From the Headmaster:
A remarkable few weeks.
Success in the pool, field, stadium, stage and arts. More importantly, a great sense of pride across the school as we celebrate collective, team and individual success.
This is down, as was quite rightly pointed out to me, to the sense of confidence and ability for our children to ‘put their hand up and give it a go.’
Where does this stem from? Confidence, resilience, perseverance and self esteem. It comes from everyday lessons, activities, interactions and time.
I know I am biased, but it is what makes our school.
Enjoy your week. Safe travels, Bon voyage.
Alistair
ILG Athletics Championship - Lee Valley Stadium
Yet another event that I very much look forward to each year. It has grown in status and size, obviously, as our family of schools have increased in number. The very first was held at St. Mary’s University and it has now evolved to now be held at the Lee Valley Indoor Athletics Stadium. How I wish I was their age, again, and competing on such a stage.
Four teams from each school, all competing and gaining points for their school. Long jump, javelin, ball throw in the field events and then 60m sprint, hurdles, the daunting 600m and then the 4x50m relay. You will be aware from previous editions of this newsletter that I have a particular fondness for the relay. No finer sight than a smooth and elegant relay exchange. I was not disappointed.
A brilliant event, with new friends being made and discoveries made about how to overcome and how to persevere.
Well done to all teams, with particular congratulations to our sixteen. A special mention to a certain young lady who stepped into the U9 boys team due to illness and hearty congratulations to our U11 Boys and U9 Girls teams who were crowned champions 👏👏👏 and to our U11 Girls who came away very impressive runners up. 👏👏👏. Quite the day!
Century - Learning
As a school, we are always striving to find new ways of further developing curriculum and learning opportunities. As part of this, we have been trialling a new application in school, receiving feedback from pupils and teachers.
I am pleased to say that the feedback was very positive, with one pupil commenting that “it’s really useful because it starts easy but then gets harder, but not too hard, so that I am always challenged”.
This application is called Century.
https://www.century.tech/explore-century/primary-schools/
Century is a online learning application combining education with an AI, to challenge the children in multiple areas, including 11+. The application identifies every pupil’s strengths, gaps in knowledge and any misconceptions. Pupils can log in, both in school and at home and be challenged with work suggested for them by the AI, or work which has been set by teachers.
Each pupil receives a fully personalised learning path.
This compliments the work that your child will receive in school, and provides a continually adapting system that can be incorporated into lessons, or utilised at home.
At the beginning of this week, we implemented this across our Year 3, 4, 5, and 6 classes, with a very positive response. Century will be part of pupil’s homework this half term; please do have a look if you get the chance!
In the next term, there is an opportunity for parents in Year 2-6 to join us in school to learn more about this system. In order to allow as many parents as possible to join us, there will be a Century workshop at 8:30 am and 3:30pm on Tuesday 7th June. Please let us know if you will be attending either workshop.
New Era Speech and Drama Exams
Our first foray into the world of speech and drama exams and, well, could they have gone any better? All of our children passed and all with a distinction!
To celebrate the occasion, and to give it the status it deserved, I recorded a video for assembly (I was unfortunately attending a meeting) and I think it only right that I include it below. Well done to all children but may I also shine the spotlight on Miss Georgina. All too quick and all too humble to pass the praise and recognition on to others, on this occasion I will not allow it. Take a very deserved bow, Georgie, it would be all too easy to underestimate the remarkable contribution you make, have made and will continue to make tor children. I speak from a position of experience with my own daughter.
Assembly
Much fun at the assembly this week. Our certificate winners, school colours recipients and our birthday!
In the news…
We live in peculiar times. Wall to wall news and interruptions can take their toll. On the back of two years of uncertainty and strain.
Children are no less immune to this than we are. Whilst this newsletter is full of celebration and a return to much missed events, the news and social media channels are sounding alerts over the next medical crisis.
With the context of this part of world history, our children have been seeking to understand more about Monkey Pox and it has been a topic circulating on the playground. As ever, we at school, deal with any concerns in a calm and reassuring way but such things can cause anxiety and children must be given the opportunity to talk in a supportive manner. I would be grateful if I could ask for your support with this and help us in providing children time to talk about their worries. Naturally, please do let us know if you feel we can support in any way. We have a variety of tools to help support children with their mental and physical health and, as ever, simply want the best for our children.
Reception Swimming
We are very keen to provide our Reception children with a swimming lessons in advance of joining Year 1, but this term we do seem a little challenged with staff illness (we rely on those staff with the relevant ASA L2 award and RLSS life guarding) and events such as Triathlon an previously celebrated athletics fall on a Friday.
