News

• Friday 27 March 2026 Radley College Visits A group of children have been attending Radley Farm every Tuesday morning and have been enjoying getting to know the farm's furry residents as well as learning an array of transferable skills such as teamwork and perseverance. The children have grown in confidence and shown bravery and patience each week whilst working with the animals. They should be proud of the skills and experiences they have achieved so far. Our thanks to Radley College for enabling this to happen.
• Tuesday 24 March 2026 Children's Mental Health Week In our recent Children's Mental Health Week, we linked the overall national theme of 'This is my place' with learning about 'myHappymind Places'. During this week, the children deepened their recognition and understanding of their own and others' emotions. We also explored different self-regulation strategies that could help should we feel some big emotions and our 'Team HAP' is not working as well as we would like. In addition, we reflected on the power of belonging and feeling connected, and created some stunning 'belonging bunting' to represent our thoughts. The beautiful creative balloon homework certainly brought our learning together - there were lots of brilliant creations that also reflected some of the strategies we can use to help us on our way.
• Tuesday 24 March 2026 Eco Crew Litter Pick On Friday, the Eco Crew headed out into the streets around school for our community litter pick. The children were thanked by several passers-by and felt a great sense of satisfaction in playing a small part in keeping our community tidy! A huge thank you to our adult volunteers for helping us out.
• Tuesday 17 March 2026 Year 3 & 4 Girls Football Tournament Last Wednesday, some our year 3's and 4's represented our school in a girl's football tournament at King Alfred School. The girl's demonstrated great teamwork skills and were incredibly supportive of one another. They also showed amazing perseverance while playing back-to-back games. A massive well done to all.
• Tuesday 10 March 2026 Library celebration with Friends of Kennington Library
• Tuesday 10 March 2026 Mixed Netball Tournament Last Wednesday we took two teams, a Year 5 team and a Year 6 team, to Matthew Arnold to compete in a mixed Netball Tournament. They all did an amazing job and demonstrated excellent sportsman ship throughout all of their games. They also showed brilliant teamwork skills and executed some amazing passes and awesome goals! After 8 matches our Year 6's finished 3rd and our Year 5's came 6th, a huge congratulations to all! And a big thankyou to all the helpers that made this possible.
• Tuesday 10 March 2026 World Book Day 2026 Last week to celebrate World Book Day younger year groups were allocated a KS2 class to join and read together. The children loved reading with their buddy classes as part of our "Drop Everything and Read" afternoon. Poems and stories were shared together and the older children did an amazing job of reading to the younger children and talking about what their favourite parts of the books were. Well done to everyone!
• Tuesday 3 March 2026 Year 6 welcomes Science Oxford
• Tuesday 3 March 2026 Balance Bikes for Nursery & Reception There was great excitement in the playground at St Swithun's last month as our nursery and reception children proudly took delivery of a brand-new set of balance bikes. The colourful fleet arrived as part of the national Bikeability programme, giving our youngest learners the perfect opportunity to begin their cycling journey.
• Tuesday 3 March 2026 Singing and Drama Squad at Young Voices What a joy it was on Thursday to take 40 members of Singing and Drama Squad to the Young Voices concert in Birmingham. After months of rehearsing songs and dance moves (and working through the disappointment of the concert cancellation in January due to snow), we finally got the opportunity to join 5,600 other children to sing and dance our hearts out. Our children were simply outstanding - their enthusiasm, energy and engagement shone throughout the whole day, their singing and dancing were exceptional and it was a delight for them to be part of this brilliant event. They truly did themselves and us all proud!
• Tuesday 24 February 2026 International Day - 10th Feb
• Tuesday 10 February 2026 International Day!!!
• Tuesday 10 February 2026 Tag Rugby Tournament Last Thursday, a group of our Year 6 pupils proudly represented St Swithuns at a Tag Rugby tournament at Tilsley Park. They demonstrated fantastic teamwork and it was a real pleasure to see how supportive and encouraging they were of one another.
• Tuesday 10 February 2026 Dr Bike visits St Swithun's Dr Bike was in today to look over the bikes of the year 4s and upper juniors. The year 5s are doing their bikeability after half term, so their bikes needed checking over to ensure they're safe on the roads!
• Tuesday 10 February 2026 Ramadan, Lent and Chinese New Year Our thanks to Dom, Jago, Ted, Iqra and Amara for two fabulous presentations on Lent and Ramadan. We discovered that, together with Chinese New Year, all three events are special times when people pause and reset.
