St John's staff have once again been dancing in the corridors, playgrounds and classrooms to celebrate the start of the summer holidays. 

Click here to view the video.

Summer Maths Challenge

There’s still time to sign up to the Summer Maths Challenge!

The challenge is to complete 15 short maths practice sessions which are based on the National Curriculum for the school year your child has just completed. These ‘little and often’ sessions are perfectly crafted to sharpen maths skills without getting in the way of summer relaxation - and without keeping children at the screen for too long.

Our school has been given a unique code to enter onto komodomath.com/summer so that you can access these practice sessions completely free of charge.

Our code is: SLSTJOHNSCE

All you have to do is visit komodomath.com/summer and enter this code in the ‘voucher code’ field when you sign up on the page.

It’s quick, it’s free, it won’t take too much time and we really believe that participating in this initiative will have tangible benefits for our pupils.

On Friday 15th June the whole school took part in our first ever annual Inclusion Day. We had some wonderful outside speakers including Al Carter from the Chailey Heritage Foundation, pupils from Valence School and two assistance dogs from Canine Partners.

Two of our own amazing pupils also helped us to understand more about our school values of Inclusivity and Empathy, our very own ‘superheroes!’

Visit our Inclusion Day page to see photographs and videos from the day. http://www.st-johns.kent.sch.uk/inclusion-day-2018/

After arriving at PGL, ahead of schedule, the children learnt lots of new songs and games.

Unfortunately the continual rain meant that we had to change one of our activities but this did not dampen anyone’s spirits. Lots of fun was had, lots of positivity and great teamwork shown. We were able to have an enjoyable campfire and everyone settled and slept-some more than others.

The food is excellent and we are are very impressed with the behaviour of our children-this has also been noticed by PGL staff.

The forecast is looking great for today and there are lots of different height challenges for us to conquer today. Please look on the ‘gallery section’ of the website for a small selection of photos.

Mr Bradbeer and the team.

(The coaches are due to leave PGL at 2:00pm tomorrow, so we estimate arrival back at school will be 3:30-4pm depending on traffic.)

We all arrived safely and the children have enjoyed their first day of activities.  The day has been rounded off with singing around the campfire.

Photos will be added to the Gallery each day.

Once again we've been going bananas for Bananagrams in the library, as the annual contest to find St John's 'best of the bunch' reached its exciting conclusion this week.

Over 30 children from Year 5 have taken part in the competition, which involves each player creating their own grid of interconnecting words as quickly as possible - and with NO spelling mistakes!

In a tightly contested final, Danny (Elm), narrowly pipped Kitt (Juniper) and Lily (Elm) to be crowned St John's 'Top Banana' for 2018. Congratulations to Danny, and to Kitt and Lily for such a close and exciting game and for everyone who took part in this year's competition.

Bananagrams Club runs every lunchtime in the library from 12.15-12.40 for children in Year 5 and all are welcome to come along and have a go.

Mrs Barker, Librarian and Mrs Irving, Y5 teacher

The Forest School are looking forward to starting this term’s sessions and using the new fire pit that has been installed. We’re really excited to be using this new seated area, which has been generously funded by an outside agency.

Bedtime Story

To celebrate World Book Day, we are launching our first Bedtime Story. This is for you to enjoy with your family. Share it snuggled up on the sofa or in bed.

Remember a bedtime story is so important and hearing lots of language is crucial for a child’s social and academic development.

Look out for our bedtime stories to be updated throughout the year as different St John’s staff members share their favourites.

Just go to the World Book Day 2018 page to listen to our first Bedtime Story read by Mrs Watts.

Last Thursday Year 2 brought a taste of India to St John's. The children had the opportunity to taste Indian food made by Saffron Indian restaurant, which included: bhajis, samosas, poppadoms, rice and potato curry. It was lovely to see some children trying foods they had never tasted before, even if some of them were rather spicy! Mrs Pande came in to tell us about her experiences in India and gave us beautiful Henna hands. We also welcomed DJ from KZ Dance Company who taught us Bollywood and Bhangra style dances and explained to us how they tell a story. To top the day off we performed our dances to parents in the hall at the end of the day.
An amazing day was had by all, we hope the children enjoyed being immersed in the culture of India.