A Friday Night Round Up from Mr Schumm

1 Mar 2024

Good afternoon,

 

With my ears still ringing from the excitement of the House Captain’s Charity Games last night, it’s time for a round up and it’s certainly been a packed few weeks.

 

A massive thank you, firstly to our House Captains who organised last night’s fun and games. The children absolutely loved it – Go find the coloured ribbons, was a personal favourite (with the adults especially), for the 10 minutes silence in the hall while the children hunted throughout the school.

Thank you to Louise and Justine for lending such a helping hand to the festivities! And the winners were Orange (1st) Green (2nd) Gold (3rd) and Pink (4th)! Orange will spend next Friday wearing their own clothes.

 

Movie Night was a great success and the hall was packed with Sonic the Hedgehog enthusiasts and a lot of popcorn!

 

Hot off the press we were delighted to be placed in the top 1% of primary school in the country for our Year 6 SATs results! Thank you to all the Y6 team but especially Miss Marchant, Mr Gane, Miss Williams and Miss Charrington, for all your hard work in Year 6 and of course your amazing children.

 

St Stephen’s Debaters triumphed again! 

We have been continuing our morning training sessions and last Friday afternoon was the semi -finals of the ‘National Cicero Cup 2024’ debating competition for private preps and primary schools; this round was online.

Six of our year 6’s gathered round Mr Schumm’s computer to face their opposing teams, they were given 20 minutes to prepare impromptu debates, where they worked together brainstorming their points and persuasive explanations. One of the motions this time was ‘This House would protect the privacy of celebrities’ and our team was allocated the pro-position side! We had a victorious afternoon and St Stephen’s is through to ‘THE FINALS’ for the second year running. The date is to be confirmed! Of all the schools competing, we are the only ones to have reached the finals twice. Congratulations debaters!

 

Open the Magic Box

Year 2 took us on a roller coaster musical theatre extravaganza yesterday! Miss Whiting packed in 7 songs! The children were superb and well and truly shone. Their dance routines were step perfect and their singing pitch perfect. Their loud confident voices boomed around the hall and their enthusiasm was infections – amazing!

 

Lunar New Year

What a day we had Celebrating Lunar New Year. There were workshops, art and craft activities and so much more. We started the day with the dragon dance, with our very own band, and a display of the fan and ribbon dance. Y3 made sticky chicken rice or lor mee gai to add to the homemade dumplings for lunch. We also  enjoyed delicious lotus leaf parcels of chicken, shitake mushrooms, dried shrimp and Chinese sausage (lap cheong).  The sticky comes from the glutinous rice and the oyster sauce.  Yummy!

Thank you Winky and your team who made the day such an exciting learning opportunity for all.

 

Sporting Updates

A few sports stories to celebrate – first there’s the Y4 Skittleball squad sporting silver medals in the LBHF competition, then the Y3/4 athletics squad also finished in second place at the recent Sports Hall Athletics tournament. Our Year 5/6 Girl’s Football Team won the borough competition and will now go forward to representing the borough in the London Youth Games. Top work everyone.

 

The Rubik’s Cube!

The Y6 Independent Maths Group visited Bute House yesterday as part of the Ri Maths Masterclass programme, to hear from guest speaker – Andrew Jeffrey.  He gave an incredibly dynamic, interactive talk on the Rubik’s Cube and the all the maths involved, as it is its fiftieth birthday. We joined four other schools, learning about the 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 combinations, or 43 quintillion permutations of the original 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube, before being introduced to even more complicated tetrahedron and dodecahedron versions!

 

Year 1 Playground

As if by magic, some exciting new equipment popped up in the Y1 & Y2 playground over half term, which the children absolutely LOVE! Huge thanks to Miss Charrington for leading the fund raising and to Yoo Capital Investment Management for their donation.

 

 

Mental Health Workshops

Over the past few days, experts from Coram Life Education & SCARF – the UK’s leading charity provider of PSHE and wellbeing education in primary schools – have been visiting and delivered sessions to all classes from Y1 to Y5. These classroom-based sessions have allowed the children to explore – in an age appropriate way – the many aspects of maintaining good mental health: protecting themselves, taking care of feelings, acceptance and the brain. The children always love to see healthy Harold the giraffe each year and hear what new message he has for them.

 

A Few Quick Reminders

  • Thursday, 7th March World book Day. Please join us at 9am for our parade in the hall to see the children dressed in their favourite book character..
  • Please follow us on Instagram Ststephensw12 – we love a like
  • Don’t forget to register for Beat the Street – check the bag for your cards and get tapping!
  • If your child attend breakfast club please continue to use the main school entrance as the Nursery door is temporarily out of action.

 

Parent Workshop- Let’s Talk Mental Health – Tuesday, 5 March from 7pm

Theresa Kyeyune our school counsellor will be sharing with parents her extensive knowledge and practical tips on:

  • How to build resilience with everyday situations and changes in circumstance (like friendship groups, moving to new school, 11+ results, a bereavement, divorce, new house, etc)
  • Help parents identify when a child is signalling for help and what to do
  • Debunk some myths covering parenting and communication topics
  • Highlight the impact Covid has had on our children’s mental health and what parents can do to help

 

There will be a cash bar with nibbles.

This talk is open to all year groups and is strictly for adults only.

Make sure you book your ticket today on Parentmail as we can only accommodate 100 parents in the Music Room.

 

Climate Change and Road Safety Workshops for Year 6

Two teachers from Climate Ed  delivered the first session of a programme that will run up to Easter, which will see the children learn about climate science in detail and getting to grips with ‘carbon literacy’. The aim to inspire children to take an interest in climate change and begin taking action on it!

 

The road safety workshop this week was particularly pertinent, as the company shared stories of what can happen when we do not pay attention on the roads. Please reiterate to your children just how important it is to look before they cross the road and keep any phones away.

Have a lovely weekend and if you missed it, please take a quick ‘Catch Up’ journey to watch ‘Rick Stein’s Food Stories’, which is from Shepherd’s Bush. Not only that, but he’s visiting Delina in the market, an amazing Ethiopian restaurant run by ex St Stephen’s mum, Naz.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3RlV4aIYs9/

Have a good one.

Mr Schumm