From the Head
What a wonderfully busy week it has been at St Olave’s – with Christmas Cards and Christmas Fayre plans already underway, I can hardly believe we are already turning our thoughts towards December! Alongside this, we have been delighted to welcome so many prospective parents into school, many of whom are coming to us on the strength of personal recommendations from our current families. Thank you for your kind words and support – it makes such a difference. A special thank you also to those families who have already shared written testimonials with the School Office; they really do help prospective parents to see what makes our school community so special.
Today we marked National Teaching Assistant Day in style. Our Year 6 children created bunting filled with heartfelt messages of thanks for our incredible TA team, and the staffroom was full of cake and celebration this afternoon. We are so grateful for everything our Teaching Assistants do every single day to support children across the school.
Looking ahead, Monday will bring an exciting moment for our Year 6 children as we announce the first of this year’s positions of responsibility in assembly. Following this, children across the school will be invited to apply for a variety of pupil voice roles. In Thursday’s assembly, they were introduced to the different opportunities available, and each child will be bringing home a booklet with full details of the roles and responsibilities. Please do encourage your child to apply for the positions they feel most passionate about – they may apply for as many as they wish, but to keep things fair, each child will only be appointed to one major role.
Next week also sees the start of Black History Month on Wednesday. While we celebrate and recognise Black history and culture throughout the year at St Olave’s, October gives us a special opportunity to shine an extra spotlight on stories, achievements and voices that matter deeply to our whole school community. We look forward to sharing the exciting activities planned with you over the coming weeks.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support. I wish you all a happy and restful weekend.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Monthly Safeguarding Update
Safeguarding at St Olave’s
This term, we remind all children and staff that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. If your child ever shares a worry with you, please let us know straight away so we can help. Our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) team is always here to listen and act.
Focus on School Values
This week’s school value: Collaboration
This week’s manner: Don’t interrupt when someone else is talking – wait until there is a break in conversation
This week at St Olave’s, we’re continuing our focus on Collaboration; learning how to be excellent team players, listeners and contributors. Our weekly manner is all about waiting patiently to speak and not interrupting (unless in an emergency!). These are essential life skills that help children grow into respectful, empathetic communicators.
At school, we’re using gentle reminders, role play and praise to build a culture of thoughtful listening. At home, you can support this by encouraging your child to wait for their turn to speak during family meals or conversations, and by modelling how to respond respectfully even when excited to share something.
In assembly, we shared Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein - a humorous and relatable story that gently shows how interruptions can get in the way of connection. If you’re looking for a follow-up story to read at home, My Mouth is a Volcano by Julia Cook is another fantastic, child-friendly text that deals with this exact challenge.
We believe learning how to listen is just as important as learning how to read. Thank you for working with us to nurture kind, confident communicators.
This week at St Olave's
International Week of Languages
Continuing a tradition we began last year, this week at St Olave’s we celebrated languages in line with the European Day of Languages on 26th September - reimagined here as our very own ‘International Day of Languages’ We used two different activities to help the children cement the importance of learning different languages and celebrate diversity and uniqueness.
Both Lower and Upper School students have researched the word “friend” in a multitude of languages, putting under the spotlight that, by learning languages, we engage more deeply with each other. Understanding different languages fosters friendship, enhances communication, and builds respect among peers, essential qualities in our multicultural society.
In the Upper School, each class also created an engaging poster that focused on the theme of “Why it is important to learn new languages”. This collaborative effort encouraged creativity, teamwork, and a deeper understanding of the diverse cultures represented in our classroom.
On Wednesday, the Young Interpreters Team led an informative assembly, giving us some fun facts about languages: did you know there are around 7000 languages spoken today? And do you know where the longest word in the world comes from? It's a language spoken in New Zealand and has 85 letters!
It has been a fantastic week and I am already looking forward to next year’s celebrations!
