What a wonderful week of learning we have had in Pre-School and Pre Prep. On Tuesday our day began with a beautiful service dedicated to celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth II. After the service the children reflected whilst listening to a lovely piece of music titled ‘The Swan’ played on the Piano accompanied by the Cello. The children’s devotions during the service was extraordinary.
On my visits to Pre-School this week, I was welcomed by little hands tugging at me to play with them or read a story with them, which was such a delight. Mrs Doughty had the pleasure of spending time in the woods with our little band of woodland friends as they embarked on their Forest School adventures. Our youngest members of our team also participated in their first music and PE sessions at the Prep school. All very exciting but the most exciting for the children was being ferried on the school minibuses!
Pre Prep threw themselves wholeheartedly into their curriculum learning. With the focus this week definitely being on Maths (music to my ears!), Reception had been exploring their environment and learning key mathematical concepts through their independent learning such as number recognition and problem solving. Year 1 enjoyed using concrete apparatus to explore and embed the understanding of place value and Year 2 made 3D shapes using polydrons which the children loved! From the wonderful pictures, one can see how brilliantly the teachers have brought learning to life.
I am delighted to report that the Pre Prep has now also fully adopted the whole school approach to the House Points system and their contributions have flooded in! Well done all.
Year 3 - This week the children have been busy settling into their first full week of school. The children had a special service at school this week to honour the Queen. Afterwards lots of children wrote special poems, letters and drawings to commemorate her Royal Highness. In English this week the children were looking at the story of ‘Stone Age Boy’. Year 3 loved the story and really enjoyed hearing about life in the Stone Age. The children pretended to be the main character from the story and wrote postcards home to their families describing this strange new world. In maths Year 3 were learning about place value. They used their understanding of thousands, hundreds and tens to partition and order numbers. The children had great fun this week drawing skeletons in science lessons. Year 3 were asked to label their drawings with facts they already knew about the human body. Their teachers were amazed to hear how much Year 3 already knew! Perhaps your child could tell you what the smallest bone in their body is?
In humanities lessons the children continued to learn about life in the Stone Age. They were discussing why life could be particularly challenging back then. There was beautiful singing coming from the music block this week as the children were singing lots of food themed songs with Mr Leutfeld. Riley in 3L showed his comical talents this week by performing a comedy sketch show for the other classes.
Well done to all Year 3 pupils for showing resilience and maturity this week as they settle into their new timetable.
Year 4 - In maths, children have been exploring place value to ten thousand. They have explored this topic using concrete resources supported by visual representations. They have had the chance to cement this knowledge by playing interactive dice games.
In English, children have continued to work on their persuasive writing skills. They have put themselves into Ernest Shackleton’s shoes in order for them to persuade people to join his perilous expedition across the Antarctic. The children have enjoyed learning some scientific words relating to forces. They have discussed the direction forces work in and how forces can work against each other. The children are excited to start planning their first experiment based on forces.
Year 5 & 6 - Our assembly time this week was given to a beautiful service dedicated to celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth. We heard a lovely piece of music titled ‘The Swan’ played by Mr Leutfeld on the Piano and Mrs Stevenson on the Cello.
Games this week saw the pupils take part in the first inter-house competition of the year, with Football and Hockey competitions taking place. It was so wonderful to see so many parents and staff come and support, it definitely gave the children fantastic motivation to play at their very best! Well done to all the house teams and I know we all eagerly await the final scores!
Year 5 - In Maths the pupils learnt about square and cube numbers by creating squares of 2 and cubes of 3, explaining the results due to the shapes they made. A lovely selection of photographs of the pupils working can be seen below.
Year 5 in English have been identifying the use of descriptive language in the work of CS Lewis when Lucy first sets foot in the world of Narnia. Strong verbs and powerful adjectives, similes and sensory language are key features of effective description, and year 5 have been gathering ideas and vocabulary to use in an original description of their own.
Year 6 - In Science the year 6’s are learning about plant reproduction and have completed beautiful flower dissection posters. They labelled the parts of the flower and explained the function of each part. You can see some of our Year 6 pupils in action creating their posters in the images.
Year 6 in English have been immersed in life in the Victorian workhouse and have demonstrated their understanding of conditions for orphans like Oliver Twist in letter form. Children have learned about the importance of using vocabulary that is fitting to evoke a particular period and setting.
Another busy week for Year 7 and 8 including a very exciting science lesson for Year 8 in which they did an experiment to test the relative reactivity of common metals. The pupils reacted metals with Hydrochloric acid and captured the Hydrogen produced. They then carried out a 'squeaky pop' test to confirm the presence of Hydrogen.
