WELCOME BACK TO OAKFIELD

AUTUMN TERM 2023

We are delighted to have completed another successful and productive half term at Oakfield Prep.

We welcomed many new faces - both pupils and parents - and were  excited to rejoin and reconnect with our favourite classmates and teachers once more. 

This is the first, experimental edition of our new Oakfield Observer. We will be sending you (what we hope will be) a fun, retrospective newsletter each half term, looking back and celebrating some of our favourite moments, exploring our sporting wins and sharing our many artistic creations.  It will also be a chance to discover more about day-to-day life at Oakfield and get to know our pupils and staff. 

Feeling creative? Don't miss the opportunity to provide feedback or suggestions at the end.

Welcome to our new Newsletter! 

A welcome message from our Headteacher, Mrs Thompson.

Click to watch the video

Tell us about your first half term as head boy and head girl. Did you enjoy it?

Do any moments stand out in your memory? 

Is there anything particular you learned as head girl?

It is tradition for our Year 6s to be front and centre at our Open Mornings. Alongside our headteacher, Mrs Thompson, our head boy and girl provided characterful and engaging welcome speeches to the crowd.

Our Year 6s also act as tour guides around the school for the prospective parents. After all, who has more insider knowledge than the pupils themselves?!

They were wonderful ambassadors, chatting enthusiastically and answering questions with ease. We always receive positive feedback about our Oakfield tour guides and this year was no different!

Thanks again, Year 6!

(Pictured above and below)

The highlight for many this half term was the Year 6 trip to the Imperial War Museum. By watching the discussions, the questions and the interest shown, it was clear to see how much this outing hit home for many of our pupils.

The impact, cost and tragedy of war over the last century were explored in detail, and we were even lucky enough to get a private talk and discussion with one of the museum's specialist curators. 

Our children were excellently behaved and asked really challenging and thoughtful questions.  We look forward to returning next year with our current Year 5s.

(Above and below)

We like to vary the input, information and experience our children get wherever possible.  Every Monday we have a headteacher from another local school come in to give a guest assembly for our Year 5s - an opportunity for our pupils to get inspired and to build bridges and connect with other schools in our community.

It is also particularly useful as they go on to think about secondary school choice.

(Above)

In their all-encompassing science project on Earth and Space, our Year 5s started by mapping the Solar System with crayons across our playground - an exercise to help them understand the relative distances and positioning of each planet or body.

After completing a few other creative planetary exercises, we then set up a competitive but fun homemade game of Planet & Moon Top Trumps... a high-octane way of testing what they've learned and getting them excited and competitive about the Solar System! 

(Above and the two pictures below)

In the final week of term, we had the wonderful children's author Nancy Caroll come round and speak to Years 3-6. 

Here, they are in the middle of analysing their favourite words and extracting deeper meaning from their respective choices.  There were so many onomatopoeias for Year 5!

We highly recommend her book 'Daisy Fitzpatrick and her Worries,' which takes a light-hearted but analytical look at anxiety and thinking differently.

Thank you, Nancy. We really appreciate you joining us!

(Above and below)

In Year 4 the children continued to learn about refugees in Humanities. We used our laptops to research some of the countries that refugees have travelled from. With our partner we found out facts about some of these countries. Did you know: South Sudan is located in northeastern Africa, the country of South Sudan has rich grasslands and rainforests that are home to many species of wildlife. The dominant physical feature is the River Nile.  

-Miss Duncan

(Above) 

During our Religious Studies lessons Year 4 have been learning about the Jewish faith. Last week we looked at the importance of the Mezuzah. This week we used plasticine to create the special case that protects the scroll. The children worked collaboratively to make their designs. 

-Miss Duncan
 
(Above) 

In Jigsaw the theme this term has been, 'Being in my world'. The children have learnt and understood how a democracy works through the school council. They particularly enjoyed the lesson, rewards and consequences and how their actions can affect them themselves and others. We had some budding actors performing scenarios through role play. The children used actions and facial expressions only and the rest of the class had to guess the scenario! Brilliant teamwork and collaboration.

-Miss Duncan

(Above and below)

Year 4 have started the term with enthusiasm! They have enjoyed learning about Refugees in Humanities and reading the story, The Boy at the Back of the Class, by Onjali Q. Raúf, a British author. The children linked Humanities and Art by drawing portraits of refugee children. They showed excellent tracing, sketching and highlighting skills and used the art media, pastels, to shade and blend. In English the children wrote an emotive poem based upon images selected from the picture the book, The Arrival by Shaun Tan [We have included a couple of the poems below]. Children independently typed their own poem using their excellent ICT skills.