Mrs Mossone Evans
Year 5 girls visit to Blackheath High
On Thursday, we were very lucky to be invited to Blackheath High to celebrate the European Day of Languages. Albeit a very early start to catch our train at 7:50am, the day was filled with fun. The children had taster sessions in French, Spanish, German and Mandarin with many different activities, and even went on a French picnic and sang “Les Cornichons”, which is still stuck in our heads!
“My favourite lesson was German: I liked it because I didn’t know any German and today I have learnt a few words! I am very happy!” - Primrose
“My favourite lesson was Spanish: we sang great songs and I loved doing the actions! I love Spanish!” - Tharaa
We are very grateful to Blackheath High for the invite and we really enjoyed our day!
Sporting Round Up
Year 4 Rugby Tournament
On Monday, Year 4 travelled to Merton Court Prep School for a friendly rugby tournament. The children were competitive in the two games we played and won both of them. Tries were scored and shared out amongst the team from a variety of different players. Great team work and collaboration was demonstrated throughout the afternoon. Well played Year 4!
Baseball Tournament
Thursday saw Year 6 travel down the road to Greenwich University to take part in a Baseball tournament. 15 schools arrived, all excited to take part across the day. The morning was made up of skills and drills to enhance the children's understanding and ability in the game. The afternoon was what the children had most looked forward to though, which was the tournament. We won all three of our group stage games, gaining entry into the semi finals. Unfortunately, we lost by 1 run on the last hit of the game, which meant we went into the 3rd and 4th place game. Again, very similar to our last game, we tied the last match on the last ball. This led to a distance hit off and unfortunately lost to the other school. We finished the tournament in 4th place, so a great achievement and Year 6 should be very proud of their efforts!
Nursery
The Little Acorns have had a lot of messy fun this week including mixing powder paint to make some autumn colours, playing in a mixture of cornflour and water and filling the water tray with large jugs of water outside.
Feathers were flying everywhere in the classroom as the children used a fan to blow them up high. We worked out the best way to position them to make them fly high and used our hand-eye coordination to catch them as they fell!
Reception
It’s been a slightly chillier week, but the sun has still been trying to make an appearance! We’ve had such a lovely week in Reception, keeping ourselves very busy practicing our subitising skills. The children have been using their knowledge to identify amounts without counting, and we’ve played lots of games discussing what we can see and what has changed when counters are added to a board. The children have shared so many brilliant observations, for example, “I can see 2 and 1, and that makes 3!” To put our learning into practice, we carried out a class vote to choose which book we wanted to read. Each child placed a counter to cast their vote, and then we looked carefully at the counters on the board to spot patterns and talk about what we noticed.
We have also continued learning new sounds in phonics. This week, we have focused on c, k, u, and b. The children have been orally blending words using these sounds, and they have completely blown our socks off as many of them are now beginning to read written words!
We’ve also introduced some new items to our loose parts area. The children have had so much fun creating pictures with their friends using tumbled glass. They have shown just how creative they can be! It has been wonderful to see them using their great communication skills, listening carefully to one another as they shared what they had made and speaking with confidence when showing their creations to their friends.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
Year 1
We have had another exciting week of learning in Year 1. In maths, the children have been continuing their work on place value up to 10. They have been comparing numbers and amounts and are beginning to confidently use vocabulary such as fewer than, greater than and equal to.
In English, we have been building on our skills in labelling and writing lists. It was lovely to see the range of thoughtful adjectives the children came up with to describe people who are important to them.
In science, we have been investigating how our eyes work. The children enjoyed experimenting with how their vision changes when using one eye or two, and they had some brilliant discussions about how distance and viewpoints are affected.
We have also started practising our poem for the Harvest Festival, which the children are very excited about. Copies have been sent home this weekend, so please continue to practise with your child to help them feel confident for the performance.
Year 2
This week Year 2 have become authors as our narrative writing topic draws to a close. We took inspiration from our story of ‘The Bear and the Piano’ by David Litchfield to create our own animal and instrument stories. We had chameleons playing violins, cheetahs playing guitars and even a tiger playing a bagpipe! After lots of hard work we had finished our stories and were ready to publish alongside amazing matching artwork.
