From the Head
This week has been another brilliant one at St Olave’s. There has been a calm, productive feel across the school, with children settled, focused and working hard. Weeks like this are always a pleasure and a reminder of what children can achieve when routines, expectations and confidence all come together. I was particularly delighted to spend time teaching Year 6 yesterday afternoon. It was wonderful to be back in the classroom and to see first-hand the maturity, engagement and thoughtful approach our Year 6 children are showing. They are approaching this stage of the year with real confidence and purpose and I felt incredibly proud of them. It was also lovely to see blue skies on Wednesday, even if they did not stay for long. That brief glimpse of brightness was very welcome and a good reminder that spring is slowly on its way. There is a strong sense of steady progress in school at the moment, and it is a very positive time to be part of our community. I would like to say a sincere thank you to our parents for continuing to recommend St Olave’s to friends and family. We are delighted to be receiving a very healthy number of applications, not only for Nursery and Reception next year and beyond, but also for in-year admissions. The vast majority of these enquiries come through word of mouth, which is the greatest compliment a school can receive. Your trust, confidence and advocacy mean a great deal to us, and we are truly grateful for your ongoing support. Thank you, as always, for the kindness, encouragement and partnership you show the school. It makes a genuine difference to the children every single day. I hope you all have a lovely weekend; fingers crossed for some drier days ahead! Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Monthly Safeguarding Update
February – Supporting Children with SEND and Vulnerabilities
All children deserve to feel safe and heard. For children with additional needs, communication can sometimes be a barrier. If you ever notice changes in your child’s mood or behaviour, however small, please share with us - early conversations make a big difference.
Focus on School Values
We’re continuing our focus on Commitment this week, helping children to recognise that commitment isn’t just about sticking with learning goals, but also about consistently choosing to do what’s right in their everyday interactions. In Monday’s assembly, I shared Pass It On by Sophy Henn, a joyful picture book that celebrates sharing happiness, kindness and encouragement. It’s a wonderful way to show children how even the smallest kind actions can ripple outward and brighten someone’s day. Our manner of the week is: “Hold the door for people.” This is a lovely one to reinforce at home and in school; it’s not only polite, but also thoughtful. Holding the door shows an awareness of others and a willingness to pause and be helpful; both clear signs of growing maturity and community spirit. Thank you for helping to model this at home. It’s these little habits, done regularly, that help us raise kind, thoughtful and committed children. A similar book you might enjoy sharing at home is The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright, which also explores the power of small, brave, kind acts.
This week at St Olave's
NSPCC Number Day
St Olave's celebrated NSPCC's Number Day this week raising funds for this essential charity whilst expressing our school's love of numbers and all things mathematical. Children were challenged to Dress Up For Digits and they responded with passion, creativity and craftsmanship arriving to brilliant and imaginative costumes and customised clothing to express their favourite number, equation or maths joke! From a human-sized dotted domino to a giant Num-Ba-Nana the children truly impressed us. Head of Maths, Mr Warner, led an assembly highlighting how the charity has protected children since 1884, and as well as practising our NCETM times table gestures, the children answered a series of increasingly difficult maths questions. We also held a lunchtime 3-dart Arithmetic Challenge (in the rain!), which was won by Adam in 4 Apple who hit a treble and a single 20, and was milimetres away from getting Shanghai with a double 20. Well done, Adam. Donations are still open and can be made by clicking the button below. We are also taking part in the Times Table Rock Stars linked competition, NSPCC Rocks. St O's will be up against hundreds of other school in the UK, by completing any challenge on TTRS today from 7:30am - 7:30pm. Children can compete for an hour during this time and correct answers will be averaged across each class. Good luck to the children!
Equality Champions Assembly Our Equality Champions confidently led a whole-school assembly all about the protected characteristics, helping everyone understand what equality means in everyday life. The Champions, who were selected after completing an application form, used clear, child-friendly examples so the messages were easy for all ages to understand. As part of the assembly, the children watched a short Pop ’n’ Olly video, which explained discrimination in a simple and engaging way. There was lots of audience participation too, with some children invited up to act out a scene showing a child being left out of drawing club, sparking thoughtful discussion. The assembly ended with the Champions proudly sharing posters they had created themselves to promote equality and inclusion across our school.
