what they have been learning in our Spring Instrumental Concerts to parents over the next couple of weeks. The children have been rehearsing their pieces both in school and at home, with many also wanting to play their piece to their class first in preparation for the main event. ‘Thank you’ to Olisa in Year 5 who played a wonderful Ukrainian folk song on the piano in assembly this week and also to Zachary in Year 4 who popped along to Nursery and Reception to play a couple of pieces on the violin. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the concerts soon!
The children in the Lower School also started to learn Easter and Spring themed songs this week. We discussed the song lyrics and what particular words meant. The Nursery children started to learn a song about a ‘Hot Cross Bunny’ and ‘Two Little Chicks’. The children in Reception listened to the song, ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ and started to learn the first two verses. We’re looking forward to bringing in our teddy bears in a couple of weeks to sing along too!
Postcards of Praise
Community News
Tooled Up Education March webinars
Empowering girls to live well with ADHD
March 18, 2025, 12:30 -13:30 GMT
Join us and Pippa Simou, Chartered Coaching Psychologist and former teacher, as she leads an enlightening session diving into the world of ADHD in girls. Pippa will shed light on the unique challenges that girls with ADHD face and how this experience differs to that of boys with the same diagnosis.
Discover effective strategies to help celebrate their individuality and strengths, and ensure that these remarkable girls flourish both at home and in school.
Motivating teens to engage with study and revision: Tips for parents
March 20, 2025, 19:30 -20:30 GMT
In this webinar, researcher Dr Iro Konstantinou will talk us through insights from research evidence that can help inform strategies when it comes to motivating our children to try hard, persist and stay focused in their learning and revision. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of the presentation