Friday Headlines

the weekly newsletter from EHS

News from Head of Prep

11 October 2024

Creativity has been in evidence in every part of the Prep school this week from our youngest Nursery girls exploring the colour green and using their fine motor skills to create fantastic snakes, to our eldest pupils taking inspiration from our incredible allotment to produce wonderful pieces of descriptive writing. The girls know that I love nothing better than to lose myself in a good book and so supporting our pupils to develop a love of reading is something I am very passionate about. Reading is the key to unlocking learning, but it is not an easy skill to master and building firm foundations right from the start can have a hugely positive impact on a child’s educational journey.

When Mrs Robinson asked me if she could take the Kindergarten girls out on a school trip to Harborne, I was intrigued to see how this would help immerse the pupils in their learning. Fortunately the Post office was open, there were Pumpkins for sale, Police officers in attendance and letters to be posted to Paddington Bear. The girls had a wonderful time and returned to school, confident in their knowledge, understanding and application of the ‘p’ sound.

Ensuring a child’s education feels relevant to them is a useful tool in helping to engage them and secure their understanding. This was evident in the Kindergarten trip to Harborne, but also in our Year Three trip to Dudley Canal trust to find out about rocks and soils, our Year One Geography mapwork in Chad Square and with our Year Five girls immersing themselves in the school allotment as inspiration for their creative writing.

However, a highlight of the week for me was when I was invited to join pupils in Coding Club on Wednesday morning. Using Scratch, girls had coded the most wonderful, interactive online games. It was no mean feat and there was significant debugging to be done along the way, but the results were extremely impressive. The girls are taking part in the Primary Schools Coding League which is a fun, collaborative and competitive coding competition. I cannot wait to see how they approach the challenges over the coming year.

What we do well as a school is to give our girls opportunities and I am incredibly proud of the opportunities that have been in evidence this week.

Have a super weekend.

Mrs Hobson