The Chronicle

Dear Parents 
 
It was quite a change in the weather this week but it seems as though Kenilworth was not as badly affected as other parts of the surrounding areas. Thank you to everyone for making the effort to get their children into school and to the staff for their adjustments and efforts in keeping things running as ‘nearly normal’. It was a little sad to have to cancel the inter-school cross country and to postpone the inter-school debate that we were hosting. I look forward to the pupils being able to enter the debate when it happens. Thank you to Mr Vaughan and Mrs Jackson-Mayne for preparing for the two events. 
 
A highlight of the week was the First Reconciliation Service for ten of our Junior 3 pupils. This was held at St Austin’s Church on Monday, led by Fr Kevin and prepared by Mrs Jackson-Mayne. Fr Kevin heard the confessions in church, witnessed by the candidates’ parents and grandparents. Thank you to Fr Kevin, Mrs Jackson-Mayne, Mrs Simmonds and Mrs Hill for their part in the sacrament. Congratulations to all the pupils: Una, Niamh, Will, Jess, Thomas D, Thomas K, Edward, Gabriella, Leyton and Tristan! 
 
The U9A football team won the Independent Schools Association 5-a-side tournament on Tuesday, beating off strong competition from a number of schools. They won five and drew one match in their group, to qualify in first place for the winners’ group. They proceeded to win the afternoon matches to walk away with the trophy and the gold medals. What a wonderful achievement by the team and Mr Stedeford. Congratulations to Leo, Ryan, Rory S, Theo, Soren, Henry, Rory T and Archie. The U11A netball team who qualified for the national finals will have to wait until next term to see how they get on as this event was also postponed. A group of musicians enjoyed a most productive day of music and friendship at Crescent School on Tuesday. Thank you to Mrs Olden and Mr Pike for accompanying the pupils. 
 
Congratulations to all the stars of the week who received their certificates today: Darcey, Eli, Edward, Nirvair, Bella-Rae, Charlie, Oscar, Edward, Ryan, Shuvan, Ben and Susie. Well done to the pupils who earned Crackley Compass stars and those who achieved Da Vinci’s. It is also lovely to be able to present pupils with their certificates or medals received in activities out of school. 
 
Next week is National Science Week and Mrs Roberts has sourced various activities for each class. We will also be hosting the Scholastic Book Fair which usually brings in many exciting books from the pupils can choose. 
 
The school sports photos are being taken on Monday and pupils will need to bring their various sports kits in with them please so that they are dressed appropriately for each of the sports. 
 
We will be welcoming a new teaching assistant to Crackley Hall next week. Mrs Georgina Jeffrey will join the school, having worked at St Augustine’s School in Kenilworth. She is very experienced in the Early Years and Key Stage 1 and we are excited that she is joining our excellent teaching and classroom support team. 
 
I would like to wish everyone a restful and happy weekend with your families. 
 
God bless, 
 

Rob Duigan 

We remain in Fair Trade fortnight as part of our One World initiative, which the children are really enjoying and engaging with. You may have seen the news in the Chronicle or heard your child talking to you about the importance of fair trade goods in helping some of the world’s poorest producers earn a living wage. 

The PTA support the ethos of Fair Trade and have put together a hamper of fairly traded goods, including bottles of South African Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as tea, sugar, hot chocolate and coffee, dark, milk and salted caramel craft chocolate bars.  

If you would like to win the hamper, it’s £1 a strip to enter the raffle and tickets will be sold in school over the coming week with the draw next Friday 17 March. Good luck!

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Over half term pupils had the opportunity to complete two optional Junior da Vinci challenges. Lots of pupils took part and we were delighted with the response. The completed projects are now on display in the school hall.

Following on from NSPCC Number Day, Mrs Van Zyl challenged pupils to see what they could find out about Fibonacci and to present their discoveries in an attractive way.

Then, Mrs Malcolm challenged pupils to create a piece that could explain to others about how to stay safe and behave appropriately on the internet.