Notices
Fundraising and Social Committee (FRSC) – World Book Day and Second-Hand Uniform Donations As we look ahead to World Book Day, the FRSC would love your support in making this celebration both sustainable and affordable for families. We are asking for donations of good-quality, pre-loved dressing-up costumes so that we can hold a pre-loved costume sale ahead of the day. This will help reduce waste while also keeping costs down for parents. We are also collecting donations of second-hand school uniform in preparation for the uniform sale taking place after half term. Any clean, good-condition items that your child has outgrown would be very gratefully received. Thank you in advance for your generosity and support of these community initiatives.
Sporting Round Up
Netball and Football fixtures The children who did not attend the Young Voices concert had their fixtures rearranged to Wednesday at Footscray RFC. We hosted Charlton Manor School with a mixture of children from Years 3, 4, 5 and 6, competing in either football or netball matches. The football matches resulted in a 6-1 victory, 2-2 draw, and a 2-1 loss. The netball fixture resulted in a 7-2 victory with goals being shared out amongst the team. Well played everyone!
Gymnastics Plus
Year 6 were lucky enough to kick off our new season of Gymnastics Plus this week at the purpose-built facilities at Sutcliffe Park. They had a great time on the bars and trampolines, revising their shapes, and participated in lots of coordination and strength circuits of skills.
Nursery
Our focus this week has been on different ways of joining paper and we have explored glue, treasury tags, staplers, split pins and masking tape. The children were presented with lots of different paper strips and a variety of joining materials and it has been wonderful to see all the imaginative ways they have used them! We have had two beanstalks spring up that reach the classroom ceiling, a selection of jewellery including crowns, necklaces, watches and rings, a set of bunting that stretches for the entire length of the EYFS building and some spidey web throwers!! Number Day was full of fun and excitement as the children came to school in some colourful and numberful outfits. We learnt how to play dominos and sang some of our favourite number rhymes.
Reception
WOW, what an incredible week we have had in Reception! The children have returned to school full of excitement and curiosity as we continue our learning all about space. The children have been busy preparing for their very own space adventure. They created fantastic alien hats and dressed up as astronauts, eagerly getting ready for lift-off in their rocket. Their imaginations truly took flight! As part of our learning, we explored gravity and forces. The children designed and made their own parachutes, discussing how they work and why objects fall at different speeds. We then had a wonderful time testing them out in our outdoor area, watching them float through the air and sharing lots of exciting observations. The children also had great fun playing in the sand area, using a range of space toys to inspire and support their taught vocabulary. Looking ahead, we are very excited about a rocket launching next week, with astronauts setting off to the moon. We will be keeping a close eye on the launch and hope we manage to catch it in time to see it! We also had a fantastic time celebrating Number Day. The children have been so enthusiastic about number learning and are becoming increasingly confident using numbers in their everyday play and routines. We have continued to use ten frames throughout the day, during our continuous provision. This week, our Drawing Club has been based around hedgehogs. We enjoyed reading the story Hedgehog Hunt to celebrate World Hedgehog Day, which took place on Monday. The children loved listening to the story and were inspired to create their own drawings, sharing ideas and developing their creativity while learning more about these fascinating animals. It has been wonderful to see so much enthusiasm, creativity, and confidence in the children this week. We hope you have an amazing weekend, and we look forward to more exciting learning next week!
Year 1
This week in Year 1, the children have continued developing their instruction writing skills. They have been working hard to sequence their ideas clearly and are using appropriate time openers to help organise their steps. In Maths, we have begun our new unit on addition up to 20. The children have been applying their number bond knowledge to add numbers greater than 10 and are now starting to use their addition skills to double amounts. We are really pleased with the confidence they are showing. We have also completed our Geography topic by creating maps of the school grounds. The children looked at our school on Google Maps from an aerial view and were very excited to spot different areas of the playground. This is something you might enjoy exploring at home too—looking at your local area and recognising familiar places from above. In Science, we have continued investigating the properties of materials. This week, the children have been experimenting to find out which objects float and which sink. They have loved making predictions and testing their ideas. The children were extremely excited to celebrate Number Day, and we were very impressed by their creative outfits—thank you for your support with this! We hope you have a wonderful weekend and look forward to welcoming the children back next week.