In maths, we continued our topic of place value. We compared numbers to 100 using mathematical symbols and language, ordered them and then began skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s. Please support your child with this at home too as much as possible as we creep closer to learning these as more formal times tables.
In the afternoons this week we have been focusing on art. As well as the creations to match our stories, we began our topic of understanding tone and texture. We used different mark making tools to explore the way they presented on the page and the effects that each one gave. We then used adjectives to describe what they were like to draw with or what they looked like to us.
All of this learning was accompanied with Christmas card designing (yes - in SEPTEMBER!) and exploring the world of languages on International Languages Day! What a busy week.
Year 3
Year 3 have become fully published newspaper reporters this week, producing articles based on ‘Leon and the Place Between’. For our first ‘big write’ they have shown organisation in producing a detailed plan, used literary devices and exciting vocabulary and have even become their own editors. They have displayed great stamina in writing at length and have produced quality pieces of work. Well done Year 3, we cannot wait to read your full articles.
This week in maths, sees the end of our place value topic. The children have built on prior knowledge, cementing their recall of key facts and manipulating numbers to 1000 with confidence. They have a sound base for our next topic of addition and subtraction.
In science this week, Year 3 once again became geologists exploring the effects of weathering by applying vinegar to different rocks in order to be able to choose the most appropriate material for a new school plaque.
Our ever enthusiastic historians ordered key events from the Stone Age period using timelines this week. They were amazed to discover just how long ago this period in history was and had lively and well thought out discussions around chronology and the order of events.
Year 4
In English this week, the children have been delving into the important story-writing skill of dialogue. They have been practising how to write speech effectively, paying particular attention to layout and punctuation. The children rose to the challenge brilliantly and especially enjoyed the song we used to help them remember the rules - do ask them to sing it for you! A definite highlight of the week was when they created their own character with a super power or special skill, inspired by Varjak Paw. The children loved deciding whether their character would be a cat, dog, or horse and revelled in designing unique and imaginative super skills for their pet.
This morning, we moved on to the art of planning a story. Using Varjak Paw as inspiration, the children began developing a storyline for their own super pet. They thought carefully about the setting, characters, and the problem or quest their pet might face, before deciding on an exciting ending. It was a wonderfully creative session, and we cannot wait to read their final stories next week!
In Maths, we have now reached the end of our first topic on Place Value. The children have worked hard on comparing, ordering, and rounding numbers, and we have been impressed with their growing confidence and skills in this area. Many have shown real strength in working with numbers up to 10,000. However, we have also noticed that some children find reasoning and problem-solving questions more challenging, especially when questions are worded in a slightly unfamiliar way. Encouraging the children to take time to carefully unpick these problems will really support their progress moving forward. Next week, we look forward to beginning our new topic on addition and subtraction.
Science has been especially exciting this week, as the children carried out their first experiment of the year: investigating the melting points of different solids. Equipped with tealights, thermometers, and a range of materials, they observed how the solids changed when heated and carefully recorded their melting points. The children thoroughly enjoyed the practical, hands-on nature of the experiment and were full of curiosity and enthusiasm throughout.
Finally, we are delighted to be welcoming Adisa back on Monday for more specialist poetry work exploring the theme of journeys. It promises to be another enriching experience for the children.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support. We wish you a restful and enjoyable weekend!
Year 5
While the girls were exploring languages at Blackheath High, the boys delved into some language exploration of their own. With a ‘guess the language’ quiz and the opportunity to research the importance of learning different languages; much fun was had.
English this week has focused on making our writing more engaging for our readers. We’ve considered how and when to include dashes for parenthesis - to add more detail - and to create atmosphere and intensity. We’ve also considered the impact of flashbacks in narrative writing and how this can add depth of meaning to even a short story. From short multiplication to word problems and fractions, we’ve tested our maths ability to improve both technique and fluency. We will be starting regular times table tests soon so please ensure these are being practised at home.
In Science we have explored how the Earth rotates around the sun and, using plasticine and torches we investigated the impact of this rotation on our day, our year and the seasons.