Congratulations to all members of Year 7 and 8 who successfully completed the Target Mars STEM challenge last week. Representing rival nations, our senior students worked closely together on a virtual space race challenge. Each member took on a key role as either a leader, a biologist, a maths analyst or an engineer.
Facilitated by a visiting company, ‘Thinkers in Education’ each individual student’s and team’s performance was carefully monitored and assessed against Bloom’s Taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis). As the level of challenge increased, so did the type of thinking skill required by each group.
One nation however stood out from the rest: congratulations to Team SpaceX who were the overall winners with a final score of 173800. The Thinkers in Education team were particularly impressed by how this group of boys communicated and collaborated with each other - well done to Rex, Henry, Ben, Rohan, Isaac and Ayaan.
Our standout individual was Rahul who, representing Team China, wowed us all with successfully answering 92% of all science, maths and engineering questions - well done Rahul!
Our Head Boy and Head Girl wrote a beautiful message of condolence to the late Queen Elizabeth II. You can view it here.
Last week we had the first of our inter house tournaments with Year 5 to 8 hockey and football. Please see the inter house section of this newsletter for the results. Amelie S in Year 6 and School Journalist wrote the following match report:
Inter House Girls’ Hockey By School Journalist, Amelie S Y6
Last week at school there was Inter House Hockey for Years 5-8.T he hockey was very good given that it was during our first full week back; even the people that were not that keen on hockey last year showed their enthusiasm. No matter which house is announced the winner in assembly, everyone should be happy. I’m sure all the teachers are proud of everyone as we all showed our potential.
We look forward to our first fixtures this week, culminating in the U13 IAPS football tournament on Saturday. Good luck everyone! And we also look forward to welcoming Year 3 and 4 parents on Friday for the Open Games session. This is an opportunity for parents to come and watch a training session and then meet Mr McManus and Miss Lloyd to discuss any questions that you have about games. Please check the Information Letter and sign up via the Google form if you are planning on attending.
Drama - The newly decorated theatre is once again a hive of activity after the summer holidays.
Year 3 have thoroughly enjoyed being introduced to drama lessons at Edge Grove. They have started with being introduced to the purpose of why we play certain drama games and why (as it helps focus, listening and reaction skills). Pupils have also been exploring facial expressions and how they are used to effectively portray different feelings and emotions.
Year 4 have been focusing on body language and facial expressions to produce the story of Cinderella in eight freeze frames. Over the next few weeks they will begin rehearsals for the Christmas Show!
In Year 5 the focus has been on monologues and writing as if they are an inanimate object. We had some very comical performances from the pupils including ‘Life as a Shoe’ and What it’s like to be an Ipad.
One of my favourite topics for Year 6 is Superheroes and I am delighted that the children are excited as I am to begin this unit. This week they have been making up their own superheroes and next week we will look at voice overs to introduce their superheroes.
Year 7 have started to look at the development of drama across the generations and for the next 2 weeks we will be looking in particular at Greek theatre and the importance of a chorus and speaking in unison. It has been quite humorous to watch the boys all try to say Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in unison with actions!
The Year 8 pupils have begun to write their own stories which they will turn into scripts for our page to screen unit. In this unit pupils will look at various camera angles, advertising and filming their own short films.
Tuesday saw our first Matilda rehearsal and the staff and pupils were all very excited to get started. We did a short run through of the script and learnt the first song Miracle. Next week we begin the next audition process to cast the show and give pupils a role.
Music - Another busy week in the music department with peripatetic music lessons beginning and welcoming back old and new members of orchestra, prep chorus and chamber choir.
Pre-School enjoyed their first trip up to the music department this week and enjoyed meeting Nellie (our elephant musical mascot) as well as exploring and creating exciting sounds with lots of different percussion instruments. They learnt musical signals to stand up, sit down, stop & freeze and line up at the door and did these without a prompt by the end of the lesson. Musical magic! Pre Prep have all had a brilliant start and we have enjoyed hearing their hello songs again. They are all sounding fantastic learning and rehearsing their year group song in preparation for the Harvest Assembly.
Year 4 choir lifted the spirits of the school with their voices on Friday morning during singing practice learning Amazing Grace. We are looking forward to hymn practice recommencing next week for the entire prep school.
Year 5 are enjoying the beginning of exploring drumming and cyclic patterns which is developing their sense of rhythm and pulse.
Year 7 & 8 have enjoyed learning to play bass guitar in preparation for forming their very own bands. Ed Sheeran ‘Perfect’ and Bill Withers ‘Lean on Me’ should be included on their playlists immediately!