All pupils who took on the challenges will receive a Junior Da Vinci strand; some outstanding pieces will be awarded full Junior Da Vincis.

Well done again to all who took part, look out for more opportunities like this in the coming months!

On Tuesday 7 March, Crackley Hall's musicians visited fellow Foundation junior school, Crescent School, for an orchestral workshop. It was a great opportunity for the young virtuosos to work together, with 12 members of Crackley Hall’s Orchestra joining 12 Crescent instrumentalists for a day designed to develop and stretch their music and performance skills.

Pupils from both schools worked under the guidance of Crescent School’s Director of Music, Julie Barnes, and Crackley Hall’s Director of Music, Susan Olden, to prepare and rehearse pieces ready for an impromptu afternoon performance.

The children relished making music, especially in such a big group. They worked hard to prepare the dramatic Star Wars theme and the moving I Dreamed A Dream from Les Misérables, both pieces testing the players’ technical and music-reading ability.

At the end of the day parents were welcomed into school to watch a short performance. The concert was superb, and as well as featuring the full 24-piece orchestra playing their now near perfect pieces, it also included solo performances from Julia Kozhan and Grace Aston from Crackley Hall and Zahra Nadeem and Hattie Little from Crescent School.

Mrs Barnes and Mrs Olden, commented, “We had a very successful day and the pupils enjoyed collaborating together. They achieved a very high standard of performance, learning challenging music in a short space of time, it was a great opportunity for them all to play with so many other talented musicians. Thank you Crackley Hall for joining us today."

Thursday's arrival of snow was the perfect opporuinty for Junior 1H to enjoy a snow themed Forest School lesson.

Children had great fun making 'snow cakes' in the kitchen, whizzing down the slopes on make-shift sledges and thoroughly enjoyed simply playing in the snow!

Next week we are very excited to have the Scholastic Book Fair visiting our school between Monday 13 and Thursday 16 March. All classes will be given an allocated time in which to visit the fair throughout the week. Parents should now be aware of when their child/children have their slots, so they know on which day to send the book vouchers in with their child. The link to purchase these has already been sent out, please let us know if you have any problems with this. The children at Crackley Hall love coming to browse and choose their books so we are hoping for a very successful week!

Ten children from Junior 3, who are making their First Holy Communion later this year, visited St Austin's Church in Kenilworth on Monday. There they received the Sacrament of Reconciliation by Fr Kevin, an important step in their preparation for their First Holy Communion.  They each lit a candle to remind them that Jesus is their light. At the end of the Reconciliation the children all blew bubbles into the air, in the church grounds, while they prayed for someone special.

For Fair Trade Fortnight, pupils across the school have all been busy baking flapjacks made entirely out of Fair Trade ingredients. They combined maths skills to measure in grams and worked together in pairs to make the delicious snacks to learn more about the different products that you can find with the Fair Trade stamp.

A huge thank you to the PTA for funding the ingredients to help bring learning alive in this way.

Scroll through the gallery to see photos from our Celebration Assembly this morning.

As part of One World Week last week the children have been learning all about Sikhism. How they have helped provide hot meals to all those in need and the influence that the Gurus have had on the wider world. In their trip to the Gurdwara, the children were treated to a tour of the Leamington Temple and learnt all about this surprisingly new religion. Also, as part of One World Week, the children were visited by two local graffiti artists who talked to the children about how we can use our creative talents to stand up for what we believe in. A special thanks to Mrs Jackson-Mayne for organising this fantastic week; we all learnt so much! Keep up the hard work Junior 6!

This week, Junior 5 have been continuing their study of Kensuke’s Kingdom. They have been imaginative in designing their own islands that they envisioned themselves or their character to be stranded on, using a key to explain the different features. Their islands had a variety of unique features such as: a ski hill, mountains, waterfalls, palm trees and many more. The children also annotated their designs with key phrases and features to support their writing. Junior 5 completed a descriptive piece of writing about their deserted island using DADWAVERS.

