Nutrition Talk by Sodexo
Today, NHP were joined by Amy Teichman, the Quality and Nutrition Manager for Sodexo (the catering providers for NHP), for an informative talk on child nutrition, based on extensive research and experience within the schools’ sector. She discussed how the catering team at NHP creates varied and balanced meals that work on a three-week rota to provide our pupils with a wide range of options. We allow our children freedom to choose the food items on their plates in a controlled and monitored environment, encouraging them to add vegetables where needed.
By including a twice-weekly sweet treat, she spoke about how this enables pupils to understand that all food types can be enjoyed in moderation; thus building the foundations for a healthy and happy life both in and out of school.
Amy gave some great tips to our attending parents on how to how to incorporate healthier ingredients into regular meals, which even the fussiest of children will enjoy! We finished the session with a demonstration of recommended portion sizes and how our catering team measures each portion when preparing food for the children, finishing off with a Q&A, which covered points in the answers such as how it is very normal for children to be hungry and wanting a snack around 3pm after a good lunch, how portion sizes vary from lower down the school to higher up and and how student voice is important to the school through feedback on the food discussed at School Council.
It was an incredibly informative talk and one which highlighted the pivotal role that schools take in creating a healthy relationship with eating.
Read MoreThe Sugar Plum Fairy visits NHP
The children in the Lower School enjoyed a visit from the Sugar Plum Fairy on Monday. They watched quite entranced as she danced a ballet solo up on her pointe shoes. Then, she taught them a dance from The Land of Sweets, which they performed with great confidence. Wonderful dancing, Lower School!
Read MoreChristmas Book Drive for Oxford Gardens Primary
In true NHP style, our parents came out in full force to support our annual Christmas Book Drive as part of the NHP Foundation’s Radius Programme. This year, we were collecting books for the children at Oxford Gardens Primary School. Thanks to the generosity of our parents, each one of their 302 pupils from Nursery to Year 6 received an age-appropriate, wrapped book, in time for Christmas. And to top it all off, Santa made a special stop-off at the school to hand the books out to the children, with the help of three very important NHP Pupil Leadership Team elves: Ludo, Shiden and Louis.
A special thank you to NHP parent Jo Benians for once again so successfully leading the drive for the second year in a row, certainly no small feat. And for the support from our Heads of the PA, Susie Comish and Lauren Jarrett, NHP Librarian Arabella Chase and Head of the Foundation, Kirsty Murdoch.
Read MoreSpreading Literary Christmas Cheer!
Inspired by the holiday-themed towns in Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, 7KP have been writing richly descriptive pieces of work on the theme of ‘Christmas Town’. Their stories were written to interest and delight Year 3 pupils, and on Tuesday they had the opportunity to share their stories with 3K and 3E. They had a rapt audience, and Year 3 asked some very insightful questions. One pupil commented ‘I hope I can write like that when I’m in Year 7’! 7KP were fantastic role models throughout.
5JW have also created work for other year groups this week, rehearsing and recording an audio book version of Dr Suess’s ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas’ for pupils in the Lower School. They have been learning about the work of Foley artists, and made some of their own effects to accompany the recording. Many a brave understudy was called upon on our recording day: pupils were thinking flexibly and read unseen passages with bravery and panache. Lower School pupils and teachers have enjoyed listening to 5JW’s expressive poetry in their classes this week; it has certainly spread some Christmas cheer.
Read MoreNHCCC debut performance!
The Notting Hill Children’s Community Choir (NHCCC), the NHP Foundation’s choir, made their debut public performance on Sunday 27th November at the Music House for Children Carols by Candlelight concert at Bush Hall. It was a fantastically festive evening full of carols, Christmas cheer and a special appearance from Santa himself. The choir, made up of 7 local primary schools (including NHP), were an absolute highlight of the show, demonstrating how hard they have worked over the past term with an incredible performance full of fun and enthusiasm to a packed audience.
Watch a video of their performance
Photo credits: Doris Heinrich
Read MoreYear 3’s Pantomime
On Wednesday, we kicked off our in-house Christmas performances in style with Y3’s Pantoland – a mash-up of different pantos and eclectic music choices. The children rapped and danced with rhythm to ‘Ice, Ice Baby’ – from memory, a first at NHP – and sang Christmas hits from years gone by with style and panache.
Audience participation was actively encouraged and good fun was had by all. Thank you to Paige and the Huzzah Drama team for writing and co-ordinating it all, to Mrs Chambers and Alvaro for their marvellous musical accompaniments and to our incredible Year 3 team, Gaggi and the gappies for all their hard work behind the scenes to make it such a great success.
Read MoreThe 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 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 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.
Read More