From the Deputy Head
The sun has most certainly shone on us for the majority of this busy and exciting week!
We’ve naturally missed our lovely Year 6 team this week, but we have enjoyed their wonderful Norfolk photos and videos on our social media channels. I have no doubt that they will have many great stories to share when they get back! Residential trips really are special, as they create the perfect opportunities for amazing memories to be made and for friendships to deepen.
Back at school, we have been making the most of every minute as usual. One of my favourite parts of the week is being able to observe the teaching and learning that takes place throughout our school. Our children know that I am naturally nosey and I love looking through their books and seeing the progress that they continue to make. When having conversations about their work, our children are always proud to share their achievements.
On Wednesday, Year 4 represented our school superbly well during a number of cricket and rounders fixtures. The teamwork they displayed throughout was excellent. A moment that stood out was when one of our pupils was running to score a rounder, when she accidentally bumped into a fielder from the other school. Without hesitation, she stopped running and prioritised the well-being of that other person. Forfeiting the rounder to consider and help someone else. It really was a great example of how our children learn to be competitive and determined to win, whilst always having respect for our opponents.
Following some awesome dancing at our Year 2 and 3 disco yesterday, our Year 2 children visited Watergate School in Lewisham again today. The children continue to be fantastic ambassadors and we look forward to watching this connection grow.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support.
Have a lovely weekend,
Kind regards, Mr Lupton
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Safeguarding Team
This week at St Olave's
Year 2 visit to Watergate School
Last Friday, and for the next few Fridays, Year 2 visited Watergate School for a joint venture. Watergate is a special school that caters for a range of primary age pupils with severe learning difficulties and complex needs. As you can imagine, our children really made us proud, making new friends and working together on an art project linked to a story about how flowers grow. We talk to our children all the time about the importance of difference and acceptance, alongside trying to instil qualities such as perseverance and resilience, and a partnership like this allows children from both schools to see this in action in a different way. We cannot wait to visit again!
Sporting Round Up
Year 2 Tennis
Last Friday saw Year 2 travel across to Shooters Hill College for an afternoon of Tennis. This was an Inspire event, which focuses on developing and enhancing the childrens tennis skills. There were three different games, which were played to develop hand eye coordination, striking skills with rackets, and accuracy hitting. The children had a great time and enjoyed the games. Well done Year 2!
Girls' Football League
The Girls' Football League continued on Tuesday and, with Year 6 on a school trip, the girls from Year 5 took the opportunity to rise to the challenge. Unfortunately we fell just short losing 2-0, however I could not be more proud of the girls. The girls worked incredibly hard, defended extremely well, and created chances to score goals. I know that the girls will continue to develop together, and that next academic year the girls' football team will be in a very good position. With 3 games left to go, and St Olave's still top of the league, it’s still all to play for. Well played Year 5!
Inclusive Sports
Year 4 had an inclusive sports afternoon at Footscray RFC on Wednesday afternoon. We invited St David's to come and have an afternoon of Cricket and Rounders matches. The matches were played in great spirit and the children encouraged each other to do their best in every game. We witnessed brilliant batting and superb team work when fielding. Well played Year 4!
Pupil Achievements
Congratulations to George in Year 4 for passing his Grade 1 Classical Guitar exam with distinction.
Congratulations to Tiana in Year 5 for passing her Grade 1 Harp with distinction and to Arianna in Year 3 for passing her Grade 2 Harp with distinction.
Congratulations to many of our pupils who took part in the Blackheath Music Festival. Goktug in Year 6 was given the Silver Award for his piano performance in the 10 and 11 Years Long Recital category and Starryena in Year 4 was given the Bronze Award for her harp performance. Well done to all and we look forward to celebrating many more achievements soon!
Notices
Bug Hotel Building Materials
We will be taking a group of children to Southwood Park next week to complete the Bugwall Tunnel bug hotel. If anyone has any canes, pine cones, hay, straw, corrugated cardboard, dead leaves, engineering bricks, and twigs that can be added to the bug hotel, please bring them in and leave with Mrs Farrell. Thank you.
Uniform
We have quite a lot of uniform without names on (or with the names of past pupils). Please take a few minutes to check that your child’s uniform has their name on and that the label has not fallen off. Thank you.
Nursery
Who’s that trip, trapping over MY bridge?!
This week, we have read the books ‘No dinner’ and ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. After reading the stories, we discussed the similarities and differences between both stories. Using the materials from the Creation Station, the children made troll and goat masks. They loved being the grumpy troll so much that they decided to create their own bridge in the outdoor area. We then recreated the story using their imaginations and inspiration from both books. It was so lovely to see the children come to life and immerse themselves into the characters in the story.