Year 2
An exciting week in Year 2 English lessons as we began our work based on a new story ‘The Princess and The Peas’. We learned to relate to how the Princess was feeling by thinking about the foods we liked and disliked. We also worked hard on our fairytale introductions by adding a mystery, timeless and magical feel with our language. We then continued our hard work on our descriptions by adding lots of detail about our main characters and there were lots of attempts to use some higher level vocabulary in our expanded noun phrases and some lists appearing in our independent writing. In maths, we focused on multiplication by learning what is happening when we multiply. We recognised and created equal groups and discovered how repeated addition can help you work out any and all times tables. Year 2 have worked really hard to learn their 2 times tables, keep up the good work and practice, practice, practice! The more you do the faster you’ll become. On Thursday, we were very pleased to celebrate Number Day with lots of maths based puzzles and activities. The children were very proud to wear number clothes and we even had some walking maths lessons and a dice! Thank you for your support with this, they all looked fab!
Year 3
We have had another busy and exciting week in Year 3, full of hands-on learning and great enthusiasm from the children. Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been getting up to across the curriculum. This week in Maths, we have been learning all about measurement. The children practised drawing lines accurately, measuring a variety of items around the classroom, and converting between centimetres (cm) and millimetres (mm). They worked carefully and showed growing confidence when using rulers and comparing measurements. In English, we finished writing our diary entries inspired by Charlotte’s Web, and the children should be very proud of their thoughtful and imaginative writing. We have also begun an exciting new topic on instruction writing. Through a fun and practical lesson, the children tried to give clear oral instructions to get the teachers to make jam sandwiches properly! Along the way, we learned about imperative verbs and why chronological order is so important when giving instructions. In RE, we continued our learning about miracles. We explored and compared Bible stories, focusing on the healing of the paralysed man and the healing of the blind man, discussing what these stories teach us and the similarities between them. In Science, we learned about how shadows are formed. The children carried out an investigation using torches and an opaque shape to observe how a shadow changes depending on how close or far it is from a light source. They made careful observations and enjoyed experimenting. Thank you, as always, for your continued support — we’re looking forward to another great week of learning ahead!
Year 4
It has been another very busy, albeit soggy, week in Year 4! We have started our new unit on non-chronological reports, and the children worked collaboratively to identify the key features by exploring a range of examples. Using the research they completed for homework, the children confidently began planning their reports on carnivorous plants, selecting subheadings, topic paragraphs and technical vocabulary. We have also continued to practise our comprehension skills, focusing on answering questions in full sentences, giving clear explanations and using correct punctuation. In science, we explored sound insulation and began planning an investigation to find out which materials would make the most effective ear defenders. The children enjoyed discussing their ideas and forming hypotheses, and we are looking forward to testing these in next week’s lesson. In geography, we looked at how different animals have adapted to living in the rainforest, examining specific adaptations and how these help the animals survive. In maths, we refreshed our knowledge of measurement by revisiting equivalence between centimetres, metres and kilometres. We ended the week with a practical activity drawing shapes with a set perimeter — this proved trickier than expected, but the children showed great perseverance. We ended the week with a fantastic trip to Danbury. The children had the opportunity to tour the site, visit the cabins, sample the food and try out their archery skills! The visit has certainly built excitement, and the children are already looking forward to their residential trip in May.
