In each of these newsletters, this opening paragraph has thus far largely covered various things to celebrate, without having to think too hard about some of the fantastic things we’ve achieved; incredible scholarship and grammar schools results, wonderful whole school events, and brilliant resilience and dedication to a really difficult situation of working from home.

And so this time, there is a slightly different feel - perhaps celebrating normality. In the past two weeks, we’ve had some brilliant lessons that we simply haven’t been able to do with everyone learning remotely. Kids have been writing code for the school drone, and there have been loads of STEM experiments, allowing for the open-ended thinking and questioning that we encourage here - across the school, we have explored the preferred habitats of wood lice, grown cress and planted hyacinths!

However, the best experiment we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks has been Reception’s experiment on lettuce leaves in food colouring. Whereas normally this section celebrates success, this experiment has failed. But therein lies the beauty of our curriculum - Mrs Godar and the class have analysed and adapted this investigation three times this week, and each time, the science has worked against them, but it’s easier to argue that here, the kids have learned more from failure than from success!

Resilience is an important inclusion in our Core Values - sometimes things don’t go to plan. Everyone knows this after the past 12 months, but its great to see that now we are back in school in person, we can again get our teeth into the exploratory elements of our curriculum, and all the successes - and failures - that this brings!

Mr Donaldson

The Core Values iSpy Box

We use the Core Values as a great way of demonstrating what it is to be a pupil at St Nicholas’. We see a lot of examples every day, but recently we’ve been looking out for children who have been particularly COLLABORATIVE and RESPONSIBLE in their learning.

BONUS iSpy!!!

We’ve also had a great example from Y6 working on cup songs in music - Think Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect! - who learned the cup song, and then performed it in a circle, which takes a crazy amount of collaboration!!!

For the last week of term, we’re looking for pupils who have been particularly COMPASSIONATE - children are able to nominate their peers in class, but as always, we welcome any examples from home please.

It has been a busy time for Year 5. We have covered a wide range of topics across the different curriculum areas. One of the big highlights this half Term has been Inquiry Project with Religious Education being the focus for Spring 2. Year 5 have been learning about Sikhism and have enjoyed unpacking the origin, teachings and impact of this religion. We covered a range of topics such as the different Guru’s, the key beliefs and they reflected how these teachings are relevant to their own lives. Learning about Sikhism gave the students an insight into a different culture and community which they all really enjoyed.

In Literacy we have been focusing on persuasive writing. The students been learning what makes a good persuasive argument and the different persuasive devices. They crafted their own essays and the argument of why students should wear uniform was a popular topic. At the end of week three, the students had to create their own speeches that they were passionate about. The majority of the speeches were related to pollution and looking after the earth. It is great to see our students passionate about topics that will impact them in the future.

The students should be proud of their effort over a challenging Spring. Their hard work has them ready to take on the new Term. The Summer Term will be extremely busy for the Year 5s as they prepare for Year 6 and the responsibilities that come with it. We are looking forward to finishing the year strong.

Click the link below to watch a video of all the amazing work covered in Year 5 recently!

In Year 1 & 2, our Plants topic began with naming the parts of a tree and a plant and describing their functions, and discussed how plants change as they grow. Comparing life cycles reaffirmed our learning as we revised the life cycles of frogs and butterflies. Factors that help seed dispersal included wind, birds and insects as they carry seeds from a flower or plant to a new place where the potential flower will grow providing the conditions are right. As we learned about germination, we found that seeds and bulbs have a store of food inside them and we found that seeds do not need light to grow but plants do. We knew when germination occurred when we saw the shoots of our sunflower seeds appearing through the soil.

Here’s Meeshani and Karim discussing watering the plants!

Our classroom is called the Rosen Room after English poet Michael Rosen and in poetry, we examined patterns in his funny and nonsense poems. We then wrote our own poems following a pattern.

