We have recently held our annual Open Mornings at school and nursery and it was a pleasure to see so many families interested in joining Merchant Taylors’ Prep. The greatest pleasure was in seeing how magnificently the Y8s performed as ambassadors (with huge thanks to some extra Y7s who helped out at the last minute due the large numbers of attendees). All of our ambassadors sold the school so well and each and every prospective parent spoke about how impressed they had been of their ambassador.  Also apparent was how well all of the boys in the school behave and how motivated they are to learn in class. These characteristics were noticed by our many visitors and it is great to have external validation of what we are trying to achieve.

In a Senior School assembly, we welcomed Mr Everson, Head Master of MTS, and Pacho Nieto O’Brien, a sixth form monitor (seen pictured with our school captain, Daniel Rowlands). We also had some other MTS visitors in the form of the Merchant Taylors’ Court, from the Merchant Taylors’ Livery Company (Peregrine Massey, the Master, is seen pictured with me), who came to meet some pupils and staff here at our school. You will be glad to know that they were delighted by everything that they saw here, from Junior School singing their ‘Harvest Samba’, to Willem Redman expertly playing his violin, to Sachin Vyas and Aman Thakkar who entertained us with their LAMDA pieces, and to Senior School for singing ‘The World in Union’ with many excellent solos and harmonies.

Finally, I would like to thank the Parents’ Association for the wonderful Fun Day a couple of weeks ago. It takes a huge amount of effort and team work for an event of this scale and thank you to everyone who supported the event and made it an enjoyable experience for the boys.

Dr. Karen McNerney | Head of School

Monday, October 19
Y8 Tutorial Week

Tuesday, October 20
Pierre Bensusan Guitar Concert 7.00 pm Theatre
U9AB Rugby v St. John’s (h) 2:30pm
U9CD Rugby v St. John's (a) 2:30pm

Wednesday, October 21
Whole School Staff Meeting 8.00 am
Y2 Visit to The Golden Hinde
Y5 & Y6 House Cross Country Competition
“Talking Pre-teens” Talk for Parents 7.00 -9.00 pm Theatre

Thursday, October 22
Junior School Parent Consultations 1.00 - 5.00 pm
Y3 & Y4 Target Setting Meeting with Parents from 1.30 pm

Friday, October 23
Parents’ Association Mutfi Day
Y1 Visit to The Golden Hinde
Y5 & Y6 Rugby Development Festival 2.15 – 4.15 pm

Monday, October 26 - Friday, October 30
Half Term

Monday, November 2
3+ Assessment Day (Nursery Closed)
Revision for Y8 Mock Examinations

Tuesday, November 3
3+ Assessment Day (Nursery Closed)
Junior School Vision Screening
Revision for Y8 Mock Examinations
U12 Hockey v Merchant Taylors’ (at MTS) 4.15 pm
U13 Hockey v St. Martin’s (at MTS) 4.15 pm

Wednesday, November 4
“Talking Pre-teens” Talk for Parents 7.00 – 9.00 pm Theatre
Junior School Recital 9.00 am
Y8 Mock Examinations

Thursday, November 5
Y8 Mock Examinations

Friday, November 6
Y8 Mock Examinations

Sunday, November 8
Remembrance Sunday

Monday, November 9
Y5 LSO Visit

Tuesday, November 10
U12 Hockey v St. Martin’s (at MTS) 4.15 pm
U13 Hockey v St. John’s (at MTS) 4.15 pm

Wednesday, November 11
1st XIII Rugby v Cheshurst Barbarians (h) 2.30 pm
“Talking Pre-teens”Talk for Parents 7.00 -9.00 pm

Thursday, November 12
Parents’ Association Firework Display (Family & Friends) 6.30 pm
U9AB Rugby v Berkhamsted (h) 2.45 pm

Friday, November 13
U11AB Rugby v Berkhamsted (a) 2.45 pm
Y3 Egyptian Workshop pm Theatre

Luka Hinton 5N2
Duncan Mallett 6L3

The boys are approaching the end of a busy, but productive half term.  Our focus during Tutor Time has been on mentoring Year 5 boys along with our news arrivals as well as embedding the new Behaviour for Learning model, which is already having a very positive impact.

