The Chronicle

Dear Parents

I hope that your family enjoyed the snowfall last weekend and at the start of the week.  As you will see in this week’s Chronicle, the children certainly had fun and there are some super photographs of sledging, snowmen and snow angels.

Despite the snow, school remained open throughout for critical worker provision.  We are currently seeing an increase in requests for Critical Worker care; this is quite understandable.  Whilst continuing to willingly offer this provision where needed, can I please ask that children only attend critical worker provision when absolutely necessary as we are in the midst of a national lockdown and people are required, where at all possible, to remain at home.  Teachers will continue to teach online and children will be supervised in school whilst they complete their online lessons.

Mr Cottrill, in consultation with the teaching staff, has again reviewed and revised year group timetables.  Everyone’s experience and requirements at home will differ, so please know that we do not want parents or children to feel pressured to complete every piece of work but to complete work to the best of their ability within a reasonable time frame.  If your child is struggling to complete all tasks, please let your class teacher know so that expectations can be adjusted.

We have now received our Lateral Flow Tests for staff which provides a peace of mind for those members of staff having to work regularly in school.   If your child attends critical worker care, please continue to monitor their temperature and signs of any symptoms in order to keep our staff and other children and their families as safe as possible.

I hope you were able to watch the assembly this morning.  I was delighted to be able to announce so many Bronze Awards and Da Vinci’s.  Hard work is certainly continuing during this lockdown and I am so proud of the children for their super effort and enthusiasm.

Our stars of the week were: Clement, Lewis, Felix, Joshua, Evie, Evie, William, Jia, Seb, Elsie, Alex, Thomas and Seb.  Well done to you all, there were some wonderful comments from teachers this week.

Bronze awards were presented to Mya, George, Marley, Hattie, Alfred, Teo, William, Alexander, Sara, Arthur, Sienna, Adreena, Ted, Molly, Beatrice and Elsie.  All the children have shown exceptional kindness and courtesy, including at online sessions; something we should all aspire to.  Well done boys and girls.

The coveted Da Vinci awards have been presented to Evie, Sara, Beatrice, Miley, Penny and Elena, who have been awarded their certificate for achieving all three merits in English.  In Mathematics, Arthur and Ted produced a number of excellent pieces of work so also received an award.  Arthur has achieved highly in a number of subjects and he received another Da Vinci for his History work.   Isla has also received a Da Vinci for her History work for her Greek Gods project.  Congratulations to you all, I know that Mrs Cowlishaw enjoys hearing about all your wonderful efforts and your certificates will be with you very soon.

I am aware that some parents have used the new booking system to have a brief online pastoral meeting with their child’s form teacher during the next two weeks.  I hope you find this time helpful.  We intend to use this system again for our parent consultation evenings in March.

Finally, well done to our Junior 6 children who completed the Princethorpe entrance examinations last weekend.  This weekend you will be able to relax and maybe even enjoy some more snow tomorrow.

I would like to wish you all a very happy and restful weekend.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

From Monday 1 to Sunday 7 February 2021, we’re taking part in Place2Be’s Children’s Mental Health Week. This year’s theme is Express Yourself. Place2Be has created activities and resources to help children (and adults) explore the different ways that they can share their thoughts, feelings and ideas. 

There are lots of resources on the Children’s Mental Health Week website that you can use with your child at home; including activity ideas, tips for parents and carers, and an online assembly which will be available from Monday 1 February. 

Visit www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk to find out more.

We are pleased to announce the first of Holroyd Howe's cook along videos from their Home School Bistro are now live on the Holroyd Howe YouTube channel!

Youtube channel

Between now and half term, Dan Collier their Head of Food Development and his daughters will bring a savoury and sweet recipe to life each week from the Home School Bistro recipe pack.

Home School Bistro Pack

All put together on a step by step basis for pupils and parents to watch and cook along!