I am pleased to confirm that for the first two Wednesdays immediately after half term, our Reception children will enjoy not just their swimming lesson, but also enjoy a slightly longer time in the pool to help compensate for the missed lessons. I do apologise for the challenges we have faced with our Friday swimming lessons. Mr McArthur will be writing immediately after half term to confirm arrangements on those two Wednesdays and the final lessons as we head to the end of the academic year.
Park Hill Pre-Loved Uniform
Park Hill Preloved, our sustainable uniform shop is now up and running. Our goals are to reuse uniform and club equipment long after your little ones have grown out of it. We will be working with the school council to raise money for their chosen charity and to support school projects (think gardening equipment, new climbing frames etc...). For the remainder of this academic year all proceeds from Park Hill Preloved will be donated to Kingston Hospital Charity (Pediatric fund) which was the chosen charity for the wonderful charity event that took place over Easter.
From September 2022 we will be donating 1/2 of the money raised to support the chosen school project and 1/2 to the chosen charity. The choosing will be down to the school council. We will update you on these once the council is voted on in the next academic year.
You can donate any uniform, club equipment and football boots directly to any one of us or you can bag it up and hand it in at the school. Please make sure your donations are in good condition.
Any uniform that you have that is not relovable may be recycled into memory gifts. Please speak to Lee if you have uniform that may be reused in this way (we don't want to end up with a mountain!).
We have set up a google form with a list of all our Park Hill Preloved stock. The link to this can be found below. Please add a comment with your child's name, class, what you want to purchase and how we can contact you. Pop the cash in an envelope labeled Park Hill Preloved and your childs name. We will deliver your uniform to your child's classroom. Please can you make sure that your envelope makes it to one of us (Cashless options coming soon hopefully!).
Class News
Year 6
Year 6 have continued their work on persuasion, finishing off their essays in the worst food and engaging in a very successful debate on which way work should be completed. Do you handwrite it or type it? Mrs Forsyth kindly brought her class up to watch and vote on the most persuasive argument. Scientists were cited, emotional speeches were said, a huge amounts of facts used, and plenty of challenging comments, made up our debate on this topic. Ultimately, by a vote of 6 to 5, handwriting won the day with their impressive arguments citing several scientists and the effect of typing on wrists, and that studies show that regular breaks should be taken when typing on a screen.
Our escapes are now nearly complete, and the level of detail in them is outstanding. Moving platforms, secret rooms, combination locks, and one very complicated school, make for some challenging puzzles; all programmed by the pupils.
Our RSE topic now complete, we explored the different types of relationships this week, particularly focusing on the difference between familial relationships, friendships, and romantic relationships. We also discussed consent and being confident with yourself.
Year 5
A great five days in Year 5. At the start of the week, the children’s hard work in the allotment allowed them plenty of radishes to enjoy, while the end of the week they got to harvest some beetroot.
The children have been drafting interview style questions in class as preparation to conduct research over the half term break into the life of somebody they identify as a hero to them. They have been focussing on utilising their questions in a relaxed conversation style of interview.
The new cutting-edge software we are implementing at Park Hill has gone down well, the children have enjoyed the personalised nature of their learning journeys that the software allows.
The School Council Book Swap Shop was a great success on Thursday. Lots of children went home that evening with something new to read over the half-term break, while over £50 was raised for the School Council and Eco Club teams.
Year 4
The final week before half term and the class have carried on working at a super pace. We have finished our class reader ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ and what a sad ending it was. There were tears (mostly mine) as we found out that Kensuke once again was to be left alone on his island. We’ve read such a wide range of books this year, but the class agreed this was the most emotional text of them all. The class have been finishing off their own Kensuke stories - hopefully with a happier ending than Michael Morpurgo’s novel.
We have been learning new vocabulary in Maths this week, perpendicular, adjacent, interior angles, diagonal and parallel lines all based around our quadrilaterals work. Rhombuses, Parallelograms, Trapeziums and Kites have all been drawn and annotated over this week in our quest to discover all the key properties of various quadrilaterals. The children have been working hard in their lessons and are enjoying trying out their quadrilaterals, triangle and angles nuggets on Century Tech.
Well done Year 4 - have a wonderful half term.
Year 3
Another busy week in Year 3 from interpreting data to improving the quality of our writing. The Vikings have definitely arrived along with some rather spectacular Viking Longships, making our classroom an even more exciting place to be!
We enjoyed discussing the Queen’s platinum jubilee and making our own personalised bunting which has been hung at the front of the school.