In our Christianity topic, we explored a range of religious stories and sacred writings and talked about their meanings, such stories included The Good Samaritan. We named and explored a range of celebrations, worship and rituals including sequencing the Story of Easter.

Olympus Challenge - Easter Holidays

During the Spring Half Term, our community ticked off the brilliant challenge of walking to Mount Olympus across our families and with our friends at Park Hill. As mentioned, and in true St Nicholas’ style, we’re raising the bar and setting ourselves a new, more ambitious challenge!! Now, this one is a real test, and so it is purely a personal challenge rather than a cumulative one for our community.

Over the Easter Holiday, we are setting children the challenge of travelling 26.2 miles, or 42.2km. A number of children completed this distance over one week in Half Term, so to have three weeks should still put this challenge within reach for lots of us.

Same as before, we’ll count walking, jogging, cycling and scooting. We will however, try to discourage steps from walking around the home - mainly because we don’t want to be responsible for turning the lounge into an athletics track! It’s a lovely time to be outside, so a few longs walks over the course of the holidays should do it!

Post your efforts onto Seesaw like before, and we’ll see who can cover the marathon in the shortest time! Good luck guys!!!

Earth Day - Thursday 22nd April

After this week’s assembly on Global Recycling Day, we’re again looking forward to celebrating Earth Day when we return from the Easter holidays.

We’ll be looking at how we can reduce our energy consumption, and will be taking the afternoon off timetable to explore different activities related to sustainability, conservation and climate change.

The year 6 pupils will be choosing a charity for us to raise money for, but we would like to invite children to come in in non-school uniform in return for a donation of £1. However, because this is Earth Day, children should please come in wearing blue and green clothes.

SIMS Pay

This information is normally included in Mrs Almeida’s announcements, which we’re sure are everyone’s favourite part of the newsletter! However, as we approach the start of the Summer Term, we want to give this the high profile it deserves so that all parents are suitably prepared.

From the start of the Summer Term, we will be using SIMS Pay for a range of tasks, from booking clubs, paying for trips and perhaps most importantly, for Wrap Around.

From the Summer Term, our Wrap Around provision will be coordinated in advance. We have put together a system which we believe is the simplest and most convenient for parents, but it does require an element of forward planning from families. We will of course continue to support and take a reasonable attitude to the charges, but similarly ask families to take note of this change in processing.

Primarily, the priority is to ensure that your SIMS Pay login is working and registered, and so if there are any issues on this matter, please do contact Mrs Almeida.

Notices...

House Poetry Competition: Tuesday 23rd March - We’re looking forward to our rescheduled House Poetry Competition, which we’ve moved to the last week of term. There will be time allocated to poetry recital techniques in class, but children are free to chose the poem they want to perform, and so it’s a good time to start thinking about the options they’d like, and begin working on memorising the text.

We’ll be holding heats in the morning, and then the final competition in the afternoon, and we’re aware of the effort that goes into these recitals at home as well as at school, so we appreciate the support in practicing the poems in the car and around the supper table!

Earth Day - Thursday 22nd April: Please see above

From Mrs Almeida...

School Uniform

Please note all children are to wear their summer school uniform when they return after the Easter holidays on 20th April 2021. As a reminder you can only buy new items of uniform from The Outfitters either remotely (online or telephone order) or by booking an appointment to visit the shop. There will also be no requirement for football, rugby or swimming kits for the Summer term.

Unfortunately, due to the size of the shop they will not be allowing any walk-ins so you must ensure you have a confirmed appointment before heading over. Alternatively, they are offering a ‘click and collect’ service starting this Saturday. The shop will be manned from 10.30am - 3.30pm for collection of orders, returns, telephone orders (020 8422 1045) and advice on sizing should you require it.

Kenton Tennis Club

Kenton Tennis Club have got in touch with us to invite members of our community to take advantage of their current offer for reduced family membership. Please do scan the QR code below to find out more information.

Don’t forget that as well as this newsletter, we’re often posting other examples of the children’s work on our social media pages, so follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more.