SEND Coffee Morning - Friday 21st March 2025 Thank you everybody for responding really positively to the SEND Coffee Morning survey. After your amazing responses, we will be holding our first SEND Coffee Morning on Friday 21st March at 9.15am. The theme will be behaviour...
The Importance of Punctuality: Every Minute Counts!
At SJSJ, we believe that arriving on time sets the tone for a successful day of learning. School starts promptly at 8:55am, and it is essential that all children arrive on time, ready to learn.
Being punctual helps children settle into their routine, reduces classroom disruptions, and ensures they do not miss important instructions at the start of the day. Arriving late can affect not only their learning, but also their confidence and social interactions.
Did you Know:
Persistent lateness can lead to a referral being made to Hackney Education and a possible fine being issued.
Let’s work together to build good habits that will benefit our children for life. Please ensure your child arrives at school at 8:55am so they can start the day feeling prepared and focused. Thank you for your support!
We’re excited to remind you that World Book Day is just around the corner on Thursday, 6th March 2025! This is a wonderful opportunity for our school community to celebrate the magic of books and the joy of reading.
On the day, children are invited to come dressed up. This costume could be:
Their favourite character from a book.
Their favourite author.
A word of their choice.
We encourage you to be creative, used recycled materials and not to spend money on your child’s costume.
Throughout the day, we’ll also be hosting a variety of reading-related activities and events to inspire a lifelong love of books and storytelling.
We can’t wait to see the fantastic costumes and share the joy of reading with everyone!
For our writing cycle this week, we were writing a short narrative with an alternative ending based on our class text, “The Egyptian Cinderella” by Shirley Climo.
Take a look at some of the writing that Ariella in Year 3 has created with a wonderful range of -ing clauses and figurative language.
A short narrative with an alternative ending
Underneath the boiling sun, rowing their humongous raft, the servant girls never gave Rhodopis a backward glance. The servant girls, bellowing orders in poor Rhodopis’ direction, didn’t want her to go to the colossal party. Rhjodopis sang as they rowed down the t=steam and their bracelets jingled. Rowing on the River Nile, they paddled the oars for the raft, whilst they turned their faces away from Rhodopis. She cried out a song full of sorrow as she hit the wooden paddles against the large pile of clothes.
A colossal shadow appeared in front of the glistening, blue sky. Rhodopis gently bowed her head gracefully because she thought it was the Great God Horus in the form of a gigantic falcon. Sparkling in the sky, the falcon was circling intently, so she softly murmured to the falcon, “Greeting God Horus.” The falcon sparkled like billions of fireflies, as she greeted him with a warm smile. Slowly dancing, as she did her chores, she sparkled like a firefly floating graciously over the glooming sea.
We are happy to announce we have won the highest funding level of £1,500 for Opal play! Tesco offers a “Stronger Starts” initiative, which provides grants to schools and community organisations to support children’s access to healthy food and activities. They are supporting us with our OPAL mission of enhancing playtimes for all pupils and we are so incredibly grateful.
Firstly, we wanted to say a huge thank you for all of the donations we have received from you during the Autumn term. It’s been lovely to see how many of you are supporting us with this initiative and to see the children engaging so beautifully with the new provision.
This week, we will be installing our new reading shed in the KS2 playground, which will be one of our ‘cosy cabins’. Therefore, we are kindly asking for any donations of bean bags for the children to sit on, or other comfortable seating arrangements such as gaming chairs, as well as any decorations, such as fairy lights, you feel the children would like to have inside.
All donations should be left in the donation station which is situated in the KS1 playground, or handed into to the main office. Thanks in advance for your support.
We are excited to announce that our Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) is seeking enthusiastic parents to fill the following positions:
* PTA Chair & Co-chair
* Communications Lead
* Nursery Representative
These roles are fantastic opportunities to get involved, meet other parents, and make a positive impact on our school community. If you’re interested, please reach out to your class PTA representative by Friday 28th February.
Thank you for your continued support and involvement.**
Your Voice Matters: Share Your Thoughts!
