Autumn Term Issue 4: 25th September 2026
Flourishing in the love of God, love of life, love of learning
Dear Families,
It was wonderful to see so many of you at our International Evening this week. What a fantastic celebration of the rich cultures, diversity and strong sense of community that make our school so special. Thank you to everyone who attended, contributed food, shared stories and helped make the evening such a success. If you brought along any containers or Tupperware that were left behind, these will be placed under the shed in the playground on Monday for collection.
Today was also National Teaching Assistants' Day, giving us a valuable opportunity to recognise the incredible contribution of our support staff. To celebrate, staff enjoyed a cooked breakfast kindly provided by our new catering team. We would also like to give our teaching assistants and support staff a huge public thank you. Their dedication, care, patience and passion for helping our children thrive make an enormous difference every single day, and we are very grateful for all that they do.
A quick reminder about uniform: with the warmer weather we've enjoyed this week, there seems to be a growing collection of jumpers and cardigans being abandoned around the playground during playtimes (there is too much fun to be had!). Please make sure that all items of uniform are clearly labelled with your child's name, and take a look through the lost property bins near the scooter rack if anything has gone missing.
Thank you for your continued support, and we hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
With warmest wishes,
Alli
Reception
This week in reception, we have been sharing the book “What I like Most” by Mary Murphy and illustrated by Zhu Cheng-Liang. We have learned some great new words and drawn our favourite things. The splendid thing about Drawing Club is mark making, mathematics and magic… what happens if you write a ’secret code word’? will you shrink or be invisible or gat all the ice-cream? What amazing things can your pencil do?
In maths we’ve been investigating numbers, and finding out what happens whin you put one and one and one and another one together. Making collections of objects- (does size matter) and building different shapes with only four bricks. Can I copy yours, how is hers different?
In RE we learned that the Bible is an important book for Christians, full of stories about how to live. In Understanding the World we looked at maps, a globe and google earth to find out about where in the world all our families are from. We were so lucky to be joined by some parents who told us about the countries they were from. Thank you.
In Phonics we learned 4 new sounds ‘i’, ‘n’, ‘m’, ‘d’. Every week we will send home our 4 new sounds, so bring in your phonics pack on Thursdays.
Finally, thanks to everyone who joined us at the Parent Café on Friday. It’s good to keep in touch.
Year 1
We have had another fantastic week in Year One!
In English, we learnt what sequencing means and used this skill to retell the story Beegu. We used actions to help us remember the key events and tell the story in the correct order. Ask us to show you our actions at home – we might surprise you with how much of the story we can remember!
In maths, we have been learning the number names for numbers up to 20, as well as the number names for the multiples of ten. We have been practising saying and recognising these numbers and are becoming more confident each day.
In our Christianity RE unit, we talked about why Jesus told stories. We thought about the messages and lessons that Jesus wanted people to learn through his stories and discussed why stories can be a helpful way of teaching others.
Year 2
Year 2 had a fantastic trip to the Florence Nightingale Museum as part of our history unit and our Big Idea: Social Justice, focusing on helping others.
The children were thrilled to be greeted by Florence Nightingale herself! They learned all about her incredible life and how she helped improve hospitals and care for soldiers. A highlight was dressing up in nurse outfits from Florence’s time and exploring real museum objects.
We also visited the Mary Seacole statue. Mary Seacole was another nurse we have been learning about, and she made an important difference by helping soldiers during the war.
We would like to say a big thank you to our wonderful volunteers who came along to support us — your help made the day even more special!
Year 3
This week in Year 3, we have been investigating the mysterious Tear Thief after our Tear Jar was stolen, much to the shock of the children as they entered class!
The children have been learning how to turn conversations into correctly punctuated sentences using inverted commas, capital letters and the correct punctuation. We have also been thinking carefully about how we can make our writing more interesting by choosing different synonyms for ‘said’, such as shouted, whispered, replied, exclaimed and cried.
The children have enjoyed imagining what the eyewitnesses might have seen and heard, before writing their own speech sentences. They have worked hard to remember that the spoken words need to go inside inverted commas and that punctuation must be placed correctly.
Year 4
This week in year 4, we have continued to revise column addition and subtraction – something that we think could be good to practise at home as well. We have been detectives identifying when we need to exchange and why. In other news, we’ve enjoyed swimming and football in PE and have started to think about what a democracy really looks like and how it works – in preparation for our school council project and Councillor who is coming to visit.
Year 5
Year 5 have been learning more about our local area. We considered the how the land in our area s used, looking at a variety of ‘birds eye view’ images as well as maps and identified uses such as commercial, residential, recreational and industrial. We then enjoyed creating our own maps with a key to show how the land is used directly around the school.
Year 6
Year 6 had a fantastic time at the Junior Citizenship Workshop, taking part in exciting, interactive sessions led by TfL, the London Fire Brigade, the Metropolitan Police Service, Southwark Council Road Safety Team and Money Ready.
The children were curious, enthusiastic and full of great questions throughout the day, showing a real interest in learning how to stay safe, make good choices and become responsible young citizens.
News from the Art Studio…
This week in the Art Studio we have been using our sketchbooks to explore techniques used by our class artists. Van Gogh used pastels to create starry nights full of movement , Gormley tried out the different mark making techniques he uses to sketch figures he can turn in to sculptures and Walker used black paper to explore how Kara Walker uses positive and negative space in her silhouettes.
Music this week…
Children in Year 5 have been listening to the music of Ravi Shankar, the world-famous Indian composer and musician. Looking at the main elements of Indian Music; they have been learning that the drone (a continuous sound) is played on an instrument called the tanpura, the raag (melody) is played on the sitar and the taal (rhythms) are played on drums called the table.
Looking at how the notes of a Raag Bhupali correspond to Western notes, children tried to play the melodies on tuned percussion.
It has been lovely to showcase some of the amazing musical talent at SJSC during Singing Assemblies. This week we heard a Grade 3 Piano piece being played with great precision.
Friends of SJSC
What a lovely day for International evening! Hopefully everyone got to sample the delicious food and drinks, and enjoyed meeting parents new and old.
These warmer days are a reminder of the very hot summer when the school was forced to close early due to the extreme temperatures. There are various measures being explored to help for next summer, and if anyone has any expertise in this area please contact one of the PTFA or email friendsofsjsc@gmail.com as we’re forming a sub committee to help support Alli and team.
Alternatively any small donation to our Climate Resilience fundraiser would be greatly appreciated, there is no obligation, but if you are able to, please donate via this link: https://st-johns-and-st-clements-ptfa.square.site/
Thanks for your support as always.
And lastly keep an eye out in school bags next week as you’ll be receiving the Xmas4schools form! For those unfamiliar, this is a chance for your child to draw a lovely Christmas picture that you can turn into cards, tea towels etc. Great early Christmas present ideas, and some of the profits go back to the school. Form will need to be returned by Oct 15th, details on the form and following in parent WhatsApp chats.
Have a good week!
HB Art Club has started with a bang! We have seen an explosion of creativity and exploration of lots of different materials. Each artist has started drawing in their very own sketchbook, used craft knives to create frames and used sewing techniques to embellish their work.
We have a few spaces left so if you would like to join us or book onto our Art Holiday Club please email hbartsclub@outlook.com or call 07538302422 to book your spot.
Many thanks,
Moya & Freya Hanif-Banks
Have a great weekend, see you next week!