St Olave's News 4th July 2025

From the Head

Firstly, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our wonderful Fundraising and Social Committee, along with all the staff members who supported last weekend’s Summer Hawaiian BBQ. It was an amazing afternoon and such a beautiful celebration of the strength and kindness of our St Olave’s community. The atmosphere was full of laughter, connection and joy, and it was a perfect example of what makes our school so special. Thank you to everyone who came along, helped behind the scenes, or supported in any way - it was a true team effort.

As we approach the final week of term, there is a wonderful sense of celebration and reflection across the school. Our children have achieved so much this year - from their academic progress to their sporting successes, creative talents and acts of kindness. I am incredibly proud of each and every one of them.

This evening, we look forward to coming together as a community for our Year 6 Presentation Evening, where we will celebrate the achievements and growth of our oldest children before they move on to secondary school. It is always a highlight of the school year, filled with pride, a few tears and enormous gratitude for the way our families, staff and children work together to make St Olave’s such a special place to learn and grow.

Tonight’s event will include a performance of Beauty and the Beast from our talented Upper School children, followed by awards, speeches and a chance to wish our Year 6 leavers well as they take their next steps. It promises to be a memorable evening for everyone involved.

Next week, I will share a fuller end-of-term round-up with you in our final newsletter of the year, including key dates, reminders and highlights from across the school. For now, thank you for all your support as we head towards a well-deserved summer break and I look forward to celebrating together this evening as we shine a spotlight on the Class of 2025.

Have a lovely weekend,

Kind regards, Miss Holloway

The week ahead...

Lunch Menu

Safeguarding Team

This week at St Olave's

Rights Day

On Monday we had our final Rights Day of the year with a focus on peace, something that runs throughout all the articles of the UNCRC. Following another assembly expertly delivered by our Year 6 Rights Ambassadors, the children had the opportunity to explore and celebrate peace, what it means to all of us and for others around the world. They also had time to consider the strength and courage of people who are unable to find peace for a variety of reasons alongside thinking about the impact of war and conflict on access to rights. From acrostic poetry to peace art, and descriptive writing to an analysis of rights, the children showed great self awareness and understanding.

Year 2 Trip to Duxford

Year 2 had a wonderful trip on Wednesday to IWM Duxford to bring their science and history learning on flight to life - or should we say ‘to the skies’. We started with an immersive walk through a timeline, to see how aviation has evolved, before venturing into hangers, a ‘plane garden’ and a Battle of Britain exhibition. The children were in awe as they got to walk through the actual Concorde that holds the record for the fastest flight and compared passenger jets through time. As always, the children were impeccably behaved, as commented on by the volunteers at Duxford and members of the public.

Year 3 Maths Challenge - Final

On Tuesday, eight children from Year 3 competed in the HFL Maths Challenge Final. They competed in two teams of four and showed excellent collaboration skills. They were faced with some very tricky challenges but faced them together and persevered to complete the challenge. Although they didn’t make the top three, they performed very well and were up against 430 other teams nationwide. We are very proud of them, and hopefully we can enter the HFL Maths Challenge again next year.

Notices

Mr Pradic and Mrs Farrell will be at the CANE Summer Fair on Saturday, with a stall selling lots of plants grown by the children over the last few months. We hope to see some of you there.

Nursery

It’s been a hot sticky week in Little Acorns (thank goodness for our lovely air conditioning!) and the children have spent a lot of time cooling off in the water trays and having fun with the hose pipe. We have built our own water cycle as the children made it rain onto a river which flowed to the sea and then back to the rain! The beach was filled with lots of interesting sea creatures and there was even room for some surfers!

Another popular activity this week has been making our own guitars and forming a band called The Starwars!! Watch out Glastonbury, we have some popstars in the making!

Reception

Shiver me timbers, it’s been a scorchin’ hot week, but that didn’t stop our crew of little pirates from having buckets of fun! With the sun blazing overhead, we cooled down with loads of water play. Our kind chef delivered a treasure chest full of ice cubes, which made their way into the water trays. Brrr! The children had a blast giving their teachers icy pedicures, and even sneaking a few cubes down our backs! We also set sail on a mission to make the longest paper chain ever, using it to measure all sorts of things inside and out, practicing our clever comparison words. After reading ‘The Pirates Next Door’, our classroom turned into a pirate ship full of swashbuckling fun, complete with hats, cannons, eyepatches, and even mermaid tails! We worked together to create our own class story, full of magical sea adventures. We can’t believe next week is our final voyage of the year. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the profile meetings. Until then, have a wonderful weekend, and may fair winds be at your back!