Junior 4 have been busy learning about the Digestive System this week, creating life-size models of the human body and labelling the key organs. The children are also in the middle of a 3-week investigation, attempting to discover which liquid is bad for their teeth – vinegar, coca-cola, lemon juice, water or mouthwash. Don’t worry, we didn’t use the children’s teeth but instead hard-boiled eggs! The children continue to work incredibly hard to improve their writing skills and have been enjoying starting the ancient story of Beowulf, including writing gruesome descriptions of Grendel. Keep up the great work, Junior 4!

Junior 3 have had yet another busy week thinking about Fair Trade products and where our food comes from. We have learned how those farmers across the world are treated. We made these lovely Fair Trade world designs to show how much we appreciate their efforts.

Fractions have also been the order of the day in Junior 3, with our children learning how to lay out their fractions in a beautiful neat way using bar models. As you can see from our books, we are fast becoming the masters of visual mathematics!

Our ‘rock fest’ continues as we explore the geology of the world through ‘Rocks, Soil and Fossils’ in Science and in Geography. Children have been investigating the features of different rocks and where they may have come from all those billions of years ago! Fascinating stuff and thanks to Ms Holmes' stonemason neighbour, we have some amazing examples to look at. 

This week Junior 2 continue learning about The Great Fire of London that started near Pudding Lane on the night of 2 September 1666. In History, have learned interesting facts about the plague and the extreme and unusual ways they looked to treat the symptoms and stop the spread of the disease. Mrs Burley, Mrs Bhogal and Mrs Thomas have been very impressed with the standard and quality of the children diary entries in English. In Maths we continued to work on our multiplications, and we are now moving onto length and height.  We also had fun in the snow!

After an inspiring One World Week last week, Junior 1 were back to focusing on Where The Wild Things Are. Adjectives have been our aim this week, describing Max, the monsters and even creating our own monster that could live with the other wild things and describing it. Over in Maths we have begun to use a ruler to measure in centimetres and draw straight lines of a given length. Geography was a hit again this week as we looked at the country of Wales in more detail. Potato and Leek soup and Welsh cakes helped the children to experience things that are typically Welsh, and a visiting (toy) dragon also helped! We also set up an experiment in Science to see if plants need light, water and soil to grow into strong plants - we’ll update you on that at the end of the term.

This week in Reception we have been finding out about plants and what helps them to grow. We have started our very own experiment in the classroom using cress seeds. The children made predictions about which cress will grow the best (with light, no light, water or no water) and we can’t wait to see the results! We also acted out the bible story of Palm Sunday as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. We pretended we were the joyful crowd and we discussed how Jesus would be feeling.

Please click here for this week's newsletter.

Mrs Glen-Roots led the school assembly on Monday on the theme of transfiguration from the New Testament when Jesus took three of His disciples, Peter, James and John, and led them up on a mountain, where Moses and Elijah appeared and Jesus was transfigured whereby His face and clothes became dazzling bright.  Mrs Glen-Roots linked this to the change in nature which we see all around us, particularly when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Through our prayers this Lent, we can all hope for wonderful changes too. We were asked how we can show love in the coming week and what will we do to try and love more as God asks us to? How will we listen and change our life and the lives of others for the better?  We then listened to the pupils say a poem about change:-

• Change can be exciting or scary.
• Have a vision of what you want to achieve.
• Always be open to new ideas.
• Never give up.
• Give it time.
• Embrace change.

The children who were making their sacrament of First Reconciliation that afternoon were celebrated with the school and we were reminded of this within our school ethos where we celebrate everybody every day.

Please click on the link below for this week's Weekly Mission:

Weekly Mission

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

The story of the Samaritan woman at the well reminds us that God loves all people, no matter where they are from.

Activity Sheet

Crackley Hall’s U9 Football team took part in the ISA Midlands Tournament on Tuesday 7 March. Taking part were 14 teams from across the Midlands area, all keen to get out on the pitch and play football.