We value your insights and invite you to complete a brief survey—taking less than 5 minutes—to help us enhance our PTA initiatives. Please participate by Friday 28th February.
Thank you for your time and input.
We are pleased to announce that the annual Hackney RE calendar competition has commenced for 2025-26. Last year, over 120 entries were received across the borough so thank you to all children who participated. The calendar is sent to every school in Hackney and is a celebration of Religion and Worldviews teaching and learning in our schools. It also includes important dates of upcoming religious festivals and secular commemorations which help us when planning assemblies and collective worship. It aims to support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development beyond the RE classroom.
All the artwork is selected through a borough-wide poster competition, which is open to all pupils across KS1-KS3 in Hackney Schools. This year’s Religion and Worldviews theme is on ‘Festivals and Celebrations’. The entries can show religious and secular festivals and celebrations to reflect Hackney’s diverse communities.
Entries:
Please note that ALL entries (originals only) should be:
If entries do contain some text, please check words have the correct spelling before submission. The closing date is Friday 28th March 2025 and all entries should be sent to:
RE Calendar Competition
Claire Ramalli
School Improvement Team
Hackney Education
Hackney Service Centre
1 Hillman Street
London
E8 1DY
Mr Watson is our school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead.
If Mr Watson is not available, you can always speak to one of our school’s Deputy Safeguarding Leads:
| Name | Class | Reason |
| Davey and Sydney | Year 1 | For their amazing artwork. |
| Hawa, Leonardo and Zoe S | Year 1 | For outstanding effort and improvement during reading and amazing progress in handwriting. |
| Whole class | Year 2 | For projecting their voices beautifully in their class assembly. |
| Aria-Rose, Jhamelle, Mary, Ruben and Zaynab | Year 3 | For outstanding behaviour, effort and enthusiasm to their learning all term. Miss Bah has been amazed and couldn’t be more proud! |
| Ariella | Year 3 | For incredible use of complex sentences in her writing as well as ambitious vocabulary choices. |
| Anoushka | Year 4 | For beautiful handwriting in all of her books. |
| Kenzo | Year 4 | For amazing inquisitive questions during reading lessons. |
| Andrea and Amayah | Year 5 | For always being the first to put their hands up and modelling what to do to the rest of the class. |
| Jagjot | Year 5 | For fantastic effort in using joined continuous cursive handwriting. |
| Oscar | Year 5 | For settling in well in his class. |
| Iman | Year 6 | For fantastic effort in using joined continuous cursive handwriting. |
This week, Year 6 have been finalising their balanced arguments, exploring the questions “Was Macbeth right to kill King Duncan?” in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” In order to write our fantastic arguments, we sorted statements into proposition and opposition for the statement and engaged in some......
This week in Year 5, as part of our computing module, we have been studying filming techniques and the benefits of using certain filming techniques. These techniques include, close up shots, long range shots, panning and recording moving subjects. Here are some examples of shots......
This week in Year 4, we have been creating our own pastel drawings in the style of Paul Cezanne. We have had so much fun experimenting with colours and blending colours to make shadows. Have a look at the creating process:...
This week for Internet Safety Week, Year 3 have been making posters to alert people of scams that can happen online. Using the letters SCAM, the children used symbols and phrases to warn others....
In Year 2 this week, the children have been looking at equal groups. As you can see, they used cubes or drew dots and placed them into equal groups. Then found out by counting what the total amount was....
This week in Year 1 our highlight was putting all our scientific skills to use in creating fact files for our our favourite animals. We organised the animals by their animal group, what their diet was and their habitat. We worked in teams to gather......
This half term in Reception, we have been learning all about the famous artwork of sculpture and photographer, Andy Goldsworthy. We discovered that Andy is an environmentalist who likes to use natural materials to create his pieces of art. We began by looking at some......
Nursery’s art project this week was inspired by British artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Andy uses natural materials such as leaves, twigs, pebbles and rocks to make sculptures in the UK and around the world. Nursery children first created a spiral pattern in sand, using the formation......