Reception this week revelled in the sunny weather, immersing themselves in a variety of engaging activities in the shared area that promote independent learning, teamwork and problem-solving. During water play, they explored the concept of capacity by transferring water between different containers, using language such as ‘full’, ‘empty’ and ‘more than’ to describe their observations. The children also investigated the concepts of floating and sinking, making predictions and testing their ideas to develop early scientific thinking and reasoning skills. In addition, Reception worked together to solve practical challenges, such as how to move water from one place to another, which fostered collaboration, communication and resilience. It was wonderful to see their curiosity and confidence grow through these hands-on learning experiences.

Rosie Snagge, Reception Class Teacher

As Year 1 are now experts at knowing where their food comes from, the onset of this week’s warm sunshine meant they could begin planting their own food. Having already worked together to identify as many wild and garden flowers as they could around the school grounds, the children eagerly set about planting out some runner beans, which they had been carefully nurturing in the classroom. The children took it in turns to dig small holes in their vegetable patch in which to plant their seeds before carefully adding a little water and marking the area with a named stick. The rest is now up to Mother Nature, but the children have promised to keep a close eye on their special beans.

Hannah Feery, Year 1 Class Teacher

With the cricket season now upon us and Sports Day looming large, Year 2 this week focused on their overarm throwing technique in PE. The children began with a technical warm up for throwers which included specific stretches for the forearms, upper arms and shoulders. Year 2 were then taken through the key points of a successful overarm throw, such as maintaining good balance, standing sideways on, taking aim with the weaker arm pointing straight ahead and focusing on a smooth, controlled arm swing and follow through to the target. The children then got the opportunity to practise what they had learnt with a friendly ball throwing competition, which produced some impressive results.

Jo Gordon, Assistant Director of Sport

Having learnt the basics of cricket in PE, Year 3 got the chance to put their skills to the test with a series of matches against Westbourne House. Despite playing in a cold wind, the children  showed huge amounts of enthusiasm as well as ability, and particularly enjoyed playing as a team, supporting and encouraging their teammates throughout. There were some amazing efforts with both bat and ball to complement energetic fielding, while all the children got the chance to try their hand at each discipline. Despite being early in the season, it’s already clear to see that Year 3 have a great deal of potential among their ranks.

Sergio Heredia Rodriguez, Year 3 Cricket Coach

This week in Latin, Year 5 were reviewing numbers. As with every new aspect of language, the emphasis was on ensuring that the rules of translation remain at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Mrs Durrant kindly created a helpful paperchain of numbers to assist with the mental acrobatics required to answer a series of sums, switching between the familiar numerals and their Latin words. In addition, the often-asked question of ‘who speaks Latin?’ was addressed – with a discussion of events last week in Rome when the billion-plus Catholics and even more interested television viewers listened to the announcement of the new Pope in joyous (and grammatically correct) Latin.

Alex Walker, Head of Classics

As part of their summer term topic on ‘Crime and Punishment’, Year 6 this week headed to the Tower of London to explore a real site where prisoners were jailed and punished. This was an introductory journey into their new topic and the children had to take on a lot of new information and listen to stories from a broad range of British history, from 1100 up to the 20^th Century. Year 6 were engaged and enthused throughout a fascinating day, asking many questions and gaining a firm understanding of the crime and punishment topic before they delve into it in more detail after the half-term break.

This term in Drama, Year 7 are exploring the topic of building a character. This involves working on developing their voice, body language, facial expressions and understanding their character’s motivation. To help them with their topic, the children were tasked with creating characters for a session of improvisation. Working in small groups, they were given minimal information (such as someone being interviewed for a job or three people waiting at a bus stop) and had to decide quickly how best to portray characterisation. Year 7 explored multiple options for their characters’ motivation, tone of voice and body language to create short scenes, with collaboration key to staging an effective performance.

Sarah Baird, Head of Drama

Year 8 this week took a trip to London to delve further into the history of medicine, to underpin their classroom studies ahead of the Common Entrance exams. The trip took in a fascinating lecture at the 19^th Century Old Operating Theatre and a walking tour around some related spots around the capital. Located in the garret of St Thomas’ Church in Southwark on the original site of St Thomas’ Hospital, the children discovered that it is now a museum of surgical history and one of the oldest surviving operating theatres which was used in the days before anaesthetics and antiseptic surgery. Year 8 also toured the herb garret used by the hospital’s apothecary to store and cure herbs used in healing and got a close look at a collection of artefacts revealing the horrors of medicine before the age of modern science.

Katy Warner, Year 8 English Teacher