LDBS Academies Trust Autumn 24

LDBS ACADEMIES TRUST

ST PAUL AND ALL HALLOWS NATIVITY

NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 24

Autumn 24 St Michael’s St Ann’s Meridian Angel St Andrew and St Francis Holy Trinity Milbrook Park St Paul’s and All Hallow’s St Richard’s Stanwell Fields Executive Chef CEO

https://www.ldbsact.org/

LDBS Academies Trust London Diocesan House, 36 Causton Street, London, SW1P 4AU

St Michael’s This term we have launched free extracurricular clubs for all children. The children have loved creating optical illusions during photography club & developing their maths, tactics and language skills during board game club. ​ Despite being a small school, we have a huge Winter Fair - out whole school community attends and gets into the festive spirit

St Michael’s

Anti-Bullying Week Our Junior Leaders organised a poster campaign for Anti-bullying week. They gave short speeches to their classmates, and urged them to research more about bullying to raise awareness. They were also in charge of the collection of posters on the theme from other pupils, as well as creating their own.

St Ann’s

DEVELOPING WRITING AT ST ANN’S

Writing is a key priority for the school, so we are always looking for ways to inspire our young writers and motivate them to write. During Black History Month, we ran a whole school writing project focussed on pioneers from Black British history. Some of these people were contemporary figures, so we thought we'd write to them. We were delighted to receive video messages from both Jazzie B and Alex Scott

Meridian Angel

Reverend Tina came in to school to Bless our Bags Children and adults took their bags down to collective worship (assembly) where it took place.

A huge thank you to Reverend Tina for keeping up this tradition we have, which sets us up in the name of HOPE to go on to have a wonderful academic year.

We linked this to our ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ initiative and raised funds to support the cause.

Special thanks to Shocka for volunteering his time to help us kick off the month in a big way.

This year, our focus was on Scientists, the children were exceptional in showcasing their learning throughout the month.

We were thrilled to see so many of you at the evening celebration event – your support truly means a lot.

Shocka performed one of his songs from his new album.

Our Meridian Podcast had its premiere in November with the help and guidance of DJ Martin Jay.

We were invited to Tottenham Hotspurs’ Training ground for a Festival of Football. All the boys represented the school perfectly. A huge thank you to Mr March, who has been working with the team and supported us on the trip They had training drills with the Tottenham coaching team and then played games against other Enfield Schools.

Reception children joined the whole school in the hall as we learned about Christingle.

We sang together and watched as Elenor was dressed up by Reverend Tina as a Christingle

St Andrew and St Francis Year 3 joined members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Brent Library for a fun, interactive music workshop celebrating the greatest black composers, musicians and music to mark Black History Month.

The children even got to compose their own piece with the musicians and share their knowledge.

Shocka is a Tottenham-based rapper and mental health advocate who performed to Key Stage 2 as part of Black History Month. He has appeared on TedTalks and his lyrics focus on maintaining positive mental health through self-love which 'is the glue that puts us back together.' He got the whole Key Stage performing the chorus to one of his raps - 'When I say 'positive', you say 'ENERGY!' Year 6 became University students for the week thanks to the Into University charity in Kensal Rise.

The theme was Environmental Science and the children were introduced to seminars and lectures; which cities have universities; where students live; which degrees are available to them and which societies they could join to broaden their horizons.

The week culminated with a graduation ceremony at Middlesex University where they presented their environmental science and renewable energy knowledge to a panel of students and lecturers.

They can now tell you which university they will be graduating from in 2034!

SASF

SASF

In November, SASF was excited to welcome local artist Kamila Hokynkova. During small assemblies she introduced herself and talked about what it means to be an artist. She took questions from the children and, most impressive, did live portrait drawings. Watching her create artwork in front of our eyes was extremely inspiring.

Motivated by Kamila’s visit the entire school had an art afternoon where we drew our own portraits of our Black History Month heroes. These portraits were then put on display for the open afternoons for families to come and view. This was our first art exhibition but certainly not our last. Watch this space for more excellent art being created at SASF!

Holy Trinity Holy Trinity Year 6 visited the Cenotaph this term in remembrance of those who fell in WW1 and WW2.

They also went to a wonderful workshop at the National Portrait Gallery, where they had a sparkle in their eyes and learnt about a variety of portraits and the techniques used to create these.