As the weather was on our side this week, we took a trip to the allotment and found some flowers, twigs and leaves to create a plant print. The children absolutely loved making their own picture and it was a fantastic activity to strengthen their fine motor skills.
We have been focusing on counting and recognising numbers and amounts. We have been finding things around the classroom and counting how many of each we can find.
Have an incredible weekend. We look forward to seeing you for the last week of half term! Where has the time gone?
Reception
What a pleasure it has been to see so many smiley faces enjoying the sunshine this week. We say it every week but we have had a gorgeous week, learning inside and outside the classroom.
This week in ‘Drawing Club’ we have been reading the book Stuck. The children were asked to draw their own tree and then create something that got stuck in it and a machine to get it out. Their ideas and creations are incredible and they have given us a little chuckle.
The children have been using their gross motor skills, focusing on completing obstacle courses and following tracks accurately on bikes and scooters. They have made up their own highway code and they have even taken their driving test and made licence cards. We added our own fingerprint and we spoke about our unique identities.
In Maths, we are continuing to learn about number bonds within and to 10. We have been using Numicon and cubes to find missing amounts. We have spoken about symbols and we have written our own number sentences.
We have also started to learn about sharing a given amount.
Next week, we will be visiting Sally at the library and taking a little trip to the park. We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Year 1
Year 1 have had another very busy week. We are working hard to learn how to recognise coins, count in coins and give change during our maths lessons. The children enjoyed staffing their own shop to practice these skills too!
We have practiced lots of different skills during our English lessons; including spelling, rhyming and grammar and the children have worked really hard to develop their skills.
Science saw an end to our materials unit last week, which means we start to learn all about animals! We were able to group animals into their category, be it mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird or fish; which of course led to lots of great discussions about animals and what groups they belong to and why!
Year 2
Another week has flown by in Year 2! We have continued with our fractions learning in maths focusing on thirds, unit and non-unit, fractions and recognising equivalent fractions. In English we have furthered our understanding of past tense to include past progressive and wrote funny diary entries about a disastrous day. We have also expanded our understanding of extending sentences to make them more interesting for the reader.
In geography this week, we have gone on a Whistlestop tour of the United Kingdom. Exploring the countries and capitals, seas and oceans - we have loved using the Atlas to find our way around. We became detectives to figure out famous landmarks from satellite images, considered whether we would prefer to live in the city or the countryside, and explored the flags that make up the Union Jack.
We had another wonderful swimming lesson on Tuesday, we can already see the fabulous progress that the children are making.
We had a treat on Thursday with a fabulous disco organised by the FRSC. We loved dressing up, having fun with our friends and eating pizza! Thank you very much to the parents involved in organising such a fun event!
We hope you all have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you Monday for our last week of this half term!
Year 3
Another fab week in Year 3 with plenty of fun! We kicked off with another solar oven science lesson, this time measuring to see if our solar ovens were more effective with or without cling film. We popped the ovens out on the playground and used thermometers to measure the difference with and without the cling film. The results were … varied! Some increased in temperature by a couple of celsius, some by several and some even decreased. This really put our theories of the greenhouse effect into a spin. However, we did have a great discussion about how not every investigation gives the results you are expecting and how different variables might skew results too!
A new topic for us in maths, and this one is all about money, money and more money. We started by recognising coins and notes (not an easy thing to do in an increasingly cashless society) and thought about all the possibilities for creating the same amounts using different coins. We then focused on adding sums of money before moving on to working out change by creating our very own Year 3 shop.
In English this week, we started by planning out a diary of a fictional day in our life where we swapped our precious items several times over and had to hunt them down just like in our book ‘The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish’. We had mums being swapped for PS5s, PS5s swapped for skateboards, skateboards swapped for headphones…all sorts! We then began writing our diary entries being careful to add some emotions and thoughts, as well as some conjunctions and adverbs.
Thank you to all that have been applying suncream before school and providing the children with hats this week. Please continue to do so as this lovely weather carries on!
We have had so much fun this week and we can’t wait for more on Monday to start our final week of this half-term!
Year 4
What a wonderfully sunny week we have had in Year 4. Time is flying by, with only one more week left until half term!
In English, we have begun planning our own Ananse story, in keeping with the genre but with our own creative twists. Reviewing our knowledge of adverbs and conjunctions has been a key part of this process to ensure we are writing interesting and detailed, multi-clause sentences.