A quick note to end about swimming - the children are making brilliant progress in their lessons so far and consistently impress their instructors with their focus and desire to push themselves further. We are very proud of them all.
Finally - please can you ensure that all uniforms are clearly labelled and encourage your children to double check they have everything before leaving school. This is especially pertinent at games where we are still finding lots of ‘left property’ at the end of the day.
Have a super weekend everyone!
Year 6
In English this week, we have been diving into the world of Shakespeare’s sonnets. We explored how these poems are structured, looking closely at the 14 lines, rhyme schemes and interesting but sometimes tricky language used by Shakespeare. We then had a go at writing our own and discovered just how creative and expressive this form of poetry can be!
In maths, our focus is multiplication and division and this week we have been looking at rules of divisibility and prime, square and cubed numbers. We have practised spotting clever shortcuts to help us know if a number is divisible by a range of numbers without needing to do long division.
We also enjoyed International Week of Languages where we thought about why it is important to learn different languages. Next week, we are looking forward to our Talk the Talk workshop, focusing on our oracy and developing our confidence and communication skills when talking to an audience.
Have a lovely weekend.
Outdoor Learning
This week the children have been busy helping to clear a new space for a greenhouse which has been donated to school. We managed to move the old polytunnel, lay some bricks as our base and move some new shelving units which were very heavy! Some of the children helped clear the Parkview gardens of lots of pears both on the floor and in the tree. We then juiced them and they were delicious. Four Year 5 girls also got to use the electric screwdriver to remove the plastic from the old polytunnel door which was exciting and different. Have a lovely weekend.
Languages
In French, Nursery and Reception students are getting very confident with the instructions routine and answering to “how are you?”. This week the children focused on numbers and practiced with different games. The weekly story was “Mes comptines”, where we started to introduce animals and colours, ready for next week.
Year 1 also focused on numbers and started to work on their French booklet: the children matched pictures with numbers and started to do some writing of numbers in French.
Year 3 practised talking about where they live and started to give opinions on whether they like where they live; Year 4 practised the topic of places in town, played listening and reading games and did some brilliant translation to consolidate the vocabulary.
In Spanish, Year 5 worked on the use of verb tener to give their age, whilst Year 6 consolidated the topic’s vocabulary with translations and memory games. In Latin, we read a real birthday party invitation that the mother of our Vindolanda family (Lepidina) received from a friend living in another fort, and we talked about the sentences’ structure in Latin and started to experience the difference between singular and plural verbs.
Design & Technology and Computing
Quiz of the week, test out your child's subject recall by asking them to explain what the bold words mean.
Year 3 Cardboard Castles
Pupils in Year 3 prepared the nets for their project by transferring paper templates to card. They focused on accurate layout and neat cutting to ensure the final nets would fold correctly.
Year 4 Electronic Torches
This week, Year 4 pupils prepared the reflectors for their torches. They needed to create a conical shaped reflector that they covered carefully with foil.
Year 5 Pop Up Books
Year 5 made the first four-page structure of their pop up books. They also created the first pop up mechanism by cutting and folding card; this step required accurate measuring and careful cutting.
Year 6 Steady Hand Games
Pupils in Year 6 used a template to transfer a net design to card, they needed to adapt the shape of the net to suit the size of the base card material, they carefully pressed and folded the joining tabs and used hot glue guns to join the tabs to make a 3D/stable base.
Computing Highlights
Year 1 pupils recalled how computers are programmed with algorithms and that errors in code are called bugs. Year 2 pupils applied their knowledge of input and output to programming an instruction for a robot. Year 3 pupils raced against the teacher to identify if paper based databases were better than computerised databases. Year 4 pupils took the first steps in creating the homepage of their websites, they selected images and edited fonts and text colours. Year 5 pupils experimented with creating simple pixellated animations using Micro: Bits. Year 6 pupils designed devices that use infrared in a school, their designs were selected from options that include proximity, heat detection, barriers and data transfer. Pupils in Year 6 also experimented with google sheets to create encrypted data.