Year 2
Year 2 had a wonderful week.
Just before half term, energies were high and we had a lovely week which ended on a high note with a dance party, some singing and cheese sandwiches and some juice!
On Monday, we started the week by finalising the newspaper report we had done and on Thursday we read them to the rest of the school. We were very confident and read them with great enthusiasm. I am so proud of you Year 2
In Maths we moved forward with some work on fractions. We started by looking at equivalent fractions and ended the week with reading some word problems that solved fraction problems. You’ve done a great job with this Year 2!
In science we finished off the final week on our work with plants. We researched about plant adaptations and their habitats. Independent research and reading to find key information were the great skills we practised.
I hope you have a lovely half term, see you all in a week!
Year 1
A busy week full of maths and phonics and investigations. This week we have been looking at position and direction, identifying before and after and looking at turns clockwise and anti-clockwise.
We worked practically as well as solving reasoning questions.
Inspired by the Wetlands Centre we wrote independently- informative recounts about our trip, working hard to show off all our writing skills like varied sentence openers, verbs, adjectives and punctuation.
In phonics, we have been looking at homophones and learning that these words have the same pronunciation but different meanings.
We are becoming very adept at identifying the correct word for a sentence.
In Science we had a fantastic experiment, to look at travelling sounds. To work out how sound moves, how the length or type of string affects the sound we made String telephones.
Reception
What a special week this has been!
We were ALL awarded a giant certificate this week in assembly. Mrs Hunt heard such wonderful reports about how sensible and hard working we were while she was away and we have been very kind, caring and helpful since she came back.
In mathematics we have continued to learn ‘first, then, now’ number stories which help us add together known and unknown amounts.
We have also kept a close eye on our caterpillars who have turned into chrysalides and we are hoping they will wait until after half term for their final metamorphosis into butterflies.
However, the highlights of the week have been Monday morning and Friday afternoon….
We started the week with a whole-school STEAM morning learning all about the Queen and her very special Platinum Jubilee. We learned about her many years of service to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. We also made Jubilee bunting and crowns.
Then we finished the week with a Pre-Prep ‘street’ party in the playground to start the national celebrations that will continue throughout the extended Bank Holiday over half term. We sang the National Anthem, raised three cheers for Her Majestic The Queen, enjoyed an afternoon tea and then had a few games and a dance.
Happy half term!
Second Steps
It is the last week before half term and Second Steps have been busy as usual. We have been playing more board games after last weeks games of Gruffalo snap. The children have enjoyed playing children’s Monopoly, memory games using letters & identifying the missing letters or numbers building on their foundation of letter and number recognition.
We have continued with our weekly letter of the week with ‘g’. The children named so many things that begin with a g like goat, gorilla, gurgle, gargle, go go go and Gigantosaurus to name a few. We also played the silly soup game. The children collected small items and toys beginning with the letter g, putting them all in a big bowl and mixing them all up together. The children took turns closing their eyes, picking out one item and trying to describe it just using their sense of touch.
In sports the children have been refining their gross motor skills by trying to jump in many different ways. Mr McArthur encouraged them to do star jumps, pencil jumps, twisting jumps and a tricky tuck jump. The whole class enjoyed jumping and have been repeating their jumps through the week with great success.
The children have loved playing in the sand pit and have been digging for treasure so we made our own Treasure Island. Half sand and half water in the tray we buried our gems so we could dig them up. The children floated their boats in the water to see how many gems they could collect before their boat sunk and became a ship wreck. To make it trickier to find the treasure there was a nose eating octopus, a finger snapping turtle and very hungry star fish. To manoeuvre around the carnivorous sea creatures the children had to use the tweezers to collect the gems. During their play the children were comparing quantities, trying to collect the same gems and using words like heavier, lighter in relation to how much the boat weighed with all the gems.
We have been making our own crowns in preparation for the Queens Jubilee. The children cut long strips of coloured paper in different patterns then chose how they would like to decorate them. The children have been making their own Union Flags using a ruler to draw the straight lines and then colouring them red, white and blue. We are all looking forward to more celebrations at school and at home over the next week and the long bank holiday weekend.
The children have been very creative with their story telling and small world play. Bethan and Amal were reading Goldilocks and the 3 bears and got the small bears and the little Goldilocks and started reenacting the story with the soft toys in the dolls house. We added 3 bowls, 3 spoons and some small furniture & the children have been telling the traditional story with the characters as well as making up their own stories and adding more props.
