A very warm welcome back to the start of the new academic year for all parents, pupils and staff, both established and new. This term is about new beginnings in so many ways and I am delighted that so many of you are excited about our alliance with Merchant Taylors’ School. Long-term, we really believe that being Merchant Taylors’ Prep is beneficial for your sons, with a simpler transfer process to Merchant Taylors’ Senior School for those of you who are interested in MTS and a guarantee of preparation for other schools for those of you who would still like to pursue other options. For the many of you who attended one of our Q&A sessions recently, you will have heard that further changes to our school will be gradual at this stage, with a slow phasing in of new uniform and eventual change of the website once new colours and logos have been finalised. Your sons can look forward to ‘business as usual’ at school whilst we look for meaningful ways to promote greater collaboration between the two sections of our school.

This weekend, the Parents’ Association have planned their Fun Day and I do hope that you all can come and support this event. A huge amount of planning has gone into ensuring that it will be a fun day out for the whole family. There will be stalls, games, rides, food and a whole lot more. I look forward to seeing you there!

Finally a huge congratulations to Mrs Ly on the safe arrival of Toby last week, mum and baby doing well.

Best wishes

Dr. Karen McNerney | Head of School

Sunday, September 20
Parents’ Association Fun Day
U10 Westminster Under School Football Tournament 10.00 am -4.00 pm

Tuesday, September 22
Merchant Taylors’ Hockey League (Week 2) 4.15 – 5.30 pm

Thursday, September 24
U9AB Rugby v Haberdashers’ (h) 2.30 pm

Friday, September 25
Junior & Senior School Harvest Festivals
U11AB Hockey v Chesham Prep (a) 2.30 pm
World’s Biggest Coffee Morning (MacMillan) 8.00 – 8.30 am Dining Hall

Sunday, September 27
Manches Moor Park 10k & Junior Fun Runs

Monday, September 28
Appreciating Animals for Nursery & Reception

Tuesday, September 29
Founder’s Day
Merchant Taylors’ Hockey League (Week 3) 4.15-5.30 pm
U13 Hockey v Merchant Taylors’ (at MTS) 4:15pm
Y4-Y6 Table Tennis v UCS (h) (4.15 pm
Y4-Y6 Table Tennis v UCS (h) (4.15 pm

Wednesday, September 30
U12A Hockey v Merchant Taylors’ (a) 3.00 pm
U13A Hockey v Merchant Taylors’ (a) 3.00 pm

Thursday, October 1
Individual Photographs am
U9ABCD Rugby v Belmont (a) 2.30 pm
Y7 Harrow School Pre-Testing

Friday, October 2
U10A Hockey v UCS (h) 2.15 pm
U10AB Rugby v UCS (h) 2.15 pm
U11A Hockey v UCS (a) 2.15 pm
U11AB Rugby v UCS (a) 2.15 pm

Monday, October 5
Y7 & Y8 House Cross Country Competition

Tuesday, October 6
Merchant Taylors’ Hockey League (Week 4) 4.15 – 5.30 pm
U13 Hockey v St. Martin’s (at MTS) 4.15 pm
Y3 & Y4 House Cross Country Competition

Wednesday, October 7
Y1 & Y2 Drumming Workshop
“Talking Pre-teens” Talk for Parents 7.00 -9.00 pm Theatre

Friday, October 9
Open Morning 9.45 am – 12 noon
U10AB Rugby v St. John’s (h) 2.30 pm
U11AB Rugby v St. John’s (a) 2.30 pm
Y7 Merchant Taylors’ Maths Afternoon

Tuesday, October 13
Merchant Taylors’ Hockey League (Week 5) 4.15 – 5.30 pm
U13 Hockey v St. John’s (at MTS) 4.15 pm

Wednesday, October 14
“Talking Pre-teens” Talk for Parents 7.00 – 9.00 pm Theatre

Thursday, October 15
Nursery Open Morning 9.30 – 11.00 am
U8AB Rugby v St. John’s (a) 2.15 pm
U8CD Rugby v St. John’s (h) 2.15 pm

