From the Head
There are weeks at St Olave’s that feel like a celebration of everything we believe in and this has certainly been one of them.
Our Year of Reading theme for April turned our focus to the joyful, playful and powerful world of poetry and what better way to bring that to life than with a visit from the incredible Adisa the Verbaliser on Monday. Adisa’s energy and passion for language were utterly infectious and our children responded with such confidence, curiosity and creativity. There were smiles, laughter and some truly inspired performances. More importantly, there was courage; children stepping up to share their voices, try new rhythms and take risks with words. That is resilience in action, wrapped up in rhyme.
On Tuesday, it was another milestone moment - Year 2’s very first swimming lesson. For some, it was pure excitement; for others, there were wobbles. But each child approached the water with bravery and a growing sense of independence. It was a wonderful reminder that resilience doesn’t always shout; sometimes it’s just quietly getting in the pool, even when your tummy is full of butterflies. We are so proud of them all and look forward to watching their confidence grow with each stroke.
And speaking of energy and excitement our first FRSC Disco took place yesterday for the Year 4 and 5 children and what a night it was! Thank you to the fabulous parents of the Fundraising and Social Committee for organising an evening full of limbo, laughter and memory-making. These shared moments are so important. They build friendships, school spirit and a sense of belonging that lasts far beyond the pizza and balloons
As always, these highlights are about more than the events themselves. They are about the kind of children we are nurturing together - children who try new things, express themselves, support each other and bounce back when things feel new or unfamiliar.
Thank you for your continued support and for trusting us with your children’s learning, growth and joy.
Wishing you an extended weekend full of fun; here's hoping the weather stays good for the Bank Holiday! I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Safeguarding Team
This week at St Olave's
Year 6 Bikeability Training
This week, our Year 6 children took part in Bikeability training with Cycle Confident, working towards their Level 2 Certificate. The training focused on teaching the children how to cycle safely and responsibly, respond appropriately to hazards, maintain suitable riding positions, and comply with road signals, signs and markings. All the children approached the sessions with enthusiasm and maturity, showing great determination and resilience. We are incredibly proud of their fantastic progress and commend their exceptional behaviour throughout the week.
Year 4 trip to the Saatchi Gallery
On Monday, Year 4 enjoyed a wonderful trip to the Saatchi Gallery in London. This was an art trip with a focus on the work of William and May Morris, and we also visited the ‘Flowers’ exhibition that is on in the gallery at the moment. The children were excellent ambassadors for the school, and they asked some fantastic questions throughout the trip. We got the opportunity to do a watercolour painting workshop and have a guided tour of the exhibition. Some of the artwork is interactive or produced using cutlery or 3D printed materials, for example the digital flower wall which had motion sensors on it so every time someone moved, the flowers moved! We also learnt a lot about how flowers have been used in fashion, culture and other aspects of our lives. We even managed to fit in a quick visit to the playground too on our way back to school!
Adisa The Verbalizer
To celebrate Poetry Month, our school was thrilled to welcome the brilliant performance poet Adisa the Verbalizer. The day began with a lively whole-school assembly where Adisa captivated everyone with his energetic and inspiring performance. The children joined in chorally, creating an electric atmosphere full of rhythm, rhyme and excitement.
Following the assembly, year groups had the opportunity to take part in a poetry workshop led by Adisa. During these sessions, the children explored creative ways to express themselves through words, building confidence and having fun with language. It was a memorable day that brought poetry to life and left everyone feeling inspired to write and perform their own verses.
Year 4 and 5 Disco
On Thursday, Year 4 and 5 were treated to a fantastic disco courtesy of the Fundraising and Social Committee (FRSC). The children enjoyed dancing, playing the ‘Pass the Balloon’ game and also seeing how low they could go on the limbo - we definitely have some very flexible children! As well as this, we enjoyed pizza and fruit prepared by our kitchen staff. Thank you to all of the FRSC for organising it and to Mr Schaller for providing the music.