Woodland school was as exciting as ever, the children said their favourite parts were stuck in the mud, floor is lava, playing in the Forrest, climbing trees and running with little Amber and big Amber. The children were exploring under and around the logs for creepy crawlies and bugs, although they found lots of them we left them I’m their homes.
We are still keeping a close eye on our cocoons. They have had the odd little wiggle here and there but no butterflies yet. We think they will emerge next week so Miss Wood and the children is going to keep checking on them over half term and will see if we can catch them emerging on Timelapse.
Have a great half term and have fun celebrating the Queens Jubilee weekend.
Miss Wood & Miss Finch
First Steps
The children enjoyed learning about the Jubilee this week. We looked at some facts about the queen and the children were surprised to learn she has two Birthdays! First Steps made flags and crowns to celebrate and there was lots of chatter at the play dough table about what cake the Queen might like. The children pretended to be the Queen using a face mask and they enjoyed playing with the queens favourite animals - horses and corgis.
First Steps children did a grouping shapes activity and went outside to find objects that matched that shape. In music this week they were clapping to the beat of the tune and working out how many claps were needed to say their name.
In Woodlands we were inspired by the story, ‘That’s not my tiger’. The children were read to and asked questions such as, ‘what do the tigers ear feel like?’ They then went on a hunt to find objects in the book that were fluffy, smooth, rough or bumpy. The children found items such as stones and put them in a bag to bring back to the classroom. We have retold the story all week and left the objects found out on a tray for the children to feel and describe.
We wish you all a happy half term.
Mrs Guniz, Mrs Mousi & Miss Howell
French
Year 5:
This week, Year 5 did a good job presenting their Fashion Critic in front of the rest of their classmate using as much language as possible; i.e opinion expressions, clothes vocabulary, adjectives of colour, adjectives…We looked at the structure of the sentences, making sure adjectives agreed with the noun in both gender and number and encouraged peer correction throughout the whole process.
We also did a Listening / Comprehension activity “Acheter un vêtement”. Children listened to a dialogue and answered a gist question then we played the dialogue again, this time children had to listen for details and answer comprehension questions in French to demonstrate their understanding.
Year 6:
This week, Year 6 did a good job presenting their Fashion Critic in front of the rest of their classmate using as much language as possible; i.e opinion expressions, clothes vocabulary, adjectives of colour, adjectives… We looked at the structure of the sentences, making sure adjectives agreed with the noun in both gender and number and encouraged peer correction throughout the whole process.
We also introduced the interrogative form. After completing a practice activity on clothes and adjectives of colour. We practised transforming affirmative sentences into interrogative sentences using (est-ce que / est-ce qu’) and children were encouraged to derive the first part of the answer from the question.
To conclude our session, we carried a Listening / Comprehension activity “Acheter un vêtement / Buying an item of clothing”. Children listened to a dialogue and answered a gist question then we played the dialogue again, this time children had to listen for details and answer comprehension questions in French using full sentences as much as possible to demonstrate understanding and practise their speaking skill.
Year 3:
In Year 3 we have started our lesson with the song “ Bonjour Monsieur, Bonjour Madame, Bonjour Mademoiselle”. After listening to the song children took turns introducing themselves and I encouraged them to listen and practise singing along the song over the half term and to practise introducing themselves using their full name just like on video.
We also listened to the song “Malade”, this helped review the Vocabulary from last week as well as introduce the new topic “J’ai mal …” for Summer Term 2. Children completed a matching activity and to wrap up we sang along our fun “Malade” song.
Music
In Music, Year 1 and 2 learned a song from Ghana which uses call and response. Students enjoyed playing percussion instruments and improvising. In KS2 we are looking at the blues genre, students composed their own blues lyrics and we will record their songs on Friday. Year 6 looked at Adele and pop ballads. We had two lovely piano performances from Lucy and Noah in Year 4. Both have just passed their initial piano grade and were excited to perform their favourite piece.
Images from the Week
Key Dates
Whilst the dates for the term can be downloaded from the website, I would like to draw your attention to the following events
30/5/22-3/6/22 - Half Term
8-10.6.22 - Y3/4 Residential (St Felix, Southwold)
13-15.6.22 - Y5/6 Residential (St Felix, Southwold)
16.6.22 - Whole School Photo
18.6.22 – Parent Social 3pm-7pm
25.6.22 – Sports Day and Prize Giving (9.30am, St Mary’s University)
27.6.22 - Reports to parents
7.7.22 - End of term production
8.7.22 - Wimbledon Tennis Visit & last day of term
Social Media
#confidentcurioushappy
There are also some wonderful images from our Little Adventurers available through their own instagram page -
Useful Links -
Credits:
Alistair Bond