Purple Patch
Year 1 Trip
10 Mar 2009 9:42PM
The Tower Of London
Year 1 went on a trip to the Tower of London. They had a wonderful time and took some super photos.
What a lovely day – and what a lot of fun!
Year 5 Residential Trip
10 Mar 2009 9:35PM
Isle of Wight
As promised yesterday, please find a few photos of yesterday's journey and fun along the way!
Leaving Portsmouth, with a calm Solent ahead of us.
Enjoying a long anticipated packed lunch.
The view as we disembarked from the ferry and set our first wheels on the Isle of Wight.
View of Ryde Pier as we drove past.
Some children having fun on the roundabout.
The serious business of wall climbing.
More children having fun on the roundabout!
Enjoying the swings.
Enjoying the view.
Fun on springs.
Admiring the BMX skill.
More children enjoying the swings, albeit rather small ones!
More fun on springs.
And the glorious view of the coast.
This is just a taster. Sorry that I did not manage to capture every single child on camera, but they just wouldn't keep still!
There will be more images from the Isle of Wight at the weekend.
RSA News
9 Mar 2009 9:46PM
Junior Quiz Night
The RSA would like to thank Jane, Jonothan and Antonia Round for putting together the best attended Year 5 and 6 Quiz Night EVER. They managed to keep the questions flowing and the excitement going all evening with their able band of parent helpers and Mrs. Williams too. We hope all those who came thoroughly enjoyed themselves and will either be back next year for another chance of glory - or that you'll fondly remember your 'old days' at Rosemead if you're in Year 6!
Congratulations go to:
‘The Lightning Bolts’ who won the quiz and are donating £100 to ‘Wings of Hope’.
Well done everyone for raising such a large amount of money to help other children!
If you still owe money to the RSA for this (even if you couldn’t come on the night) please put your payment in the RSA box as soon as possible.
Thank you
Year 5 Residential Trip
9 Mar 2009 9:26PM
Isle of Wight Trip
Tonight I just wanted to write a quick note, after having returned from the Isle of Wight, having left all the year 5 children and staff a little tired after the journey, but very excited about the week ahead.
Our coach driver, Darren, made marvellous time down to Portsmouth and, although we were booked on the 1pm ferry, arrived in time for us to be put on the 12.30 crossing.
Once we had driven on, all the children and staff left the coach, went to the seating area on the ferry and watched as Portsmouth disappeared behind us. Some of the children were particularly excited, as they had not previously travelled on a ferry.
As we approached our destination, a lady came up to ask me the name of our school. I told her that we were from Rosemead and she asked me to pass on congratulations to the children for their super behaviour and to the staff for having organised the children so well. She said that last year she had been on the ferry when another school had been making the crossing and the behaviour had fallen very short of the mark. Needless to say, we all felt very proud of the children ourselves!
Once we had got back onto the coach and disembarked from the ferry, Darren drove us, in the glorious sunshine, to a super playground, where the children were able to run around furiously and expend a little of their energy. After a good while there, we continued to our hotel, where the children were given their rooms, and were clearly delighted at the room mates they had been given.
I left after a cup of tea with the staff, which the hotel owners had kindly brought us. The children were unpacking their things and getting ready for supper, after which time they were going to be entertained by a storyteller.
Tomorrow I hope to upload several of the photos I took today. Do call again to see some pictures from Day 1.
Book Week
8 Mar 2009 9:37PM
Book Week has been a great success once again this year. The children have been entertained by pirates, spoken to about how to write and publish novels, have participated in a quiz night, swapped books, bought new books, read to each other and have dressed up as an amazing array of characters from a myriad of different stories. This is just a selection of what they have been doing. There has also been another challenging literary quiz for the adults this year.
Thank you to everyone for participating so wholeheartely in Book Week once again this year, and particular thanks the RSA for organising the Junior Quiz, and to Mrs. Williams for organising the timetable of super events and providing plenty of questions for children and adults alike!
Read on for one year 5 boy's view of our guest speaker on Friday:
Leslie Horton – Guest Author
Mrs. Horton told us all about writing crime novels and how to publish a book. She was very interesting.
The hall was completely silent when she was talking, and there was a sea of hands when she asked for any questions!
Fred V. – year 5
A Voice from Rosemead's Past...
8 Mar 2009 5:25PM
We are very lucky to have received an email from another of Rosemead's alumni. Yesteray I posted more reminiscences from Shirley Roach, who attended Rosemead in the 1950s. In her piece, she mentioned a classmate called Keith Tritton, who went on to be an astronomer. We are very lucky to have received a email from Mr. Tritton himself, which you can see below. Mr. Tritton has also sent us a copy of one of his school reports. Do read on to enjoy his words...
I was at Rosemead from 1950 to 1954 when it was at Atkins Road in Streatham. The school there was in what had been a big old family house, with four storeys of large rooms that had been converted into classrooms.
It had a big garden that served as our playground. The Headmistress was Miss D E Plumridge, the school’s founder – she can be seen in Shirley’s Purple Patch article – and I remember her as a very imposing character indeed.
I thought you might be interested to see one of my school reports, from Christmas Term 1952. Some of the remarks seem very funny now. Although I mostly got quite good marks, apparently my dinnertime conduct was very poor! I have no idea now what I did to earn that comment. Most of my other reports were better than this – honestly!
