Newsletter 18th September 2017

From the Head...

We have completed our first full week back at school and it has been a real pleasure to have watched your children settle in so well to their new classes. Our Nursery children have had their first full week, have stayed for lunch every day and Mrs Warner and the staff are delighted to see that they all have very healthy appetites! And I am so proud of our Year 6 children who have risen to the challenges of their first secondary transfer examinations this week with maturity, resilience and confidence. Whether they have now finished sitting examinations or are still preparing, every single child really did their absolute best and did it with a smile on their faces. Well done to you all.

Thank you for attending the Welcome meetings held this week; it was lovely to see so many of you able to attend and I know that the information given out will be very useful. Please do take note of the advice given at the meetings, particularly with regard to naming uniform and having the correct equipment every day; it really does make things easier for the children and staff.

As I walk around the school, it is such a delight to share in the children’s learning. I am so proud to work with such a fantastic team of staff who really have worked hard to plan such exciting learning opportunities for your children and are busy getting to know their strengths and areas of development.

Tomorrow is the annual New Eltham Festival and as usual, we have a stall just outside the Co-op by New Eltham Train Station. The Festival is an excellent opportunity for us to support our local community and I would love to see some of you pop by and visit our stall between 10.00am and 3.00pm tomorrow. Fingers crossed for dry weather!

Whatever you are doing this weekend, I hope you have a lovely relaxing time and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Kind regards

Miss Holloway

Headteacher

Year 6

This week Year 6 have been busily preparing for their 11+ on Wednesday and all are now thoroughly pleased that their hard work helped them feel very prepared for their exam. There are a few more exams to come, which we will continue to prepare for. Some of our Year 6 students started their independent research projects and showed fantastic research skills and inquisitive minds.

On Wednesday afternoon, all of Year 6 were treated to our first trip of the year, Air Jump, in celebration of their hard work throughout Year 5 and the beginning of Year 6. They had the whole place to themselves and a great time was had by all, especially Miss Ireland, Miss Kiely and Mrs Farrell!

Year 5

This week Year 5 have been applying the exciting learning from last week’s Brainwave IPC unit to other areas of their curriculum; in Comprehension we learnt more about and improved our inference skills, in maths we have been revising our Place Value and in English we have started our new Power of Reading text, have a look below at the children’s freeze frames of the children acting out a scene from the first chapter of our text ‘Floodland’. In all of our lessons we have been thinking about the IPC learning goals that we have used - cooperation, communication, respect and enquiry to name but a few. We have also thought about how our neurons are making links between our new learning and our previous knowledge. Neurosurgeons in the making!

Year 4

We launched our new IPC topic, Active Planet, in style this week with Earthquake Day. Year 4 explored what it might be like to experience an earthquake and what they might need to do in order to stay safe. We are pleased to say that the children can now assume the ‘Drop, Cover and Hold On’ pose in less than 10 seconds, should New Eltham ever become an earthquake hotspot! The children were then tasked with planning how to turn St Olave’s into a disaster relief centre. They worked together incredibly well, thinking about how to use the space, what supplies we would need and how we could keep track of people coming in for support. We even managed to film some television announcements so that local residents would know what to do!

Year 3

This week Year 3 have been beginning their IPC topic of Scavengers and Settlers. We used the Family Tree homework as an introduction to the idea of our ancestors and how they might have lived. Thank you to all the parents who helped the children with this research.

In 3S we talked about the Golden Rules of our school which were illustrated for homework. There was some disagreement as to which one was the most important!

We also did some work on sentences. This will feed into our new class display on which every child will have an “I can...” statement and a “Next I need to...” statement for writing.

In 3H the children have been busy working on synonyms. The children were given a passage of writing where the word BIG was repeated a number of times. They all thought of some marvellous synonyms to use instead of the word BIG. How many can you think of?....

Next week we have our trip to the Environmental Centre on Wednesday. The children should wear PE kit as it will be muddy and adventurous!