Following tremendous success last year we have been voting for a new School Council, which is now in place and has had two sittings already! We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the councillors, with a special mention to James Ward and Raj Shah who were elected as Chairman and Secretary respectively. Form Captains in Years 3 & 4 will also join these meetings.

This week's second School Council meeting confirmed the allocation of cricket pitches and the announcement of Playground Equipment Monitors who will ensure the continued respectful use of equipment and assist Mrs Nye in the organisation of the playground. Councillors also began to debate amendments to our ‘School Fair Rules’, with the intention of making them even more applicable and memorable!

We are already thinking about Year 8 and Year 5 tutorials, which are essential for ensuring positive progress, and would like to thank staff, parents and the boys in advance for making these meetings so productive and beneficial.

House competitions pick up pace after half term following some nail biting Cross Country displays recently.  In particular, we draw your attention to the School’s Spelling Bee. From Monday 2nd November the Houses will run their own Spelling Bees in order to choose one representative from each of the participating year groups (Y3-8).  All those in Years 3-8 will be welcome but are not required to enter.  We will be looking to find the spelling champs of Years 3 & 4 (Monday 23rd November), Years 5 & 6 (Thursday 26th November) and Years 7 & 8 (Friday 27th November). Even now there is a notable buzz in the air. Sorry. Very, very sorry.

Those boys wishing to gear up for the Bee should visit the ‘Boys’ Pages’ on the school website, over the half term break.  Go to the English section where you will find the lists for both key stages.  Boys in Key Stage 3 may be asked words from the Key Stage 2 list (but not vice-versa).  Of course, if on the day of the competition these lists prove insufficiently challenging, in efforts to determine a winner, the judges do reserve the right to dive into the dictionary to find a few suitably challenging words. 

We look forward to a busy second half of term and on a seasonal note would like to remind boys to dust off their coats and mittens. Winter is on the way and Jack Frost comes out to play!

Heads of House

On Friday the 26th of September we celebrated Harvest Festival and Reverend Bartlett visited the school to lead our assembly. He delivered a very interesting and thought-provoking talk involving two oranges named Bubble and Squeak. Thank you to all boys and parents for your generosity. The mountain of food collected has been distributed and will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the lives of those who receive it.

On Tuesday the 29th of September we celebrated Founder’s Day and we all shared a delicious birthday cake at lunchtime. We would like to thank all the catering staff for this lovely treat.

On 27th of September the annual Moor Park Fun Run took place raising money for the Lynda Jackson MacMillan Charity. Jonathan Read (7W2) ran exceptionally well and finished 3rd in the U12 race, narrowly missing out on second place by a photo finish. Daniel Drizen (4G) was our top U10 runner and Peter Brown our top U7 runner. Mr Greenish, Mrs Lad, Mr Hibbert and Mrs Hibbert also ran – enough said about that… Thank you to all the boys, parents and staff who supported this event. Very well done to everyone who ran!

We would like to congratulate all our Year 8 Ambassadors for their wonderful work on Open working Morning recently, where they showed prospective parents around the school. This was a record-breaking year in terms of interest in the school and our Ambassadors coped very well with very large groups. A special word of thanks goes to our ‘honorary ambassadors’, year 7 boys who stepped in at the very last minute to help out. The feedback from the prospective parents was very complimentary and mentioned that our ambassadors were examples of how they hoped their boys would turn out.

Congratulations to Lukas Blom on achieving an A* grade in his GCSE Dutch. This is a huge achievement as it is 5 years early. Lukas also managed to lose only 3 marks out of a possible 300 in his exams – a truly remarkable effort.

Our Accelerated Reader programme has been launched and our boys have shown great interest in this new venture – some boys have already read over 250 000 words! Who will be our first reading ‘millionaire’? A big thank you to Mr and Mrs Smith for introducing this programme to the school and for all the hard work they have put in to making it such a success.

Mr M Hibbert | Assistant Head of School & Mr A Crook | Deputy Head

I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone who donated so generously to our Harvest Festival this term. As the photograph shows, the boys had a wonderful harvest assembly with Reverend Bartlett and the Watford Refugee Trust then came to collect all of our donations; for which they were most grateful. The photograph shows Keshav Soni, Ayush Shah and Rian Shah helping to load the car.