Split into groups the morning saw the boys play six mini-matches with the team growing in confidence as they played their way round the pool. It was great to see their determination and wonderful attitude, and how they thanked the match officials and their opponents, after every game. They finished the morning unbeaten having won 5 and drawn 1.

That put them through to the play offs where they faced the top teams. Again they were unbeaten playing some super football and working well together as a team. They won 2 and drew 1 to finish in the top spot and take the Gold medal.

Team coach, Rich Stedeford, was delighted with the team’s performance, commenting, “It was great to see the boys enjoying themselves, they were focused and determined and did really well and should be very proud of themselves.”

Did you know that each month's full moon has its own name? If you looked up in early January, you would have seen the Wolf Moon, while February was the Snow Moon. This month we were greeted by the last full moon of the winter in the form of the Worm Moon. Did you manage to see the full Worm Moon on 7 March? Of course, you don't have to wait until the middle of the night to see the moon, you can find it in Lego Club! Inspired by this very bright and full Worm Moon, whose name refers to the earthworms that wriggle to the surface as soil temperatures gradually rise, we decided to become Space explorers! With house points up for grabs, the challenge of stretching creativity and using detailed building skills made the assignments even more exciting! Adventures began with a space explorer having its very own cockpit, living area, a working crane arm and suspension, plus a small robot with moving arms to help the intrepid astronauts do their thing! With caring for our planet always in our mind-set, we even made an electric car to embark on open road moondust fun whilst roaming amongst the moon’s craters...finding charging points to return home might be a tiny problem though!! Not forgetting our precious animals and pets, a space vet clinic was launched to rescue any stray dogs, cats and hamsters who decided that the moon is not quite for them, with a cool planet-hopping space flyer to search for the more fearless puppies and kittens who ventured out on exhilarating walkabouts. What an out-of-this world creative play we all had and lots of learning about the Worm Moon too!  Look out for the Pink Moon on 6 April, the Flower Moon on 5 May and the Strawberry Moon on 3 June!

Crackley Chess Club members were excited to play with a special chess set when the club met on Tuesday lunchtime, when Mr James bought in his replica set of the Lewis Chessmen.

Named after the island or bay they were found in 1831, the original set consists of distinctive 12th century chess pieces carved from walrus ivory. They were also the inspiration for the set in the film of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Junior 3 pupil, Thomas, recently visited the British Museum where the original set is displayed; when he mentioned this to Mr James, you can imagine his surprise when Mr James told him he had a replica set!

Check out the flyers for details of upcoming PTA events.

• Pub night POSTPONED. Due to the current inclement weather and forecasts of icy roads later we’re cancelling tonight’s pub night and will rearrange a new date when it’s safer and easier to meet up. We wish everyone a warm and comfortable weekend.

• Wednesday 15th March. PTA meeting online only at 7 pm.

• Pre-loved Uniform Sale. A huge sorry that the sale did not take place today however it’s back and better than ever. Our team have worked hard to present you with an opportunity to buy your freshly laundered, quality pre-loved uniform that benefits everyone, supporting the planet as well as your school. The uniform shop will be open at The Gables on Friday 24th March 8:20-9.00 am and 15:15 to 16:15.

• Our second Colour Run is due to take place on Friday 19 May 2023. This event will take place on the school field from 4.00pm to 7.00pm, it will be a fun obstacle colour run for all of the family. We will have a DJ, ice cream, face painting and more! We look forward to seeing you there.

• Contact us. There are many ways to reach the PTA: attend a PTA event, ask in person at the office, ask any teacher or find your year group PTA representative. You can reach out online via Facebook and/ or email the Chair mariagordonpta@gmail.com

Please follow us on social media to keep updated with our events!

We regularly recruit for a variety of roles, please do share news of the vacancies with interested friends and family. Current vacancies include:

Princethorpe College

• Head of Computer Science
• Teacher of Textiles
• AV and Theatre Technician

Further information and application forms on all roles are available on the Foundation's website - www.princethorpe.co.uk/join-us