Friday, October 16
U11A Rugby v Haberdashers’ (a) 2.30 pm
U11B Rugby v Haberdashers’ (h) 2.30 pm

Willem Redman 8L1
Samuel O'Tuminu 6W1

With new House members welcomed in our first House meetings, new tutees in Tutor Groups and School Council elections, the House year is underway again.  House competitions this term include House Points, The Spelling Bee, General Knowledge, Cross Country and Rugby. We hope that there is something for everyone and as we always say at the outset of the term and year, may the best House win!                                                           
A warm welcome is extended to Miss Burke as the new Head of Johnson & J3 Tutor, to Mrs Nicholas (Y3/4 Newton) and to Mr Greenish L2, Miss Levy W1, Mrs Williams N3 and Mr Winn N1 as new Co-Tutors. We were delighted to hear of the safe arrival of the latest staff baby, Toby Ly, last week. 

Congratulations to Daniel Rowlands and Willem Redman on their election as Head and Deputy Head Boys respectively and to our newly appointed House Captains:  Sebastian Constantine Johnson, Daanysh Mirza Livingstone, Neil Kapoor Newton and Toby Michaels Wren. They are officially the first captains of Merchant Taylors’ Prep!

Heads of House

It has been an exciting start to the new academic year. We arrived back on Monday 7th September as the first pupils and staff of Merchant Taylors’ Prep! Reassuringly, all the things we love about Northwood Prep remain and school life continues at a very rapid pace. Already we have enjoyed our first assemblies, sports trials, the staff and parents’ coffee morning, a Year 5 visit to Verulamium and we are looking forward to the dedication to the term service where the Senior Choir will sing tonight. Most importantly, the boys have settled into the routine of lessons and are grasping the many extra-curricular opportunities on offer.

We welcome all the boys who joined us in Year 3 from Junior School and all new boys of the school. We also welcome the following teachers and assistants to MTP: Miss Burke (KS2 Science), Miss Levy (Y5/6 Maths), Mr Greenish (Y7/8 Maths) and Mrs Williams (Year 5/6 English). We congratulate Mr De Vynck on his appointment as Head of Science and wish Mr Denham every success in his new role as PE & Games teacher. We welcome Mrs Nicholas back to Year 4 from the Nursery.

Congratulations to the following boys for being elected Form Captains and Vice Captains:
3G Aydin Meghjee & Raeef Mohammadi
3S Tobi Alade & Ishan Olsen
4G Kishan Bharti & Jack Groves
4N Abhishek Patel & Sven Tamminga

All boys have ‘Personal Organisers’ to help them record their prep and plan their learning. We ask for parental support in checking homework and signing their organiser every day. Year 5 to Year 8 Supervised Prep is in the Learning Resources Centre and any pupil, who is not collected by 4.30pm, will be taken to Supervised Prep. Parents should report to the School Office if they wish to collect their son before the end of prep/clubs at 5.15pm. Please be aware that boys who have not been collected by 5.30pm will join the Late Activity Club for which there is a charge.

Please can we remind parents that members of staff are very busy before school in the mornings as they prepare to teach. Please do not come down into the playground or school but leave a message at the School Office. Staff will answer any queries, if needed, as soon as they are able to do so. Email is another option either directly or via office@northwoodprep.co.uk

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

Welcome back everyone to the start of the new academic year at Merchant Taylors' Prep! We have had a wonderful start to the term and have been delighted to welcome some new faces to Junior School and Nursery. Firstly, our new boys in Nursery and Reception have settled in beautifully and are coping extremely well with the routines and expectations of school life.  It has been especially pleasing to see how helpful our older boys in Junior School have been with the new, younger boys in Reception; helping them at lunchtime and as they move around school. We have also welcomed Myles Brown to Year 1 and we have some new additions to our staff members too. It is lovely to have them in our school community.