For harvest, we also celebrated our bumper crop of apples from the school’s orchard by drinking school-made apple juice. The photograph shows Thomas Baldwin persevering, with the help of his friends, to harvest even the hardest to reach apples! We then all enjoyed sampling the juice at lunchtime.

Since my last newsletter the boys in Reception and Nursery have enjoyed their visit from ‘Appreciating Animals’. The children loved learning about and handling many different animals, from tiny baby mice to goats. The photographs show Parth Dongre, Tonde Gaza and Arnav Sharma feeding rabbits. Years 1 and 2 had their treat last week when Ollie Heath visited for some African drumming workshops. Ollie always inspires the children when he visits us and my final photographs show the boys happily participating in assembly and Myles Brown and Bashir Bajwa joining in their class workshop.

We had a very successful Open Morning at School last week. Junior School parents will be pleased to know that their sons worked hard and behaved beautifully whilst so many visitors came and admired the school. It is always a pleasure when the pupils rise to the occasion. We were also delighted to welcome many new prospective parents to our Nursery Open Morning yesterday.

Our parent consultation meetings have also begun this week; Nursery parents had their first meetings with Mrs. Ladbury and Mrs Hall today and these will continue next Friday. Next Thursday we will be seeing Junior School parents to talk about how their sons have settled this term. As always, we look forward to the opportunity to meet with you all.

Mrs S Funnell | Head of Junior School

In Nursery this month we have been busy discovering about pets and farm animals in our topic “Miaow! Moo! Twit Twoo!” Mrs Lee brought her dog, Molly in to visit us, Riyen Thakar brought in his family tortoises to meet us and we also had a visit from Mrs Egan’s dog, Frank. We talked about how to care for the animals and the boys showed great empathy for them. The photos show Kyle Gronning stroking Frank and Krrish Patel and Aaryan Brahmbhatt-Patel meeting the tortoises.
We also had a visit from a farm in the junior school and enjoyed stroking and feeding a wide variety of animals including geese, ducks, rabbits, mice, goats and even a 5 day old pig! In the photo Avyan Ganatra and Arnav Patel are taking a risk and feeding a new friend.

In the Nursery we went on an exciting listening walk in the grounds of Merchant Taylors’ School and heard tractors, aeroplanes and the sound of rustling leaves. The photo shows all the boys together under a tree during our walk wearing their listening ears.

This week we welcomed many prospective parents to our Open Morning on Thursday 15th October. We will also be meeting with our parents to discuss their son’s progress so far during the afternoons of Friday 16th and 23rd October. We look forward to seeing you all then.

Mrs G Ladbury| Head of Nursery

On Friday 9th October Ankit Chadha, Ameya Dabral, Tom Groves, Pahal Jariwala, Neil Prabhakar, Raj Shah and Harry Williams went to Merchant Taylors’ School to participate in their Prep Schools Maths competition. Firstly, we enjoyed some sunshine while following a maths trail around Merchant Taylors’ grounds. Then our champion, Neil, went forth to tackle a series of challenging problems in competition with representatives from the other schools. At the half way point, Neil was in equal first, with only 1 incorrect answer. Unfortunately, Neil was pipped to the post, losing out to The Beacon School by a single point; nevertheless, he secured a very impressive second place.

Mr J Greenish | Maths Teacher

Mr M Smith | Head of English

In the past many of you have followed our Sports Tours Twitter page which has provided almost real time information about how the boys were getting on playing football in Barcelona, on expedition in Kent, or more recently their progress on tour in Barbados.

This year we would like to extend this to include results of fixture results, photographs of teams and any updates related to sport at the school. Everything Sport at Merchant Taylors’ Prep School will be on here and it is linked to all the goings-on in the Senior School, OMT’s and other local schools who we compete against.

Please go to https://twitter.com/mtsprepsport and have a look! The more followers we have the more useful it will become! If you already use twitter you’ll know how easy it is to stay in touch with what’s happening!

Mr D Todd | Director of Sport

Mr D Todd | Director of Sport

Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who is now using the email reply system to confirm that their son is available to play in a match, when team sheets are sent out. It has made a significant difference to the management of teams and made more efficient the communication between home and school.

