From the Head
Dear Parents
As we start this new academic year, I’m filled with excitement and joy by the energy and togetherness that runs through our school. It’s been wonderful to see so many of you at our recent welcome meetings and I’m truly grateful for the role you play in your children’s educational journey. Your engagement and positive feedback about the recent updates to our school and classrooms have been so appreciated. It’s heartwarming to see how much you value these improvements and your interest in visiting the classrooms and our library highlights the amazing partnership between home and school that is so vital for our pupils’ success.
At our first Celebration Assembly this year, we introduced something special: our new Postcards of Praise! These will replace our old merit certificates and give us a fun new way to recognise our pupils for their hard work and for living out our school’s core values. Throughout the year, children will receive these postcards as a celebration of their Compassion, Commitment, Curiosity, Creativity, Collaboration, and Courage.
I’m also excited to share that our newly revamped website is now live! After months of hard work, we’ve created a user-friendly space that beautifully reflects the spirit of St Olave's. You’ll find gorgeous photos and videos that show off the joy of our children and the beauty of our facilities. I really encourage you to explore the site – it’s designed to keep us all connected and to celebrate all the great things happening at school.
In the performing arts, we have some wonderful news! Our pupils have once again made us incredibly proud in the recent LAMDA exams. Every child who took part in the summer exams earned a Distinction – a fantastic achievement that highlights their confidence and talent. The external examiner was so impressed with their performances and a huge thank you goes to Mrs O'Mahony for her excellent work in preparing the children.
Lastly, a quick reminder about Parksfest this Sunday at Southwood Park from 2pm to 5pm. We’d love to see many St Olave’s families there, enjoying time together and strengthening our sense of community beyond the school gates.
As we continue to celebrate and nurture each child’s potential, I’m really looking forward to all the achievements and milestones we’ll share in the coming months. Have a lovely weekend and I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
Safeguarding Team
Community News
Parksfest
If you are free on Sunday afternoon, come along to Parksfest in Southwood Park (just down the road from school) and support our local community. Mr Pradic and Mrs Farrell will be there with a stall, and there will be lots of fun and entertainment. Ms Isaacs will also be selling her delicious cakes. See the poster below for more information.
Rucksacks Wanted (with school logo or without)
One of our former parents is a Doctor and Trustee of an educational charity in Sierra Leone. She spends 4-6 months every year volunteering in a primary care clinic and teaching children and medical staff. The charity, Transform Salone, supports children with sponsorship throughout their educational journey - currently supporting 60 children in primary and secondary school. They also have students in university and colleges; studying medicine, economics, midwifery and nursing. The charity has asked if we can help provide rucksacks for students - school rucksacks, or any other suitable rucksacks - they do not have to be new, just in good condition.
Please hand any donations to Mrs Farrell on the gate. Thank you very much.
Nursery
We have had a wonderful week in Little Acorns, the children continue to impress us with their confidence and enthusiasm for learning. We have enjoyed going to the hall to eat our lunch and some of us have experienced PlayZone for the first time. All these new experiences have been greeted with enthusiasm and cheerfulness which is so lovely to see.
This week we also made our first visit to the allotment or ‘magic garden’ as one of the children called it! We brought some tomatoes back with us and they were devoured and declared ‘delicious’.
It was lovely to see so many of you at our Welcome Meeting on Wednesday, we hope we were able to answer any questions you may have had but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any more.
Reception
And just like that, the first full week in Reception has been completed!
The children have had a wonderful time, continuing to explore their new classroom. It has been a joy to see so many new friendships being formed across both classes.
This week, we read the story ‘The Gruffalo’. The children have created their very own ‘Gruffalo Cafe’. The teachers have been spoiled as we have been able to taste some delicious scrambled snake and owl ice cream. Throughout their continuous provision, the story and characters from the book have been incorporated in many creative ways, including making a Gruffalo puppet.
The children have shown a great interest in colour mixing and creating new colours using primary coloured paints.
We are creating a ‘My Family’ display in our classroom and it would be wonderful to have a picture up of every child and their family. Creating a display like this encourages conversations and fosters a sense of belonging and community links.
A hard copy can be brought in or you can email it to the School Office. Thank you to those who have your pictures in already.
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Year 1
Year 1 have had a lovely first full week with lots of fun, learning and new experiences.
The children loved their first taste of a carousel afternoon, enjoying their lessons in music, PE and outdoor learning. They also had their first computing lesson, learning all about algorithms.
In English we are enjoying the book 'Not a Stick' by Antoinette Portis, where an imaginative little piglet thinks up amazing ways to play with his stick. We also had a live lesson from none other than Julia Donaldson, reading us her new book Jonty Jentoo!