In maths, we have started a new topic on shape and have been recognising acute, obtuse and right angles, as well as comparing and ordering them by size. We then began looking at the properties of different triangles and correctly identifying them as either isosceles, scalene or right-angled triangles. Ask your child to explain the differences between them, and maybe even draw you some examples! We ended the week looking at the properties of polygons. How many polygons can your child name?
In science, we have continued our work on habitats by looking at the way different animals have adapted to their environments. We then sorted different animals by looking at their features and how they might be best suited to survive in a particular habitat.
In Geography, we learnt how to find a point on the map using a grid reference and followed directions to find hidden treasure. We then drew our own maps using our imaginations and OS map symbols. The children were astounded to hear about life before Sat Navs; having to plan journeys ahead of time with a map and navigating during car journeys to make sure you reached your destination! As the warm weather continues, please remind the children to fill their water bottles, apply sun cream and bring hats into school so they can enjoy the sunshine safely.
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Year 5
This week, Year 5 have been working hard in all areas with a keen focus on developing vocabulary and exam techniques. We have been drawing upon our worldly comprehension to aid us with successful completion of cloze procedures. Our focus this week was on Ancient Egypt and the human brain. We found out some incredible facts, for example, the average human brain weighs three pounds. Later in the week, we improved our editing and publishing skills by finalising our letters to Mr Knight (Sid), who served in WW11 and wrote us a lovely letter for VE day.
In maths, we have continued our angles topic, focusing upon problem solving and applying our knowledge of the sum of angles on a straight line, around a point, of any polygon (with the introduction of some algebra) and opposite angles! The children demonstrated determination as we applied this understanding to exam-like questions. We unpicked questions together to establish what knowledge we had to draw upon and developed application of prior knowledge.
We continued to develop our understanding of VR and NVR techniques this week. In NVR, cube and nets were the focus. The children applied the three rules: 1. Duds 2. Opposites and 3. Orientation, their application of this technique is becoming far more secure- well done! In VR, we explored spelling techniques such as missing three letter words and systematic moving of letters to create news words.
Year 6
Year 6 have had a wonderful week in a very sunny Norfolk. Look out for a full report next week but in the meantime, click on the button above to see lots posts about their adventures.
Outdoor Learning
It has been a very hot one at the allotment this week with temperatures in some of the greenhouses hitting over 40 degrees! The Year 5 classes were keen to see how the strawberries they planted have been getting on and with all the sunshine, there are quite a few close to fully grown and ready to eat. A few classes have been completing their science lessons in the allotment and have sketched flowers and learnt about photosynthesis as well as different parts of a plant. The tomato plants are doing well in the greenhouses and we have planted spring onions, beetroot and lettuce.
Languages
What a gorgeous week full of sunshine and energy! Nursery carried on working with opinions on fruits and vegetables, and so did Reception, with some impressive writing and colouring of fruits too. Year 1 went to the imaginary zoo this week, where they found gorillas, lions, tigers, penguins and elephants! Year 2, on the other hand, went to a restaurant and ordered food for their breakfast and lunch! In the Upper School, in French, Year 3 and Year 4 worked on phonics, and in Spanish, Year 5 made origami: they created their own “casita de papel”, little paper house, and labelled in Spanish the rooms inside.
Music
Once again, a huge well done to all of the children for their wonderful singing during our VE Day celebrations at school. Our song ‘I’ll Remember’ was a poignant reminder of the importance for new and future generations to pass on the message of ‘peace’, ‘kindness’ and ‘togetherness’. The children sang from the heart and thank you again to friends and family who came to join us for a memorable afternoon.
The Upper School children are starting to listen to the music for their end of year production of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. We’ve been watching clips from the Disney film as well to see the context of the songs and the expressions and actions of the characters. We’ve started to rehearse a couple of the group songs in lessons this week. Soon the children will be working on their year group dances that they will perform on the night. It’s always a wonderful occasion!
The children in the Lower School have started to learn two songs this week ahead of a trip they will be having next term (a letter will be sent out nearer the time). We will continue to learn these songs in the coming weeks. As always, the children sing with great enthusiasm and are quick to learn new songs.
The children in Nursery learnt about Scott Joplin this week. They listened to ‘The Entertainer’ and heard about how he is still one of the best ragtime musicians in the world. We enjoyed ending our lesson with a song where we share with each other what has made us smile this week! Reception used percussion instruments to play a beat and copy rhythms. We changed our ‘tempo’ and ‘dynamics’, and discussed what a ‘rest’ is and why silence can be really effective in music. We learnt about the names of our percussion instruments and discussed how they are played.
A huge thank you to Anna (Year 4) and Arthur (Year 1) for their wonderful performances on the piano and violin in assembly this week. You played confidently and entertained the rest of the school during our assembly!