Year 3 had an amazing time on their trip to Lambeth Palace this term. They followed the nativity story and spoke with each of the characters to find out more about the roles they played. Year 3 and 4 have been transitioning into the Christmas season by going on an adventure to Lambeth Palace to visit the Travelling Crib- an interactive story telling of nativity where they met ALL of the important figures in the Christmas story and the wisdom they had to share.

Year 1 at Holy Trinity have been to the Young V&A learning about how toys have changed over time.

They explored how toys were used and how the materials used to make them have also changed.

They definitely left with a sparkle in their eyes and definitely made connections with their History learning.

Year 6 at Forest School, creating fire.

Science and nature!

Year 5 had a very important job at Forest School they were planting saplings that we have been given from the Woodland Trust. There were Hazel trees, Dog Rose, Dog Wood and Crab Apple trees.

Each tree needed a hole dug and also to be planted correctly with space for the roots to spread and then they were all labelled. Year 5 have left a legacy for Holy Trinity's future children and staff to share and also to help with the environment. The trees planted will absorb pollution from the atmosphere and give us healthier air to breathe.

Learning how heat melts marshmallows at Forest School for Reception and Year 1. Very tasty eating them too!

Holy Trinity

COOKING AND WRITING

To inspire Year 2 with their Writing outcome, Kuril-Kamchatka Class learned how to make Sugar Mice! We took to the kitchen to follow each step of the recipe and our lights shone very brightly when showing off our cooking skills. We turned the mixture into ball with our hands, shaped it into mice then added strawberry laces and chocolate chips to complete it!

Millbrook Park

ANTI BULLYING WEEK

Budding fashion designers Millbrook Park took on a challenge to design a t-shirt that would support the work of Anti-Bullying Week. Our House Captains had a difficult choice to pick just seven winners, but they eventually agreed. The winning designs were printed onto real t-shirts - one for each winner and one to proudly display around school.

MBPS visit SKY STUDIOS

Our Media Crew had the pleasure of visiting Sky Studios in Osterley. In preparation for the visit, they planned out their script about space travel, which made the process of filming, editing and producing much easier when they arrived at Sky. The final product was amazing and we are now using some of our new skills in our own video work at school.

Our Media Crew are planning to produce a new ‘Welcome to Millbrook Park’ tour video.

Our families came to see and join in with the learning at school this term, on our ‘Share Our Learning Day’.

One of the most popular activities was using the green screen wall to have a photo taken, which we then superimposed one of the scenes from the book we all looked at - ‘The Lost Thing’, by Shaun Tan. We have also worked with our Media Crew to start to use some of the new additions to our Media Room, and have just set up some donated Apple Macs to enable the children to start editing thier own videos.

The green screen makes anything in green vanish - so it makes a very funny picture with our green PE t-shirt!

St Paul and All Hallow’s

PENDARREN

Exciting start to the year The year 6 pupils had a very exciting start to the year with their residential trip to Pendarren. During their week in Wales, they took part in a range of activities that included canoeing, exploring caves, studying habitats during their trip to the beach and local river, as well as overcoming their fears by taking on wall climbing.

Apart from experiencing new adventures and activities, they build stronger friendships, teamwork and confidence during the week.

Year 3 went back to the Stone Age Our Year 3 pupils took part in a Stone Age workshop, which was delivered by Vanessa Bunton, an archaeologist. It was absolutely brilliant, and the children had a wonderful day. Many of them could be heard saying, "This was the best day ever!" and "It would be great if everyday could be like this!" Throughout the day, the children were able to handle a variety of artefacts, raise their own questions, and develop their chronological understanding.

Maths in the Early Years and Foundation Stage Children in the Early Years and Foundation Stage are learning to subitise. This is an essential part of developing their number sense. The children look at a small set of objects or images and instantly know how many there are without counting them. When rolling a dice, for example, they don’t need to count the dots to know what number they have rolled.

Nativity What an amazing way to end the Autumn Term! As always, the children from the Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2 wowed everyone with their Nativity performance. They impressed all with their confidence and beautiful singing.

St Richard’s At St Richard's Primary we have launched our first parent wreath making workshop which was very successful. They had Christmas music, mince pies and lot of fun! It was so much fun that the staff wanted a workshop which we hosted after school. It really got everyone in the Christmassy spirit!

