The Puzzle Company visit NHP
NHP was delighted to welcome ‘The Puzzle Company’ yesterday to put the NHP children’s thinking skills through their paces! From Reception to Year 8, the children had to use many of the NHP habits to tackle the ‘Smart Thinker’ puzzles placed before them.
Read MoreYear 4 Trip to Celtic Harmony
First of all, thank you to the weather gods who arranged for the deluge of rain to fall either side of our time at Celtic Harmony, leaving us to bask in beautiful, autumnal sunshine for most of the day.
The children were treated to a feast of Celtic activities as part of the ‘Warrior Day’. There was archery, making headbands out of rushes, painting our faces blue with ‘woad’ and trading Celtic gold for gifts.
After such a long period of not being able to organise school trips, the most rewarding aspect was being able to be outdoors and bring our learning to life in such an engaging and stimulating environment.
The Year 4 Team
Read MoreYear 2 Museum of London Trip
To continue their focus on British history in lessons, Year 2 took a trip to the Museum of London today. They spent the day exploring through the galleries and partaking in a range of immersive activities which included performances, storytelling and object handling.
They had an excellent day seeing history come to life!
Read MoreAnti-Bullying Week – ‘Reach Out’
On Monday, pupils and staff came to school in odd socks to mark the start of National Anti-Bullying Week. This year’s theme was ‘Reach Out’, encouraging children to speak out if they are being bullied and to stand up for others if they see bullying behaviour taking place.
Children have been discussing this in their form times and PSHE lessons this week. We spoke about how we can use our NHP Habits to help us: Acting Responsibly, Being Kind and Courteous and Showing Independence. Here at NHP, we are a community and we all play our part in making sure everyone feels safe and happy here. It is important to feel you can reach out to people if you need help, as well as reaching out to help others in need.
5HP and 5HJ also created acrostic poems in Dig Lit. They had to use their skills for safe researching, formatting documents and saving to Teams!
Read MoreYear 5 Netball Tournament
On Thursday 10th November the Year 5 travelled to Ravenscourt Park to play in a netball tournament against seven other schools. For some pupils this was the first time they had ever participated in a tournament. There were 3 different competitions: the Championship, the Shield and, the Plate. Notting Hill Prep took four teams; entering two teams into the Plate competition which meant NHP Storm and NHP Stars played each other in a close-fought game.
The pupils had the opportunity to practice their versatility throughout the afternoon by playing a variety of different positions on the court. Even under the pressure of a tournament, they took this in their stride and demonstrated great determination and resilience. We came away with a bronze medal in the Plate competition and a silver medal in the Shield competition.
Overall, it was a fantastic afternoon of netball for all of the Year 5 pupils involved. They should all be very proud, well done!
Read MoreArundel House Fundraiser!
On Thursday 10th November, Arundel House hosted their annual House Fundraiser. This year, they supported the charity CPotential, which provides integrated tailored therapy and support to children and young people with movement disorders, due to conditions such as cerebral palsy, global development delay or acquired brain injury.
House Captains Wilf and Wilf chose to focus on the incredible LEGO therapy the charity use to develop social communication skills and also fine motor skills and coordination. Fundraising activities included a collection on the gates to dress up in the colours of the letters L.E.G.O. and a lego-portrait competition. The competition was fierce but well done to our winning entries, featured here. And thank you to everyone who donated, helping to raise £400 for this incredible cause!
You can read more about the fantastic work of CPotential at https://cpotential.org.uk/.
NHP Year 3 Football Tournament
Last Friday we invited 15 other schools to Chiswick Rugby Club to take part in our own Year 3 football tournament. It was a fantastic afternoon with some excellent play on display. NHP finished 3rd in the Plate tournament beating Norland Place 2-0 in their final game. Well done to everyone who took part and congratulations to Latymer Prep who won the overall trophy.
A huge thank you to our Year 8 children who helped support the tournament by refereeing, scoring, timekeeping and being general superstars. They were fantastic ambassadors for the school.
Read MoreComputing news!
This week and next pupils in Year 4-8 have been taking part in the Bebras Computing Challenge. This is an international challenge that introduces computational thinking to students. It is organised in over 50 countries and designed to get students all over the world excited about computing.
Each pupil answers questions online that focus on computational and logical thinking within a 40 minute window, and there are certificates for those that do well and the possibility of being invited to future competitions for those outstanding in their group.
Ms Kirkland
Read MoreNHP’s metacognition event
NHP was delighted to host our first Metacognition event on Wednesday 9th November in partnership with Thinking Matters. Over 30 Heads and teachers from schools all over London and beyond came to NHP to see what being a Thinking School looked like, as they embark on their own thinking school journey.
After a brilliant tour led by the Drive Team and Year 6 pupils, Ms Swales and Miss Chute presented the benefits of being an advanced accredited Thinking School and why it makes NHP a unique place to be, not just for pupils but for teachers too!
Thinking Matters wrote a brilliant paragraph to summarise our event, seen below:
‘In November, we were greeted by Notting Hill Prep, West London, an advanced Accredited Thinking School. As a school that has been embedding Thinking for over 10 years, it was great to see the different stages of their journey and how embedded the tools and habits are within their curriculum and language of learning. Nicola Swales, Deputy Head Academic, talked about the impact of metacognition for Senior School preparation. It was a powerful reminder of ‘why a Thinking School’ and the importance of preparing children for the future and developing their capacities as happy, healthy learners. They want their students to ask a multitude of questions, be curious, to read widely and not be flummoxed by unfamiliar material. How they achieve this is through the use of meta tools – Thinking Hats, Thinking Frames, NHP Habits and P4C. As we walked around the school, with our student guides, we could see all of the meta tools in action being used confidently and dexterously. Arabella Chute, Thinking School Coordinator reiterated the importance of THINK: Tools, Habits, Infusion, Nerds (The Drive Team!) and Knowledge to help embed whole school metacognition.’
Click here for the full article.
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