Sporting Round Up
Rock Climbing
Last Friday afternoon, Year 5 children travelled to The Reach in Charlton to take part in an afternoon of rock climbing. The children were brilliant and had such a great time. It was a pleasure to witness the determination and resilience shown by the children to overcome any fears or worries they had climbing up the high wall. Great climbing Year 5!
Girls' Football
Tuesday saw the return of the Year 5 and 6 girls' football team. We played one game this week as our second game conceded the fixture as they were unable to attend (an automatic 3-0 victory). The game we played resulted in a 2-0 victory with some brilliant teamwork and goals on display. The girls continue their wonderful unbeaten run, not long to go now, keep working hard girls!
Pupil Achievements
Congratulations to Starryena for passing her Grade 2 Singing for Musical Theatre Practical Exam!
Nursery
There has been great excitement in Little Acorns and the EYFS this week as we have been targeted by the ‘car snatcher’! The mysterious snatcher has been locking up parts of the classroom and some of our toys have been locked away and then the keys hidden in different places. The children are becoming excellent at finding the correct key and opening the padlocks.
The beautiful weather has led to much of our learning taking place outside the classroom and the children have had a great time using clay to make ’well dressings’ and foraging for grass and twigs to make birds’ nests.
Reception
Watch out, The Car Snatcher is about!
This week, The Car Snatcher has been playing cheeky tricks on the children in Reception and Nursery. His favourite trick was locking things up using chains and padlocks. He left us rhyming clues to find the keys. Once we had worked this out, we went on a hunt to find them. For example, when he locked the gate, the keys were hidden on a plate! We made wanted posters and set up traps to see if we could find him.
The weather has been on our side this week and we have made the most of it, playing in the sun. We have had so much fun playing in the water and going to the ‘St Olave’s Spa’ in the water area. Before Easter, we spoke a lot about new life and how birds look after their eggs. We had a few more questions and conversations about this topic so we decided we would make our own. We thought about different things birds find to put in their nests and we went on a walk around the allotment to find twigs, leaves, feathers, dried grass and so much more. Watching the children take so much care and show great empathy was beautiful to see.
What’s the time Mr Wolf? This week for Drawing Club, we have been reading books all about time and clocks. The children were so excited to learn about the face, hands and numbers on the clock. We spoke about ‘o’clock’ and which numbers the hands need to be on. We then made our own watches.
Next week, we will be learning more about VE day and why it is so important to us. We hope you have a wonderful Bank Holiday. See you next week! :)
Year 1
We've had another wonderful week in Year 1. The sun has been shining and the children have been happy and full of enthusiasm. On Monday, they had a visit from the poet, Adisa the Verbaliser, and this inspired us to spend the week writing our own poetry during our English lessons. The children identified different objects, people and memories that are important to them. Their poems were themed around what they may find on the other side of a magical door. We had some wonderful and heart warming ideas from the children. Including meals cooked by family members, siblings, cousins and precious holiday memories.
In maths, the children completed their unit learning about fractions. They have discussed and practised finding halves and quarters of objects and amounts. This may be something you would like to continue to practise at home. They have now moved on to the unit learning about time. This includes learning days of the week and months of the year, ordering events as well as telling the time to the hour and half hour.
We have begun our humanities topic, learning about inventors. We have discussed how an invention may go through many stages to get to an end result. The children used their data collection skills to decide if length impacts the distance a paper plane may travel. They have identified inventions from the past and the present and came up with many exciting ideas for their very own inventions.
Please may we ask that all children come to school with a sun hat and water bottle every day, now that the weather is warmer. We hope you have a wonderful bank holiday weekend.
Year 2
What a week Year 2 have had - busy, busy, busy!
We've had such an active week! We had a blast in our first swimming lesson on Tuesday - the children were amazing, showing such good listening skills and being really supportive of each other. We ended the lesson with a game all together in the pool and the serious stuff will start next week. Then, on Thursday we found ourselves tumbling, stretching, bouncing and spinning in our Gymnastics Plus afternoon. Again, the children did us proud and really challenged themselves to try new things.