Our science topic began with a great discussion on the weather and the seasons and we're looking forward to more lessons on these topics.
The children are doing well in their maths work and are adjusting to the Year 1 way of learning.
Roll on next week for more exciting things!
Year 2
The first full week is over and Year 2 have sailed through, taking on board all of the new routines and a range of exciting new lessons. On Monday, the children discussed their strengths and things they would like to get better at; they came up with some excellent ideas and set themselves goals for the year ahead.
Poetry has been the focus in our English lessons. We read ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat,’ by Edward Lear which the children enjoyed immensely. We then went on to sequence and summarise the events in the poem and had a go at rewriting some lines and adding in our own ideas. In addition to poetry, we have been reading the classic story of ‘The Iron Man,’ by Ted Hughes, in our Faster Read sessions.
In maths we have been developing our understanding of place value in two digit numbers. We had lots of fun modelling and partitioning numbers. On top of .this, we have also been busy practising our mental maths skills. In Science, we introduced our new topic - Animals Including Humans. We have been learning about the essential needs of animals and how they must be met for survival.
We started our History topic, ‘The Great Fire of London.’ The children were fascinated to learn about the scale of the fire and how London was so different then. We can’t wait to learn more details next week. We thoroughly enjoyed making fire pictures in Art; we used pastels to create the blazing flames and added collage to create silhouettes of the buildings.
Thank you for attending our Welcome meeting on Monday.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Year 3
What an exciting and busy first full week the children have had! It was a pleasure to meet you all at our Welcome meeting on Tuesday. We hope you found it informative and are excited for the academic year ahead. The children have enjoyed starting lots of new topics this week and they impressed us with their prior knowledge and enthusiasm. The biggest excitement of the week was the first whole Upper School Games session at Footscray. It was a great success and the children enjoyed all of the sports they participated in. Thank you for ensuring your child had all of the equipment they needed.
In English we started a new book ‘I’ll Take you to Mrs Cole.’ Before reading the text, the children were able to make interesting predictions on what they thought the story would be about. We have also revisited verbs and how to make our vocabulary more ambitious. This will help us to make our writing more interesting in the following weeks. Also in English, we started our new ‘Faster Read’ book, ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’. The children have really enjoyed listening to the story, following along with their own copy of the text and discussing the unusual vocabulary they come across. We look forward to carrying on with this book for the rest of the term.
In Maths, we have been deepening our knowledge of place value by practising representing numbers in a variety of ways, partitioning numbers and using number lines. The children have also impressed us with how well they can count in 100s.
In Science, the children learnt about Igneous rocks and were keen to share knowledge they already had about lava, magma and obsidian. Finally in History, we started our learning on the ‘Stone Age.’ The children became archeologists and carried out their very own archeological dig! We learnt about the role of archaeologists and recorded the objects we discovered.
We hope your children have enjoyed this first full week and we look forward to sharing more exciting learning with you next week.
Year 4
It’s the end of our first full week and it’s been a fabulous one! It was lovely to see so many of you at our Welcome Meeting, and we hope you enjoyed experiencing our beautiful classrooms.
We have begun our term by consolidating our place value knowledge. This gives the children a refresh and us the opportunity to address any misconceptions going into the term. Our mental maths quizzes have begun and we have been very impressed with the children's skills so far.
In English, we have started to explore Michael Rosen’s retellings of Aesop’s Fables and the children enjoyed trying to figure out the morals of each story. We have used a number of texts to practise our comprehension skills, specifically focused on finding evidence and using it within our answers. We have also reviewed the rules for punctuating speech - working towards our goal of eventually writing our own fables later this term.
Our Romans’s topic started with a lesson of sharing prior knowledge and recording questions that they would like to find out the answers to, during the term. In science, the children sorted matter into liquids, solids and gases - recalling their prior knowledge of states of matter. Look out for a homework task that may have them rummaging around in the kitchen!
Have a great weekend!
Year 5
Our first full week in Year 5 has been a busy one. We started our text ‘The Jungle Book’ by exploring the themes of belonging and what being human means in the shape of a personal narrative. Following on from this, the children analysed the blurb inferring information and making predictions using the text to justify. In addition to this, we have also started our Faster Read which the children are thoroughly enjoying with its setting perfectly complementing our English text. We all look forward to our Faster Read time as we explore new vocabulary and follow the adventure of the children lost in the Amazon.
Within maths, we have begun our term by consolidating our place value knowledge. It has been wonderful to see the children challenge themselves with problem solving questions and begin to demonstrate the importance of working systematically. Our regular mental maths practice has begun and the children have been demonstrating great pace and quick recall so far.