-Miss Duncan

Wherever possible we try and engage our pupils in a practical way to really fuel their interest and to help them retain information as effectively as possible. 

A few afternoons were spent learning about gravity and magnets. After learning the properties of magnetic materials and the principles of gravity, the children were given time to engineer a range of structures to test what they had learned. 

(Above and below)

For any future journalists out there, this was a particularly fruitful exercise.  We learned the basics of journalism and how to analyse veracity by practising looking at the source, the purpose and the surrounding context. 

(Above)

A personal highlight from Mrs Francis:

On the first few days of Year 3, all children and staff went to Bel Air Park to play rounders. Classes were split into two teams and we learnt both batting and fielding skills. Although the pitch was interrupted by a couple of dogs, we managed a few games and everyone joined in! The sun was shining and we all got to know each other much better - what a great start to the year!

Undoubtedly this term's favourite moment for the children was their all-day visit to Slime Planet. 

As you can imagine our Year 2s were absolutely in their element. There were several sessions, but perhaps the highlight was the 'Original Recipe' class where they could freestyle their creations and add ingredients from glitter, beads and scents. 

It was also particularly rewarding to collaborate on a giant slime for the outing's finale!  They certainly won't be forgetting that in a hurry.

I was lucky enough to join our Year 2s for an art session and was blown away by the creativity, passion and energy of both forms.

They shared ideas and collaborated with enthusiasm and I look forward to seeing their artistic creations over the coming years!

(Above and below)

Appreciating nature and local ecology is something we try and instil in our pupils from Nursery-age onwards. 

We are extremely lucky in West Dulwich to be surrounded with such a wealth of green spaces, lakes, woodlands and ponds. 

Here are our Year 1s enjoying an afternoon walk to the nearby Bel Air Park, where they looked at the water, the trees and surveyed the local flora and fauna.

(Above and below)

We take pride in fostering individual growth and understanding, while preparing our pupils for an increasingly interconnected world. 

Our ever-curious Year 1s had a hugely rewarding International Day exploring cultures and languages around the globe through food, dialogue, literature and more.

We even had Mrs Thompson stop by to learn about foreign nations and cultures from our enthusiastic experts. 

It was a wonderful day and we are already looking forward to the many coming opportunities to celebrate and better connect with other cultures. 

(Above and below)

Whenever possible we try and connect more closely with the local community and with our wider Oakfield families and friends. 

While learning about growth and changes we were lucky enough to be joined by some of our younger classmate-siblings and generous classmate Mummies.

The children asked some fantastic and pleasingly insightful questions:
'When do babies get teeth?'
'How many nappies do they wear a day?' and
'When do they learn to crawl and walk?'

Singing 'Wheels on the Bus' as a big group of classmates and classmate siblings was a particular highlight and made the eldest baby chuckle and dance! Some pupils tried a baby rice cake and even helped change a nappy! (Above)

Below we can see similar opportunity with a joyous picnic with our wonderful class mums! 

This was scavenger hunt early on this term.  A chance to enjoy the weather while it was still warm and a chance to run around, expelling energy, while encouraging teamwork and collaboration with their classmates! 

(Above)

As our children love and look forward to puzzles, we created our own to match our theme 'All About Me.' This was a fun way to explore and discover themselves!

(Above)

'Composer of the week' is a creative series that our Head of Music, Mr Howes, shares with the school each week to inspire us and broaden our tastes :). 

Here are two of our favourites from this term:

 (1)

Dear Musically Curious,

For our first selection, we stay close to home in both time and space, as we visit the diverse musical stylings of Daniel Pemberton. Best known by our children for his scores for Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse and Anola Holmes, his work spans genres, styles and instruments. His work on the video game Little Big Planet is particularly eclectic.

(2)

In our second selection, we revisit Venice, and the Baroque master, Antonio Vivaldi.

Vivaldi's most famous work, the Four Seasons, has become a synonymous with what we think of as classical music, but his other lesser known works have remained popular for almost 300 years.

Vivaldi's representation of summer may seem a bit at odds with a vision of balmy days lounging by the water, but Vivaldi suffered terribly with asthma, to the point where simply talking would leave him out of breath. With the heavy pollen of an Italian summer, the anguish we hear becomes more understandable.