In English we explored diary writing with a story about a very cheeky wombat. Practicing our first person and past tense writing, we explored different viewpoints in the story and wrote a diary entry from the perspective of a character we only saw in pictures. Fractions is our new maths topic, which is fabulous because we can talk about pizza and cake! With a focus on finding halves, quarters and thirds, you can support your child at home with this by talking about fractions of amounts.
As scientists, we have explored living things and their habitats, starting with Mrs Gren and the 7 life processes before going on a minibeast hunt, exploring food chains and the journey from farm to fork.
I think we are ready for our bank holiday as we have another super busy week next week! Have a lovely weekend!
Year 3
This week Year 3 have begun lots of new and exciting topics. In maths, we revisited fractions as we learned how to add, subtract and find a fraction of an amount. This involved us using lots of our addition, subtraction, multiplication and division skills and it is clear to see how speedy we have become with these.
In English, we have started reading ‘The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish’ by Neil Gaiman. In the story, a son has swapped his Dad for his friend’s goldfish and then changes his mind only to find his Dad has been swapped several times over. We imagined we had lost an item that was precious to us and described it by pretending it was lost. We made lost posters to explain to others how to help us locate our items if they ever went walkabout but concluded our precious items were too special to ever swap or be careless with!
RE lessons included us exploring the Hindu religion and our understanding of Brahmen this week. We thought about how Brahmen is an overall being made up of many deities. We compared this to how we are one being but we have many roles in our lives. We created artwork to represent our many roles within the outline of a person to reflect on our learning.
In Science, we began a very apt solar oven experiment. We first had to understand what the purpose of a solar oven would be before we thought of a question to investigate. We decided to investigate the maximum temperature a solar oven could achieve on a high UV day. We wrote our predictions about how high we thought the temperature would reach. We then fashioned our solar ovens with cardboard pizza boxes, black card, tin foil and straws and set to work measuring on a super sunny day. How hot did your solar oven get?
We are very excited about our trip to The National Gallery on Tuesday! Please remember to bring a packed lunch ready for a fun filled day.
Year 4
We had a wonderful start to our week, visiting the Saatchi Gallery to view the ‘Flowers’ exhibition. The children toured the gallery and took part in a William Morris workshop, using various techniques to explore patterns and colour. They absolutely loved it! It was a gloriously sunny day, so we took advantage of the beautiful weather and enjoyed a quick trip to Southwood Park on our way back to school.
In English, we have begun a new topic ‘Stories from other Cultures’ and read the Ghanaian stories of Ananse The Spider. We have been learning about conjunctions for time, place and cause and how to use them to write multi-clause sentences. We also used our sentences to retell one of the Ananse folktales. We will continue to use this text as a focus for the rest of the half term.
In maths, we have continued with our decimal topic by partitioning, ordering, comparing and rounding to the nearest whole. In science, we completed the end of topic review for our Sound unit and began our new unit of Living Things and their Habitats. Over the bank holiday, maybe take a walk around our urban area and take note of the wildlife and plants you find!
In art, we have been learning about sculptures and ended the week with an exciting lesson, using a variety of tools to carve sculptures out of plasticine.
The children had a fantastic time at their disco on Thursday. Huge thanks to the FRSC for arranging and hosting the event.
Have a wonderful extended weekend, and please remind the children to practise their VE Day songs!
Year 5
This week, we were excited to welcome Adisa the Verbalizer as part of our celebration of National Poetry Month. His interesting workshops inspired the children to dive into their imaginations, exploring the power of metaphors and creative language to create descriptive poetry about a simple topic - food! We were very impressed with the imaginations and inspiration taken from Adisa.
In maths, we have come to the end of our statistics topic looking at two-way tables and timetables. We then began our new topic on shape, understanding how to use degrees to describe turns and position. In English, our focus has been on building vocabulary when looking at cloze procedures and strengthening our comprehension skills. We then explored some poetry and used a range of literary devices to create vivid and powerful descriptions about being out at night time.
