Latest News

On Friday our drama practitioner Simon Batchelor, made his second visit to St John’s to support their Year 3 and Year 4 teachers. Year 4 began their new topic ‘ Is it better to be a child now or in the past’. The teacher very effectively narrated some of her own childhood recollections which the children acted out as they listened, including writing and posting letters to relatives abroad, phoning friends, listening to records, climbing trees and going shopping. The children then made their own group pieces showing these actions and fast forwarding to their own today. The children’s work showed a lot of thought both on content and acting quality. The teacher is now thinking she can teach the majority of this topic through drama going forward. In the afternoon year 3 worked on their new book for the term, The Day I swopped my Dad for 2 Goldfish by Neil Gaiman. The plan is that the children will translate this book into a playscript over the next few weeks, so using drama to produce dialogue for the scripts was an excellent start. Children worked in partners to ‘sculpt’ characters and create their thoughts as they reacted to each other. Both lessons were led by their class teachers, with Simon giving some direction and showed how skilled the teachers are becoming at leading drama in their classrooms. In addition to their main activities, the teachers are now using a range of drama games that support focus and working collaboratively, setting them up for getting the most out of the sessions. The photo shows children working together on a 10 second object of a spaceship!

Last week we held another of our year group meetings – this time for year 3 and 4 teachers across the cluster. Teachers shared examples of pupil’s work in Maths, English and topic work from this term and also looked at and discussed examples of writing we moderated earlier this year. It has been very productive to get teachers together early in the academic year and we hope this supports deeper discussion when we do moderation together in February and March 2019.

Great to capture the enthusiasm of St John’s children as they rehearsed for the Windrush celebration concert at Lambeth Town Hall during half term, joining community groups to form a special choir of all ages. Thank you Pegasus Opera.

This morning year 1 children from Archbishop Sumner Primary started their new half term by bringing together the knowledge they had learnt from last term into self portraits, experimenting with colour and developing their skills with watercolours. The children were encouraged to look at their own faces through mirrors and to experiment with colour to fill their page and create contrast in their images. This produced a great range of styles and ideas and freed the children from trying to emulate a portrait the teacher might have done themselves as a starter. Artist Liz Atkin was on hand to give advice and encourage the children’s creative thinking. This all part of our 2 year programme developing Growth Mindset through the Arts, funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Last night children from year 5 at St John’s Angell Town joined forces with singers from Black Thrive,Woodlawns Community Centre, the Pegasus Community choir and professional opera singers from Pegasus Opera to form the Pegasus Windrush Choir and celebrate 70 years since Windrush. The Brixton Learning Collaborative were delighted to be invited to be part of this event, highlighting the outstanding contribution of the Caribbean community to the UK. This was part of a programme of music performed at the highest level to a packed Lambeth Town Hall. The audience were also treated to a special performance by Nadine Benjamin, currently performing in Porgy and Bess at English National Opera. The children from St John’s sang with enthusiasm and style following 5 weeks of expert training from professional coach and choir director Allyson Devenish. A special thanks goes to Mr Obika, their class teacher, who looked after the children for this and Saturday’s performance at Tate Library, giving his time over half term. Congratulations St John’s for all their hard work and great singing.

We were delighted to attend the first of a number of ‘Cohort Days’ organised by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation as part of their Teacher Development Fund support. This was an opportunity to meet the staff leading on other PHF funded projects from throughout the country and to hear more about the formative evaluation process that will be taking place over the 2 years of the programme. We hope to make links with several projects taking part and share learning, including with Tees Valley Creative Learning Partnership who are focussing on visual arts and our more local colleagues Southwark Teaching Schools’ Alliance, working with Shakespeare’s Globe on storytelling.

In the last week before half term, we held another cross cluster meeting, this time for teachers in year 5 and 6. These meetings are proving valuable opportunities for teachers to look at books and discuss children’s progress in the first few weeks of the year and hopefully make our cross cluster moderation work at the end of Spring term even more valuable.

Here’s our round up of just some of the things families can do together over half term.

76 Low Cost No Cost half term October.docx

Last week the teachers and children at St Saviour’s had their first visit from Liz Atkin, visual artist, as part of our Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded project Confident Creators. During the visit Liz and the teachers had time to plan the lesson together, then the teacher led the activity with Liz giving support and finally, but crucially the teachers and Liz reflected on how the lesson had gone. These art lessons are all about giving children time and space to experiment with art, to learn new techniques, to work together and to take risks with their drawings. In the morning year 2 experimented with paper cutting – building pictures using just coloured paper and scissors (no pencils!). The children gradually built up a range of materials to use in their final pieces and the pictures they produced were all different, but with children able to talk about their work and sometimes build narratives from them. In the afternoon year 3 explored cave paintings through producing their own collaborative pieces. They experimented with mark making using charcoal and chalk, with texture through crumpling their paper canvases and experimenting with drawing outside on the tarmac playground, and with paint outlining animals and shapes having looked at some cave painting examples. In their groups the children started to build a narrative about their paintings. Teachers commented on how helpful it was to concentrate on process rather than worrying about a finished product that needed to adhere to a uniform piece. We are really looking forward to exploring more media, working together and developing their creativity.