The Bulletin Edition 2

This morning in the Prep we held our first ‘Celebration Assembly’ of the year. We plot out a number of these assemblies over the course of each term, and they are wonderful opportunities to laud the boys’ efforts and achievements. Do please send in any certificates, medals or cups that your sons may have won from any exciting activities they pursue outside school, as we shall be happy to re-present them here in front of their friends and teachers. We also present ‘Man of the Match’ certificates (following success in our own sporting fixtures) and ‘Headmaster’s Commendations’, (for excellent effort or achievement across all domains of school life) which I understand the boys are always very glad to receive. This morning I was also very happy to share with the boys that this week, having wandered about quite a bit popping in and out of lessons, chatting to teachers, and observing in general what has been going on, my current strong view is that there has been some really terrific effort bubbling up and out of the boys; I am convinced that many of them have been trying really hard. I have seen heads down, heads being scratched, moments of “oh, I get it now!” and plenty of moments of academic endeavour in between. I very much enjoy keeping a close eye on what everyone is learning and how they are going about it, and I am always happy to talk about all that with parents too, if ever any of you wished to come in and do so?

It is always fantastic to hear of boys’ successes outside school, in either the arts, music or sport. It is all the more exciting for us when a sport a boy competes in is rather rare! In July, Barnabas in Year 5 competed in the National Diving Skills finals. Together with his squad, he spent a weekend in Southend and competed across 12 different dives: poolside, 1m spring board and 3m spring board, all with varying degrees of difficulty. It was wonderful to learn during the holidays that Barnabas took away a silver medal for his age group in this prestigious national competition and was understandably rather proud and very happy indeed to have achieved such an impressive result.

Along with 650 other Prep School Heads in both in the UK and abroad, I am a member of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) and next week our national conference takes place in Wales. Ahead of that main event, here at Hampton Prep we shall be hosting the international strand of the conference on Tuesday. We shall be hosting Heads of British style Prep Schools from locations as varied as Singapore, the Middle East and Kenya. They will enjoy a day of professional development and sharing of ideas, led by members of the executive team from IAPS headquarters, who shall also be joining us. We are delighted to have been invited to host the event and will be glad to hear about how schools like ours operate in an international context. From Wednesday onwards, the main conference convenes in Newport and I am very much looking forward to spending time there with my colleagues from across the sector, sharing intelligence and insights and learning from each other. One topic for discussion is likely to dominate I suspect, and naturally I am keen to understand how other Prep schools are planning for the challenges we all face over the year ahead.

Please click on the link below to see some photos from the year 3 team building sessions which took place on Thursday.

The summer break and the start of the school year is a great opportunity to reflect and lay the foundations for the year ahead. This was encapsulated in my assembly on Monday where we looked at some of the incredible performances of the Olympians in Paris this year. The ‘Best Bits’, montage video induced laughter and gasps of wonder that lifted the atmosphere and demonstrated the emotional reasons we love sport and the positive impact it has in raising expectations of ourselves.

It’s been a wonderful first full week back and I continue to be extremely impressed by the children here who’ve adapted to their new surroundings so quickly. Special mention must, however, go to our youngest pupils in Kindergarten - what super stars they have been in settling in to life here so speedily! Also, a very big thank you to our Kindergarten parents for making us so welcome at the home visits over the past week or so.

What a fantastic start to the new school year, it is so lovely to see the children settling so well into Kindergarten this week. They have enjoyed playing with many different resources both inside the classroom and outside in our playground. Dinosaurs, sand, cars and the role play area have been firm favourites! They have listened well to various stories but our absolute favourites by far this week were, ‘The Lion Who Wanted to Love’ and ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’.

We have had a very busy week in Reception completing our first full week of school! Our work focused on the topic ‘Making our Mark’; we enjoyed moulding our names from coloured clay and decorating them with gemstones. The children listened to the story, ‘Gregory and the magic line’ by Dawn Piggot’, and this inspired them to take part in a large collaborative piece of class artwork, ‘making marks’ – we took our pens for a journey along the paper, exploring the different lines, letters and shapes we could make. We observed some fantastic shapes and patterns being drawn, a few shapes and a few fabulous ideas including animals, sea life and space. We decided it is a great feeling working together towards an end goal.

We have had a great start to the Autumn Term in Year 1, and all the teachers have been pleased by the way in which the children have adapted to their new learning environment. The class were extremely excited to name our class ‘pet’, Lenny! Lenny the Lion will be visiting all of you for a weekend at some point during the year, and we look forward to hearing about his adventures!

Year 2 have had a very busy week! In maths, we have been learning about the place value of 2-digit numbers and have had a lot of fun partitioning them in different ways, using a range of apparatus. We will continue learning about number and place value next week.