In VR, we explored matching codes, forming new words from two existing ones and identifying synonyms and antonyms to expand our vocabulary. In NVR we identified hidden shapes and completed matrices.
A huge thank you to the FRSC for hosting a fun-filled disco on Thursday evening. The children had a brilliant time dancing and enjoying time with their friends.
Have a lovely weekend, hopefully the sun stays out for us!
Year 6
This week, the children took part in their Bikeability sessions, hosted by Cycle Confident, and we are incredibly proud of the progress they have made. Over the course of the week, pupils have developed vital cycling skills and road safety awareness as they worked towards achieving their Bikeability Level 2 certificates. This important milestone means they have shown they can confidently navigate quiet roads, respond to traffic, pass stationary vehicles, negotiate junctions, and understand road markings and signals.
From mastering the basics up and down Southwood Road to cycling all the way up Green Lane and around the A2 to cycling to Avery Hill Park, every child rose to the challenge with determination and resilience. Their ability to follow instructions, stay focused, and demonstrate excellent road sense has been outstanding. The instructors were hugely impressed by the children’s efforts, and many have surpassed expectations – well done, Year 6!
In English, the children have enthusiastically launched into their new topic: Greek Mythology. After researching one of the well-known gods or goddesses, they created eye-catching and informative posters to showcase their findings. The next challenge saw them working in pairs to design digital presentations, which they will be presenting to the class in the coming weeks. It’s been wonderful to see their teamwork, creativity, and public speaking skills beginning to shine through.
To end this action-packed week on a high, the children were absolutely thrilled to receive their roles for the end-of-year production. This year, Year 6 will be performing their very own version of Beauty and the Beast! The excitement was contagious, and we were so impressed by the enthusiasm and positivity every child brought to the casting process. Rehearsals will begin soon – we can’t wait to get started!
Outdoor Learning
The weather has been glorious this week and many classes have been busy completing their science work. They have planted strawberries in our new beds, sunflowers to measure later on in the term and sweetcorn in different soils to see which ones will grow. The new area is fully open and the children have enjoyed putting together a small course to enjoy at lunchtimes. Let’s hope this weather continues!
Languages
In Early Years, both Nursery and Reception revised animals and the children have been practising reading and listening skills. Year 1 children, ahead of the new topic of zoo animals, have practised writing down animals that we have learnt last term and new ones that we have learnt this week.
In the Upper School, Year 3 started the new topic of French-speaking countries and Year 5 children have practised French verbs - 1st person plural- applied to the rooms of the house. In Latin, Year 6 started to become familiar with the jewellery, clothes and cosmetics worn by Roman women. The children have also learnt how to use conjunctions accurately in Latin.
Music
On Monday, Year 5 started to learn about the origins of musical theatre. We discussed what the key features of a musical are and went on to learn about how musicals have developed over time. This week we learnt about operas and operettas, watching a short aria from ‘Don Giovanni’ as our opera example and Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Pirates of Penzance’ as an example of an operetta. We enjoyed joining in with a (very fast!) rendition of ‘I am the very Model of a Modern Major-General’!
The whole school has come together this week in assemblies and in their Music lessons to learn war-time songs and a special song to commemorate 80 years since VE Day. We have been working very hard to learn these songs to perform at our VE Day celebrations in school next Thursday afternoon. We look forward to seeing many of you there. The children have been rehearsing their songs in class and they have been asked to also learn them at home too.
The music corridor was ringing out with wonderful playing as our instrumental lessons started up again this week. If you are interested in your child starting to learn an instrument at school (piano, harp, singing, violin and guitar are currently offered) please get in touch with Mrs Aldridge via the School Office. Children who learn an instrument, both in and out of school, enjoy opportunities to perform to the school during our weekly assemblies, as well as our more formal concerts, during class Music lessons and on many other occasions throughout the year.