Year 1

Our penultimate week in Year 1! Wow, the year has flown by. We have enjoyed finishing our maths topic of place value to 100 and we have made a start on multiplication in readiness for Year 2. Our English lessons allowed us to reflect on happy memories from Year 1 and write messages for our new teacher. We loved using our Galapagos giant tortoise expertise to sculpt our own tortoises out of clay; we aim to paint them next week!

Obviously, our highlight was watching the Beauty and the Beast dress rehearsal at the Rose Bruford theatre today. Well done Upper School, you were fabulous!

Year 2

What a week! From our rights day to a school trip, an afternoon at Footscray and a fantastic presentation evening, it has absolutely flown past! Our absolute highlight was our trip to IWM Duxford, which you can read about above.

In school, we wrote fabulous recounts of our trip, practising organising our work into paragraphs and checking we were writing in first person and past tense throughout. In maths, we completed our statistics topics and are now fully able to interpret tally charts, tables, bar graphs and pictograms with ease.

We launched into our History of Flight topic by creating a timeline of first flights and labelling the key parts of a plane. We also started exploring the exciting lives of the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart, and will continue with this next week.

The opportunity to explore the concept of peace on Monday as part of our final rights day, was very welcome. We thought about what peace means to us and all shared a memory of a time we felt truly peaceful. We also wrote an acrostic poem.

Have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to seeing you for the final week of term next week.

Year 3

To start the penultimate week of Year 3, we enjoyed a Rights Day full of peace. We first learned what peace meant in various contexts before defining its meaning to each of us through a reflective acrostic poem. We then looked at different symbolism for peace before using this to create peace art that encapsulated what peace looks like while being in a peaceful environment to inspire us!

On Tuesday, four members of our Year 3 team took part in the FINAL of a national maths challenge! We were super excited to see where we placed after an hour of some tricky questions and excellent teamwork. While we didn’t make the top three this time, we were very gracious and glad to have made it so far in the competition and are looking forward to hopefully taking part again in Year 4.

Lastly, we couldn’t sign off for the week without a mention of our spectacular presentation evening! The children have worked so hard and truly shine in every moment they are singing and dancing. We couldn’t be prouder of every one of them for learning their lines and for the patience they exercised during rehearsals. Thank you to all of you for your support in the run-up to such an important event, and we hope you enjoyed seeing your children in their very first Upper School play!

As the academic year draws to a close next week, we are looking forward to further reflecting on the time we have had in Year 3 and spending some quality time together before the summer!

Year 4

This week has flown by! We have been working very hard on our rehearsals for Beauty and Beast. They have shown great dedication learning the songs and our dances. Thank you to all of you for your support in the run-up to such an important event, and we hope you enjoyed seeing your children.

In maths, we finished our time topic, and the children have picked up converting the 12 hour clock to 24 hour clock, but some further practice over the summer holidays would definitely benefit the children. We have then moved onto our shape topic by revising how to read and plot coordinates. We used this knowledge to draw 2D shapes on a grid. This also helped to revise our shape knowledge too. Using this skill, we learned how to translate shapes and points in either one or two directions.

On Wednesday, we had our Rights Day (slightly different to the rest of the school due to rehearsals and Carousel). We considered what the word ‘peace’ means to us, and used these words and phrases to create our own poems. We had acrostic poems, haikus, cinquains, and even limericks! The children wrote some very passionate and powerful poems all about what peace means to them. We concluded our science topic: Living Things and their Habitats by completing the end of unit assessment. The children have really enjoyed this unit, and clearly have a passion for the environment.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend and see you next week for our final week of Year 4!

Year 5

In our penultimate week, Year 5 have continued to work hard and focus on their exam preparation alongside the final preparations for our presentation evening.

In maths, we continued our understanding of algebra, using algebra to calculate the value of missing numbers, simplifying expressions and then pulling all of our understanding together by using algebra to solve equations. This was a challenging topic, but we have been impressed with the children's determination and aptitude to the topic. In English, we have continued to develop our comprehension skills, ensuring that we have evidence for our inferences and even applying our mathematical understanding accurately to some comprehension questions! In between rehearsals, we have managed to edit and publish reflections. We ended the week with some creative writing, thinking carefully about the inclusion of literary devices for detailed descriptions and varying sentence structures.

As we continue to prepare for the up and coming examinations, the children have worked in small groups to develop understanding and techniques across the main areas tested. This enables the children to reflect on their work, but also secure understanding of techniques and recap and refresh areas of their knowledge.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend and see you next week for our final week of Year 5!

Year 6

Year 6 have had an extremely busy week preparing for tonight's Presentation Evening, with three days of rehearsals at Rose Bruford. They can't wait to perform for you tonight!

All of the Year 6 team are looking forward to going at a slightly slower pace next week, to enjoy Year 6's last few days at St Olave's, beginning with our secret trip on Monday!