Year 3 Parents:
When there are matches we will send you an email with names of those playing and details of the matches (usually 2 days before the match). Even if your son has not been included in that particular match we will still send you the list of players to avoid any confusion. Please confirm your son’s attendance by simply typing his name and class in the title of the email only, and indicate if it is ok for him to play. (Please note that we do not open the email and therefore will not see any message in the body of the email). If before matches you are not receiving team sheets via email, please check with the School Office that we have your correct email address.

Mr D Todd | Director of Sport

There are accidents every season when boys wear their day-to-day glasses which are not designed for playing sport. We have been lucky at the School so far that injuries have been minor but it does seem that more and more boys are needing to wear their glasses in order to see properly in the game. With this in mind we have been in discussion with  Parker and Hammond Opticians (Northwood branch) and have arranged a 15% discount for all boys at Merchant Taylors’ Prep School who require prescription sports eyewear.

Above are just some images of the sports eyewear that are often used by children who play contact sports like football, rugby and hockey. The parts of the frame which are in contact with the face and head have foam and rubber supports to reduce the risk of injuries in contact sports. They also have a degree of wrap/curve to the design, increasing the peripheral awareness compared to flatter designs. These frames can be made up with prescription lenses.

The opticians also fit contact lenses for children who play sport and this can be done at a young age safely. Children as young as 6 years old are wearing contact lenses comfortably for sports and general wear.

Research has indicated that children who need spectacles, but do not have the appropriate eyewear for sports and manage without any spectacles are a significant disadvantage in achieving their best potential. Hand eye co-ordination is impaired when sight defects are left uncorrected. Children’s increased sports performance and confidence have been observed in students once they can see correctly with the appropriate eyewear.

Some of the smallest prescriptions can blur one's vision over a few metres and therefore what might be thought to be a small correction for spectacles may have significant impact on performance with sports. Parker and Hammond also off a service which can often simulate to parents what their child sees when they do not wear spectacles which helps them gain a better understanding of their child’s vision.

If you are interested in taking advantage of this offer, then please contact Mr. Dipesh Chhatralia or Mr Sachin Patel at:

Pupil of the month has been introduced to Science this year and is awarded by their teacher.  The award can be given for anything from contribution in class, effort, enthusiasm, using scientific knowledge, engagement etc.  Pupils who are awarded will be informed in class and a postcard will be sent home to inform parents.

September pupils of the month for Science are:
Benjamin Ward Year 4
Paasha Mohammadi Year 5
Anay Patel Year 6

The following pupils are entered for National Science Inter-School Quiz Championship:
Year 5 Team A
Siddanth Kheria
Rhys Varma
Rayan Joshi (Resserve)

Year 5 Team B
Yiogos Velimachitis
Paasha Mohammadi
Jay Shah (Reserve)

Year 6 Team A
Shailan Bavisi
Ansh Shah
Shahil P Shah (Reserve)

Year 6 Team B
Adam Muneer
Rohan Choudhary
Thomas Treloar (Reserve)

The quiz will take place on 24th of November and preparation for the Quiz will be held every Tuesday 10:45-11:15.

Miss C Burke | Science Teacher

Mufti Day Friday 23 October

Fireworks Spectacular Thursday 12 November

Santa’s Secrets’ Room  Friday 4 December

Christmas Party Saturday 5 December

Also...

"Changes  are being proposed to be made to the Association's constitution. A notice has been emailed to all parents.

An Extra General Meeting  will be held on Tue 3 November at 8.15 pm in the old School Dining Hall. All welcome.

If you are planning to come please notify us on npspa@northwoodprep.co.uk by Friday 30 October."

Mrs Shah and Mrs Lalani

Enjoy singing, or enjoy Christmas carols? Then join the MTS Choral Society this term…

Rehearsals: (Recital Hall at MTS)
Tuesday 17 November, 8-9.15pm (followed by an optional drink in the Clubhouse!)
Tuesday 24 November, 8-9.15pm
Tuesday 1 December, 8-9.15pm
Tuesday 8 December, 8-9.15pm
Saturday 12 December, 9am-midday

Nine Lessons and Carols (the performance):
Sunday 13 December, 3.30pm

No previous experience necessary, simply turn up to the first rehearsal!

Mr D Roach | Head of Art and Design