This week, we have started a deep dive into our new science topic, ‘Earth and Space’. We began with exploring the solar system and the order of the planets. Following on from this, we developed our understanding of the heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system and created our own orrery. We look forward to developing our knowledge about Earth and space further next week.
Year 6
The Year 6 children have had a full week in school and we have managed to pack in lots of new learning as well as revision for their upcoming exams. On Tuesday, many of the children took part in the Bexley 11+ test and we were impressed with their positive attitude, confidence during the test and their encouragement and friendship towards each other. To celebrate how hard all the children have worked, we took them out for the afternoon to play mini golf.
The children have been enjoying listening to the story ‘There’s a boy in the girls’ bathroom’ which has been the perfect light relief after some challenging learning this week. We have started our new science topic, ‘Light’, the children showed great curiosity when exploring how light travels. As always, we were impressed with their questioning skills and level of interest and enthusiasm. We spent some time in darkness and it was a delight to hear them gasp as they witnessed their friend’s pupil change in size so suddenly as the light returned.
Our Art lessons this term link perfectly with our History topic ‘The Mayan Civilisation’. This week the children enjoyed collecting information to identify the key features of Mayan art. They loved exploring mark making using a range of handmade tools and created a research page all about Diego Rivera.
Wishing you all a happy weekend!
Sport
This week in sports, the return of games for Upper School was the talk of the school. We had a great afternoon in both the rain and sunshine, with football, tag rugby, hockey and fitness lessons taking place. The children were a pleasure to teach and really enjoyed the lessons.
Lower School and EYFS, enjoyed the circuit skills which focused on our ABC skills (agility, balance and coordination). We had hoop jumping, stepping stones, wobble bridges and bean bag throws as part of the course. The children enjoyed their lessons and are eager to continue with their challenges in PE.
Outdoor Learning
A changeable week weather wise but the children have managed to get out and pick a few fruit and vegetables. They had a taste of these, one group even trying an incredibly hot chilli pepper thinking it was a sweet one! I hope to see some of you at Parksfest on Sunday afternoon.
Languages
This week every class had their language lesson and the children put a lot of effort into remembering some of the topics and words from last year. Nursery and Reception learned instructions, they sang along to a beautiful song and they enjoyed a story in French. Year 1 learnt how to greet and introduce themselves to the class, Year 2 has started some work on the pronunciation of vowels.
Year 3 and Year 4 have revised greetings, introductions and instructions, on top of brainstorming all their learning from last year. Year 5 has had their first Spanish lesson and learnt classroom instructions. Year 6 has dived into this half term topic: how to describe hair and eyes in three different tenses. The children have also experienced their first Latin lesson, learning how to write the date in Latin and exploring the structure of our text book.
Design & Technology
Year 3 Cardboard Castles
Pupils in Year 3 learned about the design brief for their project and they explored the initial design process for their castles.
Year 4 Torches
This week pupils in Year 4 analysed and evaluated different torch types. They identified the features of torches that make them better suited for various tasks.
Year 5 Pop Up Books
This week pupils in Year 5 wrote their specifications for a pop up book project and they explored the moving features frequently found in pop up books. At the end of the lesson they began planning and designing the front cover of their books.
Year 6 Motorised Car
Pupils in Year 6 completed the main construction for their motorised car, this included the wiring and customisation of the chassis.
Music
It's been an exciting week with all year groups beginning their first music topic of the year!
The children in Reception explored sounds and how we can create different sounds with our voices, both spoken and sung. We also learnt the songs, 'Five Little Speckled Frogs'. 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and '1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive' in our singing lesson this week. Year 1 started to investigate keeping a beat and a steady 'pulse'. Year 2 learnt about 'call and response' and we investigated using untuned percussion to imitate animal sounds using dynamics.
In Upper School, Year 3 listened to five ballads including 'Space Oddity' by David Bowie in order to identify key features and define what a 'ballad' is. Year 4's history topic in class is the 'Romans' and we are continuing that theme in Music lessons this half term by recalling what we already know about the Romans and learning a song about their road building using dynamics, actions and 'call and response'.
On Monday morning, Year 5 were introduced to their topic inspired by the Egyptians. We created a 3-part warm up about building pyramids and then learnt a song about them using call and response and harmonies.
On Monday afternoon, Year 6 appraised the work of Felix Mendelssohn as we listened to 'Fingal's Cave' imagining what it was about and creating dramatic readings of key descriptive words and phrases along to the music.
We also had our first School Choir rehearsal on Tuesday and the children were in fine voice! We started to learn 'Stop' by the Spice Girls with actions and recapped a couple of songs we learnt previously too. Instrumental lessons are now fully underway, with many pupils taking their very first instrumental lesson this week, what a fantastic start!