Culture

Regular visits are arranged to places of cultural, historical, geographical and scientific interest, as well as trips to theatres both locally and in London. These visits are important to children's development and two trips are timetabled termly. Nursery and lower school children make more frequent trips locally.

French is introduced to the children from nursery - the acquisition of language skills is more than just learning to speak a foreign language. It obviously has an impact on children's intellectual growth and enriches cognitive development. It helps children to understand and appreciate the customs and traditions of an entirely different group of people - strengthening communication and empathy skills. During their final two years there is an opportunity for children to take part in a ski trip to the French Alps, where they have the opportunity to practise their French conversational skills with the local population.

Specialist music teachers provide individual and group music lessons and all the children are encouraged to take up a musical instrument. In class lessons all the children learn to play the keyboard and recorder as well as the percussion instruments and gain experience with sequencing software. The school has a very strong choir for which auditions are held annually, with lessons taking place after school every Wednesday. Our choir is often invited to take part in local singing festivals.

Drama is another subject which is specialist taught and one of the most popular after school clubs. As well as class assemblies and nativity performances a whole school production is performed in a local theatre at the end of the school year.