• Tuesday 3 February 2026 British Author, Explorer & TV Presenter visit On Monday 2nd February, we were lucky enough to be visited by George McGavin, a well-known British author, explorer and television presenter who is passionate about the natural world. He gave a talk to Year 4 on rainforests and recognising that environments can change and that this can sometimes pose dangers to living things. George then gave a whole-school assembly talking to us about the need to stop using plastic (he showed us a devastating photo of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck up its nostril) and how we can make gardens into amazing places for creatures to live. A huge thank you to George for coming to see us and for sharing his passion for nature in such a knowledgeable and enthusiastic way.
• Tuesday 13 January 2026 International Spectacular - Tuesday 10th February
• Tuesday 16 December 2025 Year 5 Mosque Trip
• Tuesday 16 December 2025 Welcome to 'The St Swithun's Siren' A school magazine created by Year 6
• Tuesday 16 December 2025 Year 4 Ukulele Concert On Thursday, Year 4 showed off their incredible ukulele skills in a concert to family and friends. It was amazing to see how much they had learned since September, and the concert finished with a rousing rendition of Jingle Bells where the audience joined in and sang too! A big thank you to Phil Hepworth who is their fantastic ukulele teacher.
• Tuesday 2 December 2025 Parkrun Primary
• Friday 28 November 2025 Year 6 visit Hampton Court
• Tuesday 18 November 2025 Year 2 Explorer Day Year 2 enjoyed an exciting Explorer Day last Friday. They came dressed ready to explore as you can see from some of these photos! First they explored different world habitats inside the Explorer Dome that came to visit. They learnt about how animals are adapted to their environments and the impact we as humans can have, positively or negatively on looking after our world. Later in the day they created binoculars and then went on a scavenger hunt outside looking for animals. A wonderful time was had by all.
• Tuesday 18 November 2025 Antibullying Week Our well-being ambassadors kicked off Anti-Bullying week with an incredible assembly on Monday. They spoke well and confidently and have shown they are going to be a great team this year!
• Tuesday 18 November 2025 Year 1 visit Cotswold Wildlife Park On Friday, Year 1 had a lovely but very wet day at Cotswold Wildlife Park. Despite the weather, the children smiled throughout and were so well-behaved. The best bit was the fact that, as we were the only ones there, we had great views of all the animals and saw some of the bigger ones (lions, giraffes and rhinos) really close up! We particularly enjoyed seeing the baby rhino who had been born very recently. The meerkats enjoyed showing off once they realised they had an audience!
• Tuesday 18 November 2025 BBC Children in Need 2025 The theme this year was ‘do 25 things' so our Key Stage 1 and Saplings children enjoyed a little workout on Thursday afternoon, led by Mrs Harris. We all got a little warm in the hall doing 25 arm waves, 25 star jumps, 25 squats and 25 steps marching on the spot. The children all joined in well and it was lovely to have us all together.
• Tuesday 18 November 2025 St. Swithun's celebrating with myHappymind Our school were immensely honoured to be invited to a special ceremony for myHappymind, where they were presented with the King's Award for Enterprise, a great accolade that highlights the impact, innovation and dedication they show to supporting wellbeing in education. The King's Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious awards a UK business can win. Ms Maskell (Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead) and Mrs Mills (Wellbeing Governor) joined the amazing team from myHappymind, dignitaries and other stakeholders at a joyous ceremony and reception. It was also wonderful to see all the congratulatory videos that some schools had created, including the one we created at St. Swithun's.
• Tuesday 11 November 2025 Year 3 & 4 Author visit On Thursday last week, Years 3 & 4 welcomed children's author Sarah Ann Juckes. She spoke to the children about her life as a writer and gave some brilliant tips to help the children become writers themselves. We heard about some of her books including her latest one, called "Robin" - a gorgeously poignant tale of family, hope and understanding. If you'd like to buy a copy and have it delivered to school please click this link (the book is available from other booksellers but this link will support Caper, a local independent bookshop): https://caperoxford.square.site/product/robin/PT525D6WBLNCZCGCUXX7666S
• Monday 3 November 2025 Thank you from Abingdon Foodbank
• Friday 24 October 2025 Yr 5 Elm Viking Day The Y5s all made their own costumes, shields and axes. The week has been themed around the Vikings and we have been making a start on our Viking longhouses in D&T too.

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