On Tuesday, three children from Y5 took part in the Count on us primary challenge grand final. Over 64 schools across London competed in the competition. The standard was very high this year and the challenges were extremely difficult. Team Elmgrove were crowned the champions for the second consecutive year. Congratulations to Danish 5G, Rihana 5S and Abdul 5G for winning the competition. This is an outstanding achievement and we are so proud. They have shown excellent dedication, commitment and resilience over the last 6 months. A huge thank you to the children for all their hard work.

Count on us primary challenge 2023 - Written by Danish 5G

The Count on us primary challenge took place at City Hall on the 4th of July. We arrived at the Northwick Park station at 7:45 am. We had travelled around 2 hours to City Hall. The tournament started at 10:00 am, the first round was shapes. First, we had to solve one T- shape question, one pentomino question and a domino question - we solved it in about 3 minutes! Next we had 5 more T-shape questions and 4 pentomino questions which took us around 5 minutes to solve. We counted our points and already had 120 points out of 200 which was not bad. The next game was the 24 Game. This was our best game, in total we scored 294 points! The third and final round was Codebreaking. There were 4 Codebreaking sheets that we had to solve for clues to which jobs we needed to do to get £16.25. We then completed bonus challenges which included solving tangrams puzzles. The awards ceremony seemed like it took forever. Then finally they announced first place. We didn't know if we had won or not and then they said it, Elmgrove Primary school! We all jumped up in joy as we went to the front to claim our trophy.

Year 6 had a wonderful trip to RAF Hendon on Wednesday. They learnt what it was like for 10 and 11-year-olds in the classroom during WW2. They also saw lots of planes and artefacts that were used during the Battle of Britain.

The Year 6 children are allowed to wear their leavers' hoody in school from now until the last day of term. They must still wear their full Elmgrove school uniform. We hope the children enjoy them. What a lovely keepsake to have to remember their days at Elmgrove Primary School.

The children's names have been written on the label inside the hoody.

Isn't our new mural fantastic? If you haven't already seen it, please walk round the outside of the school building - you'll soon spot it! Pictured are the children who 'lent a hand' as they helped to design the mural - well done, it looks great!

Year 4 would like to send a huge thanks to the community at Harrow Mosque who made us feel so welcome on Thursday. They provided a fascinating tour of the prayer rooms and dome and we learnt about all the different ways a Mosque is used, in addition to prayer. Our Year 4 children were a credit to the school and thank you to those parents who volunteered to support this visit.

On Friday 26th of May we (Rihana 5S, Danish 5G and Abdul 5G) took part in the COUNT ON US Heats (semi-finals for a primary maths challenge). For 5-6 months Mr Gorsia and the year 6 champions (Ameya 6B, Darsh 6K, Faryal 6L and Purv 6B) helped us train for the competition. In the competition there were 5 games: T-shapes, Pentominoes, Dominoes, (round one), 24-Game (round two) and Code Breaking (round 3). We all felt very excited to go to the competition and try to qualify for the finals.

In round one, T-shapes was very easy because we memorised all 36 shapes. Then in Pentominoes, we got stuck on one of the puzzles but managed to make it. The same thing happened with Dominoes. Joyfully, we were the only school out of all 67 schools across London who got to the Super Bonuses. When we knew that we were the only school that got to the Super Bonuses, we already started to have the feeling that we would win.

The second round started with the 24 Game. It was very easy because in most of the rounds of the 24-Game none of the other children from the other schools got any points. Additionally, we were also very quick at finding the solutions helping us win. For the 24- Game, the max amount of points you can get as a school is 200 points and lucky our school got 234 points which had to be reduced to 200.

During round 3 (the last one), we had to do Code Breaking which took lots of time due to the constant double checking. We had to shift the letters in the message to decipher what they meant and find clues. Those clues helped us work out the missing words which were all names of items. For part 2 in Code Breaking we had to work out the amount of money we had to spend in total for those items and how much change we got out of £50. Soon we completed the bonus task and finished the round.

Not long after, the winners were announced (the school which directly qualified to the finals) and we felt so cheerful because our school's name was announced and we won! Now, because we will go to the finals at City Hall in July, we have to practise more as it will be even more competitive and tricky.

Written by Rihana 5S