Year 5
Calloy! Callay! Year 5's week 'twas brillig, as they began their journey exploring frabjous nonsense verse, including works by Edward Lear and Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky. We looked at whimsy and wordplay, with the children analysing neologisms and portmanteau words, before creating their own marvellous and intriguing vocabulary which they then used to draft their own reworking of the tale of the Jabberwock! In Maths, we built on previous knowledge of calculation by using the order of operations (BODMAS) to correctly solve complicated equations, including those with missing times. We also looked at scale factors and the scaling of rectilinear shapes. In Art, we built upon our composition lessons on background, middleground and foreground and applied the understanding to printing. Children carved the design of each layer in polystyrene, before applying printing paint to the surface and then printing. They did this with three separate layers in different colours to build up their image based upon those in our core book The Arrival. In their cooking session with Ms Dourmoush on Wednesday, the children made delicious, crunchy rainbow wraps.
Year 6
This week, Year 6 developed their debating skills, learning how a formal debate is structured and how to participate respectfully and articulately. We were blown away by the maturity and team work demonstrated as they structured their arguments well. We then used these skills and applied them to our understanding of persuasive writing. We started by analysing the structure and its influences on the reader, before planning and drafting our own persuasive essays using Rose Blanche (our recent text) as our stimulus. In maths, we revised our understanding of decimals. We revised place value to support our rounding of decimals; multiplying and dividing decimals. In history, we explored the impacts of World War Two on food and how rationing impacted day to day life. We used our own food diaries to make direct comparisons to how different our diets are to what would have been available during WW11. During RE, we explored the five pillars of Islam, focusing on the Second Pillar, Salah. Year 6 learnt the importance of prayer, the preparations for prayer and the different movements involved. On Friday, we were so excited to celebrate all of the hard work Year 6 have put into their secondary transfer now that final interviews have taken place. The children had a fantastic time at Air Jump and it was a great way to celebrate all their hard work and achievements.
Outdoor Learning
The children have been carrying on with their project work but some classes have managed to get to the allotment between the rain showers! The Year 2s went out to look at the herbs and various fruit trees so they can recognise them later in the year. Nursery and Reception managed to dig over the new fruit cage and take out the last of the leeks and beetroots. We then gave them to chef to create something delicious! Year 1 were looking at the herbs we grow and managed to smell the differences between them. The other children have almost finished their projects before we begin our new growing season.
Languages
This week Nursery revised the core vocabulary on family and Reception completed some work sheets matching French words with pictures. This week we read “Lucie chat ࠢà la ferme”: the children recognised some words about family and picked up new vocabulary related to animals. Year 1 worked on numbers, recognising spelling and pronunciation, whilst Year 2 carried on describing eyes and hair, and learning where to place adjectives in a sentence. Year 3 had a lesson on phonics - sounds QU and Ç - having a lot of fun with the “smash the avocados” game; Year 4 learnt different time phrases to be able to say when they do their hobbies, and they tried their very first French dictation! In Spanish, Year 5 learnt how to talk about their teachers using adjectives that end in -o/-a whilst Year 6 finished the translation of their complex text and practised reading skills, focusing on pronunciation and intonation.
Design & Technology and Computing
Quiz of the week, ask your child if they can explain what the words in bold mean. Year 3 Electrical Posters Pupils in Year 3 wired the circuits for their posters and identified the optimum place to position the bulb in order to attract attention to the poster’s key content. Year 4 Pavilion Structures This week, Year 4 explored the specific points from the design brief that will help make their product successful. They also started preparing their construction materials.
Year 5 Bridges In Year 5, pupils learned about 3 different bridge structures. They then applied these construction features to making a paper bridge that can hold a load without collapsing.
Year 6 Electric Car Year 6 pupils analysed the design brief and identified the features necessary to make a successful car model. Computing highlights Year 1 reviewed their learning with a quiz about editing and retouching digital imagery. Year 2 wrote step by step instructions to their peers that required them to draw a robot, this activity highlighted the importance of specific information that is provided in a sequence. Year 3 pupils learned how to identify fake e-mails and what they should do if they receive them. Year 4 pupils added the data they collected to the first 2 pages of their website. Year 5 pupils learned about the role of RAM vs ROM on a Mars rover and how a limited memory can impact the range of movement and actions a device can undertake simultaneously. Year 6 learned the importance of creating and using complicated, strong passwords and how easily passwords can be hacked.