This week we have all enjoyed exploring the woods where we were delighted to find blackberries to pick! The photographs show Arjun Natarajan and Khush Galaiya  and Aryan Kapoor and Luis De Sales Fardad collecting theirs.
As you know our topic approach ensures that learning is really brought to life for the children and this term is no exception! The boys in Years I and 2 were thrilled to meet Captain Bloodheart who came to Junior School to issue a challenge that began their topic on Pirates. The photograph shows the boys showing great curiosity as they asked him a variety of interesting questions.

Nursery and Reception have begun their exciting topic Meow, Moo and Twit - Twoo by learning all about pets. The Reception classes were delighted to meet Frank, Mrs Egan’s dog, and learn about all the things he needs to stay healthy. The photograph shows Rohan Naran and Prithvi Singh Thathy carefully stroking him.
Next week Nursery and Reception children are looking forward to a visit from ‘Appreciating Animals’, when they will have the opportunity to learn about and handle many different animals. I’m sure there will be some wonderful photos to show you when I next write.

Lastly I would like to say thank you very much to everyone for completing the summer holiday homework relating to Daisy the Dog and having empathy. We were delighted to see the variety of ways you all found to help other people. I would also like to thank the many parents who attended the Parent Information Meetings for Nursery, Reception and Year 1. It is always a pleasure to see you in school and to give you information about what we do.

Mrs S Funnell | Head of Junior School

It has been a real pleasure to welcome our new boys to the Nursery. They have all made such a good start and we would like to thank our parents for the very supportive role they have played in helping the boys to settle.

In the last two weeks they have been busy learning the routines of Nursery life, making new friends and enjoying all the fun activities that Nursery has to offer. The photographs show Deiyen Hettiaratchi, Ethan Dominique and Ryan Patel collaborating to build a house for a teddy, Eashan Kumar and Luv Purohit exploring our outside area and Kiaan Kapoor persevering to create a design on a geoboard.

This term we will be learning all about animals in our topic ‘Miaow, moo, twit twoo’. We have been talking about our pets for the last 2 weeks and we have been looking after our class guinea pig and fish and we are looking forward to meeting Molly the dog and feeding the chickens.

I would like to thank all the parents who attended the Nursery Information Meeting last week. We have lots of exciting things planned for the term ahead and are very much looking forward to working with you in the coming year.

Mrs G Ladbury| Head of Nursery

FRIDAY 25th SEPTEMBER 2015

Please “COME FOR COFFEE” and help us raise money for this wonderful charity.

• £1 minimum donation for coffee and cake,
• 8.00-8.30am in the School Dining Room.
• Raffle £1 a ticket.

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 fixtures, 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

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

We continue to encourage those who lose kit to come and have a look in the large boxes in the changing rooms but we do seem to have accumulated a substantial amount of kit (particularly towards the end of last term). Can I please ask for your support at home in supporting this and to ask that parents themselves do not come down to the changing area to look on their son’s behalf. We sort out the lost property on a weekly basis and the majority of items do find their way back to the rightful owners eventually! Many of the items we have do not have names on them. Please make sure that all of your son’s kit is named so that we can get it back to him quickly and easily.

Mr D Todd | Director of Sport

Following on from the successes in the THL hockey league last year, and the wonderful tour to Bath in February 2015, we are once again looking to go on tour in February 2016. We will be taking an U13 Squad to the West Country to play against Dauntsey’s School, Prior Park, King Edwards School, Monkton Prep and this year we have added Beechen Cliff School. The tour is awaiting final confirmation, but it will be an eagerly anticipated and much-deserved tour for the boys following a testing THL league which began this week.

Mr D Todd | Director of Sport

Imagine my delight, when I was asked to accompany the Ski Trip 2016 as the ‘linguist’ and Nursery slope representative! Next term’s Ski Trip is to Val di Fiemme in the Italian Dolomites.

I, of course, said an enthusiastic, yes! It is my opportunity to learn a new skill along with all the newbie skiers! We leave on Friday 19th March and return on the following Friday 25th.