This class would be called Year 5 today. You can see that the subjects we studied were very different then. There was a big emphasis on Literacy – English, Composition, Dictation, Words and Meanings, Poetry, Reading and Writing were all taught and marked as different subjects. Mathematics was taught as Arithmetic, Mechanical Arithmetic and Tables (and I can’t even remember what Mechanical Arithmetic was!). Although Algebra and Geometry were also listed on the report form they were never taught in my classes.
Not a hint of science, of course, and certainly no ICT – computers would have been a very long way in the future.
What hasn’t changed one bit is the school badge, which is printed on the first page of the report. I’m delighted to see you have kept it exactly the same in every detail today, nearly 60 years on!
Student Council News
8 Mar 2009 5:03PM
Comic Relief
The Student Council would like to invite all children at both EC and TPR to wear red on Friday, 13th March, in support of Comic Relief. Don't worry if you can't wear all red, as long as it's mostly red.
There will be a charge of 50p for this event, and all money will, of course, be going to Comic Relief. We are planning a little extra for the children on the day, but are keeping that as a surprise!
We do hope you will be able to support this event. It's always such fun.
Your Student Council
A Voice from Rosemead's Past...
7 Mar 2009 8:06AM
Below you will find more words from Mrs. Roach, a former pupil who contacted us before Christmas with reminiscences about her time at Rosemead. Times have certainly changed...!
Teaching methods were very different from how things are done today. If we didn't behave we would be punished and maybe made to stand in the corner of the room.
When I started school at Rosemead at the age of five, I could already read - my mother had taught me when she was helping my older sister to learn.
I clearly remember a reading lesson – again at the Atkins Road site –where we had a very simple book with very short simple sentences and the instructions were to read one sentence each around the class.
Unfortunately I was sitting near the back of the classroom and by they time they got to me I had read the whole book from cover to cover and didn’t know which sentence I was supposed to read. At that time I was eager to read anything that was put before me.
I was severely reprimanded - maybe even got a slap on the back of my hand, and as a life-lesson it was not good. I now know that I was being punished for not doing as I was told but in my five-year-old brain I was being punished for reading.
I hated reading from that moment, always preferred precis to essays and I can honestly say I didn't read another book that I didn't have to until I was 60 years old. I was bored one day and my partner said I should find a book to read. I went to the Library and withdrew ten books and read them all within two weeks and now I'm hooked on reading so I got there in the end!
In another class I was day-dreaming, pretending to put on lipstick and pressing my lips together as I'd seen my mother do. Unfortunately for me, another child took that opportunity to start humming and I was accused, punished with a ruler and called a liar when I protested my innocence.
On the brighter side our first class teacher, Mrs Mower, who was a lovely old lady with her white hair pulled up into a bun on top of her head, had a better way to encourage good behaviour. She had a toffee tin and if we had been good all week, we could choose a sweet from the tin on Friday. If we hadn't been good, we had to sit by whilst our friends ate their sweets. More of a carrot than a stick.
Despite the above, I realise that the strictness imposed by the teachers was in the interests of all the students as our classes weren't constantly disrupted by unruly children, as happens in some schools nowadays, and we were free to learn. My overall memories are that it was a great start in my life.
I appear in Photo B (above) and am the third child to the left of the first adult. The little boy sitting next to the first adult is Keith Tritton, the astronomer mentioned in my first email.
Most of the teachers are in Photo C (below). The Headmistress – and I believe the founder of the School - Miss Plumridge, is third from the left. You will easily identify Mrs Mower with her white hair!
If you are reading this and are a former pupil of Rosemead, please do let us know your memories of your time here.
The Week Ahead
7 Mar 2009 7:52AM
Week beginning 9th March, 2009
Monday, 9th
Year 5 to Isle of Wight till Friday. Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Kastoryano, Miss King, Mr. Gallagher and Mrs. Chaplin. Mrs. Sherwood to travel with group.
Ms. Wannberg for PE cover till Thursday.
8.55 Year 3 assembly on Sayer’s Croft.
Eye tests begin for year 3.
13.00-15.30 Under 11 girls football vs. Virgo Fidelis.
Tuesday, 10th
Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Sherwood & Mrs. Bright out at Legal Conference.
Miss Cornejo out on course at Institute of Education. Mrs Lowe to cover.
9.30 Showround
Wednesday, 11th
8.55 6C Class assembly.
Thursday, 12th
Mrs. Riley out on course. Mrs Lowe to cover.
Mrs. Sherwood travelling to Isle of Wight.
8.55 4T Class assembly.
17.30 Parents’ Consultation Evening at EC including year 2.
Friday, 13th
Mrs Louks-Middleton out.
Year 5 return from Isle of Wight.
9.00 1H Class assembly.
Year 6 Trip
7 Mar 2009 7:42AM
Dulwich Picture Gallery
We are so lucky to have Dulwich Picture Gallery so nearby. Recently, the year 6 classes have visited the gallery. Here you can see a couple of images of one of their trips. In the first photograph, some of the children are studying the artwork, and in the second photograph, they are acting out a scene from one of the paintings.
