Spring Term Issue 19: 6th February 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 the Parent Café today. A huge thankyou to Jorje, who delivered a brilliant and thought-provoking talk on the impact of social media and screen time on children. Parenting in the digital world is certainly no easy task, but staying informed and hearing from other parents can make a difference. you to Jorje, who delivered a brilliant and thought-provoking talk on the impact of social media and screen time on children. Parenting in the digital world is certainly no easy task, but staying informed and hearing from other parents can make a difference.  

We are also delighted to be raising a fantastic amount for the NSPCC today—thank you all for your generosity and kindness. Your donations will help support an incredibly important cause. 

For those of you who love making costumes and dressing up (apologies- but it is worth it!), you will find information at the bottom of the newsletter about World Book Day, which takes place on Thursday 5th March, shortly after the half term break. 

Wishing you all a lovely and restful weekend. 

Alli

Reception

This week in Reception we have been learning all about Lunar New Year. We listened to the story of The Great Race that placed all the animals in the Chinese Zodiac. We have loved exploring Chinese writing and symbols, as well as using our problem solving and cutting skills to make our very own lucky red envelopes! Today we even tried some noodles, using chopsticks – very good for little hands and fine motor skills! 

Year 1

Year One enjoyed playing Pickled Prefixes in English, where they decided whether words needed ‘un’ at the beginning or not. The children discussed how adding ‘un’ to the start of some root words changes the meaning to the opposite. For example, ‘Bear felt unlucky that Sofia left him on the beach.’ 

In maths, the children enjoyed making number lines during choosing. We also explored odd and even numbers -they learned to look for pairs and whether a number had a flat top or not to help decide if it was odd or even

Year 2

The children have been busy writing their own innovation stories inspired by our class book Ocean Meets Sky. Using the story as a springboard for imagination, everyone created their own magical adventures. 

We focused on using adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions and more to make our writing exciting and descriptive. The progress in the children’s vocabulary and creativity has been wonderful to see, and each story is truly unique. 

Every single child did an amazing job, and we are so proud of the effort, enthusiasm, and care they put into their work. We can’t wait to share these fantastic stories with families and carers at Parents’ Evening! 

This week in English, Year 3 have been exploring the picture book Flotsam. The children carefully examined different items from the text and used their inference skills to think deeply about what they could see and what it might mean. They also practised using modal verbs such as might, could and will to make predictions about what the story was going to be about. The class showed great curiosity and creativity, sharing thoughtful ideas and justifying their predictions using evidence from the illustrations. 

Year 3

Year 4

Monet class shone in this week’s dance and sport lesson, exploring pathways, levels, and creative sport‑inspired movements with so much energy and enthusiasm. They worked brilliantly in teams to build their own mini‑routines, showing confidence, imagination, and great teamwork. I am so proud of how well they challenged themselves, supported each other, and celebrated everyone’s efforts! 

 

Year 5

This week, we became real scientists by carrying out an investigation into friction. Our enquiry question was: Which type of shoe sole creates the largest force of friction when sliding over a surface? To find out, we planned and carried out a fair test using a range of different shoes, that the children kindly bought in from home. (Thank you for your support in this).  

First, we drew our own results table — a surprisingly tricky skill that required careful thinking and neat presentation. We then used force metres to measure the force of friction in newtons as each shoe was pulled across the surface. To make sure our results were reliable, we repeated each test three times and recorded every measurement carefully. 

Some of us went a step further and calculated the average force for each shoe, helping us compare the results more accurately. This investigation helped us practise important scientific skills, including measuring, recording data, and improving accuracy. It also showed us how much effort and precision goes into real scientific experiments 

Year 6

 It’s a triple whammy of a newsletter update for Year 6 this week. We have been writing descriptive pieces in English about the suffragist Muriel Matters – an intrepid and bold protester who took to the skies of London to share her powerful message: votes for women! We’ve been taking plenty of brain breaks in between our hard work, joining in with Just Dance and showing off our groovy moves. Finally, we built our own agility obstacle courses in PE (and were blessed with yet another sunny lesson – lucky us!).

News from the Art Studio…

This week in the Art studio Year 6 have explored and experimented with paper. They will use these ideas and explorations to inform their pieces they will make for our Art Festival , which this year will focus on our Big Idea – Social Justice.

Music this week…

In Year 1, children were learning about the Glockenspiel and the Xylophone  which are members of the (tuned) Percussion Family. Part of our lesson this week involved listening to The Aquarium from The Carnival of the Animals. Children used scarves to imitate the gentle, flowing and calm mood of this piece of music. 

For the last few weeks, Reception children have been listening to Prokofiev’s Peter and The Wolf. They have been learning to identify the different instruments which are played to represent the story’s characters. 

World Book Day

Join us in celebrating our love of reading!

We will be running a range of fun activities and competitions in the lead up to World Book Day - Thursday 5th March.

Look out for the World Book Day Information Pack which will be emailed shortly . This will include how you can take part in:

  • A Wrapped Up Story!

  • A writing competition

  • Each class taking part in the decorate your door challenge

  • And our annual costume parade - children come to school dressed as a character or something linked to reading and books.

Friends of SJSC

*SJSC Quiz Night - Friday 20th March*

We are pleased to announce the return of our Quiz Night.  Tickets are only £8 - a bargain for a fun night out meeting other SJSC families.  Teams will be allocated randomly (you can suggest which year group you want to sit with when buying your ticket), so don’t worry if you are new to the school or flying solo - there will be lots of friendly faces and others in the same boat.  There will be a bar selling drinks and snacks and we hope to raise some money for the school.  

You can get your tickets here:  https://st-johns-and-st-clements-ptfa.square.site/product/quiz-night-ticket/86?cs=true&cst=custom

Hope to see you there and thanks for your support.

Save the date…..

Friday 20th March - Uniform Swap

Friday 20th March - Quiz Night 

Wednesday 20th May - School Disco

Saturday 20th June - Summer Fair 

Stars of the Week

See you next week!