We were very excited to have finally fundraised enough money to build our first ever library at St Richard's. The next stage is to now fundraise for all the books. We are very excited to have the opening launch in the New Year.

The children were over the moon when they saw the new furniture for the library!

Stanwell Fields INTO Film Festival In November, children in Years 2-6 visited the local cinema as part of the national INTOFILM festival. The festival is held annually across the UK and provides free film experiences for children to help engage them in the world of film and cinema. For some of our children, this was their first experience of the cinema and of travelling on the bus!

Fireworks At Stanwell Fields, we are fortunate to have an amazing parent body – the Friends of Stanwell Fields. This year, they put on a firework extravaganza, including fairground rides, refreshments, a disco and of course, an incredible 15-minute display of fireworks. The event raised £3000 for the school, which is being used to redevelop the school playground, including a new Multi-Use Games Area and playtime equipment for the children.

Stanwell Fields Remembrance Services Stanwell Fields marked this year’s Remembrance Day in a number of ways: Poppies – All the children got creative and made their own poppy to create a field of remembrance outside the school entrance.

War Memorial – On Remembrance Sunday, staff and children from the school gathered at the war memorial in Stanwell village. The event was also attended by the Mayor of Spelthorne, Cllr Robert Evans, clergy from St Mary’s church and members of the local community. The children laid a wreath of poppies as a mark of respect to all those who have suffered or lost their lives in conflict.

Remembrance Service – Our Year 6 pupils led a special collective worship focusing on Remembrance. The children shared facts about the symbolism of the poppy, as well as stories of lesser known war heroes, such as Sir Walter Tull. This was followed by a wholeschool 2-minute silence at 11am.

Spiritual Moment

The children at MBPS were blown away by the rainbow over the school grounds!

Executive Chef I just wanted to introduce myself to the Trust, hi I'm Executive Chef Emma, I started working with the LDBS Trust in October, prior to that I was a Head Chef in two primary schools in Islington. It's been a pleasure making my way around the schools, gradually meeting the kitchen teams, SLT and of course the children.

Involving school children in decisions about their lunch menu is an important step toward fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility in their nutrition. When students have a voice in choosing the meals offered, it can lead to better food choices, increased participation in school meal programs, and a deeper understanding of healthy eating. This collaborative approach not only empowers children but also promotes a more positive and inclusive school environment, where their preferences and dietary needs are respected and prioritized. That is why I have made it my priority to meet with the school council termly, together we've already set up post boxes in each dining room, allowing students to vote on the menu items they'd like to see offered and I look forward to seeing how we can expand on that in the coming months.

CEO I am truly grateful to all of our dedicated colleagues who have worked tirelessly over the autumn term in order to ensure our journey to excellence for all is a successful one.

The term began with training. Professional development allows us the opportunity to greet this academic year with new ambition whilst simultaneously equipping our staff with the knowledge to ensure that every child, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, will have better futures.

Most importantly, is our unwavering commitment to getting it right for our children from the moment they enter our schools, in the Early Years and Foundation Stage (EYFS) until they leave us in Year 6. One of our main priorities for all our schools is Language and Literacy.

Why are we focussing on language and Literacy?

By the age of 3 years, we know that children from high income families have double the vocabulary of low-income children. After considering the numerous equality issues facing our children as they enter our schools, we began to revise our Trust key curriculum concepts: Progress Learning Executive Function When defining progress, we acknowledge that knowledge is knowing more and memory is remembering more. Research findings linked to the Typical Forgetting Curve for newly learned information, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1890), states clearly that we will remember more if there are deliberate opportunities to learn and recall, and recall and recall our learning.

Strong executive function skills are the best predictors of a child’s later success in reading, mathematics, emotional wellbeing and behaviour in school. So we deliberately plan opportunities for our children to be regularly exposed to nursery rhymes, games such as Simon Says, Musical Statues and Sleeping Bunnies.

This year we have directed our EYFS training around the EYFS learning building blocks to ensure all practitioners are appropriately trained.

Linked to Storytelling, we have introduced a strategy called ‘Inside out Stories’ to all our schools. The progress over the Autumn term has been wonderful to see. Children in Nursery and Reception classes, across all our schools, are able to retell stories with confidence. These are wonderful stepping stones to success in reading that will unlock success in learning throughout the curriculum.

Christalla Jamil