Year 2

This week we have been thinking about what plants need to grow. We then planted gardens of our own. On Monday 2DS made container gardens with succulents and cat grass seeds. They are hoping to see the grass poking through the earth very soon! Each group had a garden design, just like real landscapers but on a smaller scale! They even made paths with the slate and put little stones around the succulents so that the earth will keep moist. The children loved planting their pots in class and will enjoy seeing them grow over the coming weeks. 2P have also been planting herbs and flowers in the allotment and learning not to trust the weather forecast! The children designed their own garden plots and will see how their plants grow over the next few weeks. All the children in Year 2 will have the opportunity to visit the allotment as part of their new IPC topic I’m Alive.

Year 1

This week we started our new topic ‘Who Am I?’ Over the summer, every child created a special box to represent who they are and their individual personalities. We were amazed to see just how much effort, thought and care had gone into each box! The children have loved sharing their boxes this week and having the opportunity to speak about their hobbies, families, likes and dislikes, holidays and much, much more! The children learnt the roles of interviewer and interviewee during lessons. In partners, they developed their speaking and listening and questioning skills to find out more about each other. Continuing with the theme of ‘Who Am I?’ in maths, Year 1 have been using bar charts and pictograms to show their favourite colour, eye colour and favourite fruit. In English, the children became illustrators and drew pictures to illustrate an opening sentence. They have also used role play to explore the main characters in our story ‘The Storm Whale,’ particularly thinking about the character’s emotions.

Reception

This week we have started our half term topic of ‘People who help us’, beginning with those who help us at school and at home. Both classes have started a ‘working wall’ of a street, which we will add the buildings and vehicles to as we learn about a new emergency service e.g. hospital and ambulance. This week we have used shapes to make houses and our school. We have talked about our families and our school staff.

Other learning has included sorting and practicing our sounds by identifying the initial sound to describe pictures of community helpers.

Nursery

On Wednesday morning, the children in Nursery had their first visit to the park. They thoroughly enjoyed playing on all the equipment, learning how to wait for their turn and helping each other on the swings.

This week the children have also been very creative. They have been looking at their faces in a mirror and made beautiful self portraits using paint. They have also turned themselves into Humpty Dumpty, designing patterns for Humpty’s trousers. They are all very proud of their achievements and so are we!

Nasal Flu Vaccination - Monday 16th October

As part of the National Childhood Vaccination Programme, children in Reception through to Year 4 have been offered the annual Nasal Flu Vaccination. Information regarding this has been sent home with your child. Please can all Consent Forms be returned to school by Wednesday 20th September. All forms need to be completed and returned even if you do not wish your child to be vaccinated.

French

Over the last couple of years, St Olave’s has been investing in new technology to enhance pupils’ learning and development. Language learning in particular has hugely benefited from this and we are now proud to be able to offer a structured, comprehensive learning experience, which combines in-class and online language learning.

Lower School pupils can use the language website Babelzone (now also accessible on smartphones and tablets via the Puffin Academy Browser – www.flashbrowser.com/APN/). The user name and password shared by the whole school are in their work folder.

Upper School pupils can use the language website Linguascope (again the user name and password are shared by the whole school and are detailed in their planner). Year 5 and 6 pupils also have individual accounts for two language apps, Duolingo and Memrise (user name and password are in their planner).

To encourage pupils to make full use of these new learning tools, language lab sessions will be on offer for Upper School pupils on Monday and Friday lunchtimes. They will be on a free access, first come, first served basis, and pupils will be able to stay for as little or as long as they wish.

Home learning will also be set from Year 3 using these websites and pupils will be encouraged to use these at least once a week for 10-15 minutes.

Duolingo (on offer for Year 5 and 6 only) is an app that is now widely used by primary and secondary schools. However, it was not initially conceived for school pupils and has a friend and chat option. We have spoken to the children at length about the proper use of these features. They know not to use the chat option and that they should stick exclusively to the class group we have set up. We will continue monitoring this regularly, however, please supervise your children carefully at all times when using technology at home to ensure their online safety.

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