We will be staying at the Sport Hotel Pampeago, which is within the Dolomite Superski Ski Area.  This offers a mind boggling 978 km of downhill runs, 668 km of marked runs and 573 ski lifts to sweep us off to our various heights. The brochure mentions evening activities such as, cabaret, evening games, karaoke, sports and non-sport tournaments, discotheque, screenings of cartoons,  evenings in an alpine hut, ice-skating and much more! The rooms look fresh, clean and  all have spectacular views, as you can imagine. The restaurant and menus look enticing; the swimming pool, spacious and inviting and the terrace is magnificent and overlooks the mountains.

Please just ask, and I will compile a more comprehensive phrase book!
Vediamo in Italia! 

Mrs L Mortimer

Staff D.Todd   L. Mortimer  L. Dandeker  S. Evans  M. Hibbert  C. Horne  B. Westacott  A. Crook

I would like to welcome all parents and boys back to a new year in Science. You will have received a parental support letter to read and initial in the front of your son’s exercise book – thank you for indulging the department in this.

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend two websites that the school subscribes to and that could further benefit your sons’ learning: Twig-Prep and TigTag. Twig-prep.com  is geared more towards KS3 learning and you can access this from home using your son’s school username and password. Where the username has had to be slightly amended for administrative purposes, your son will be informed. Tigtagworld.co.uk is geared more towards KS2 learning and can be accessed using the username “npscience” and the password “science”.

These websites are modern and user friendly and can provide your son with an engaging way to supplement his science learning in small, easily digested chunks, and I highly recommend them.

I sincerely look forward to your son having a productive year in Science.

Mr H De Vynck | Head of Science

Mrs Shah and Mrs Lalani

On the 26th of September, Merchant Taylors’ Prep is celebrating the European Day of Languages which happens every
year since 2001, as an initiative of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Throughout Europe, 800 million Europeans are encouraged to learn more languages, at any age, in and out of school. Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes plurilingualism in the whole of Europe.
The general objectives of the European Day of Languages are to:

• alert the public to the importance of language learning and diversify the range of languages learned in order to increase plurilingualism and intercultural understanding;
• promote the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe;
• encourage lifelong language learning in and out of school.

In 2013, a survey of more than 1,000 UK university graduates showed that 70% of them cannot speak any languages other than English. It also revealed that 14% of them had lost out on a job opportunity because they did not speak another language. In fact, employers are increasingly seeking talent abroad because of the shortage of graduates with a foreign language, according to HR Magazine. Many businesses are global in their very nature but it seems that UK graduates are not always well placed to take advantage of the massive opportunities abroad, for instance in South America or Asia, simply due to their lack of language skills. All young people should therefore be ready to travel, experience different cultures and try to pick up a bit of language from their chosen country.

During the week beginning on the 21st of September, the MFL Department at Merchant Taylors’ Prep is celebrating the European Day of Languages and in particular the 300 languages and dialects spoken in London, by running a few activities dedicated to languages i.e. a giant price draw, an Assembly followed by a quiz, a continental breakfast, various lunchtime screenings of French and Spanish cartoons etc.

Within the European Union, there are 23 officially recognised languages. There are also more than 60 indigenous regional and minority languages, and many non-indigenous languages spoken by migrant communities.

Just over half of Europeans (54%) are able to hold a conversation in at least one additional language, a quarter (25%) are able to speak at least two additional languages and one in ten (10%) are conversant in at least three.
The five most widely spoken foreign languages remain English (38%), French (12%), German (11%), Spanish (7%) and Russian (5%). Almost everyone in Luxembourg (98%), Latvia (95%), the Netherlands (94%), Malta (93%), Slovenia and Lithuania (92% each), and Sweden (91%) are able to speak at least one language in addition to their mother tongue.
Countries where people are least likely to be able to speak any foreign language are Hungary (65%), Italy (62%)), the UK and Portugal (61% in each), and Ireland (60%).

Mr R Kopel | Head of Modern Foreign Languages