The Stratford Literary Festival have an annual Young Poets Competition for local children. Please click on the link below for more details:

Young Poets Competition 2021

Mathletes of the week for Mrs Hardwick's class is Aaryan

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Glen-Roots class is Jess

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Holmes's class is Evelyn

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's group is Josie-Jean

Mathletes of the week for Mrs VanZyl's group is Ivy and Louis 

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Wildey's class is Alex

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's group is Lennon

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Roberts's group is Alfred

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Lammas's group is George

Well done all! 

Please follow the link below to the Raring2go! Winter Digital Edition:

Winter Edition

Please follow the link below for a digital copy of Families Warwickshire Magazine.

Magazine

This week, in Junior 6, we have adopted a cross curricular approach to our English lessons by linking them to our History theme. 

We have been learning about The Titanic in History, the ship itself, the passengers and the accommodation on board and this week we learned about the events that led to the actual disaster.  We researched these events and put together a timeline to tell the story, watched a 1950s movie adaptation of the disaster and then wrote diary extracts, imagining we had been on board and survived the tragic events of the Sunday 14 and Monday 15 April 1912. 

Such an interesting, yet horrific topic! 

Our Junior 5s have been introduced to an amazing Michael Morpurgo book, Kenzuke’s Kingdom, this week and are thoroughly enjoying finding out about the adventures of the main character, who gets washed up on a mysterious island. It’s so lovely to share a novel with the children and become fully immersed in it – and the great thing is, we have another two weeks to enjoy this amazing book!

In Maths, we have introduced division again, after spending time on multiplication. Well done to everyone for getting to grips with these concepts – you’ve got this!! 

Year 4 are developing their positive mindsets.

4B have been thinking about the power of the word 'yet'. We have to work every day to learn new things and keep trying even when it's hard. Being able to say we don't know how to do something, YET, is powerful. We can do it, if we keep trying.

4W are been thinking about the choices that they make and that they have the power to make the right choices like making a cake for their parents or recreating situations where it can be hard to make the right choice.

We are gearing up for Children's Mental Health Week next week where we will be exploring this year's theme of 'Express Yourself.' Get ready for another fun week Year 4! 

With a sprinkling of snow and some very chilly weather to start our third week of home-learning, Junior 3 have kept their brains and fingers warm getting fully involved in our history topic of Ancient Egypt.

We have conducted our own research into the different Gods and Goddesses, learned all about the gory process of mummification and enjoyed reading an Egyptian folktale called Egyptian Cinderella together.

In our Art lessons, we have continued to develop our drawing skills but have also tried our hand at making scarab beetles, Egyptian necklaces and even, mummified cats! We have become so accustomed to hieroglyphs, that we even had an Ancient Egyptian Maths lessons using their ancient number system. Have a look at some of the tricky problems that we wrote. 

The cold weather has done nothing to deter the Junior 2 children from working and playing hard this week. The snow, although it hasn’t stayed for long, linked beautifully with our ‘Instructions’ topic, as the children learned how to make Origami snowflakes online. We have also looked at snow poetry and winter recipes and the children have really created some super work.

Ms Holmes has been teaching ‘speech marks’ this week, to help with writing which is already fabulous – each time we add in a new punctuation or writing skill, the children work so hard to improve their work.

In Geography, Deforestation of the world’s rainforests has been a difficult topic to think about, but we are all now better informed as to how we need to protect our planet.

This week has seen Junior 1 using rulers in Maths to draw and measure straight lines in centimetres, a skill that is not easy to master! In Science we have been learning the names of animals and their babies. Some of these were obvious such as a duck and its duckling, but a swan and its cygnet was a revelation to some.

History and DT joined forces this week and Junior 1 were challenged to create their own penny spinners and to learn how to catch a ball in a cup, just like people did for fun in the past. PE and Drama also teamed up, with an unusual version of the story Alice in Wonderland. As the story went on, yoga moves were introduced for everyone to copy and hold, stretching muscles I’m sure no-one knew they had!!

Researching our feathery friends has been the theme in Reception this week.

Linking into the RSPB’s ‘Big Garden Birdwatch’ taking place between Friday 29 and Sunday 31 January, we have been busy investigating garden birds, making bird feeders, performing bird poetry, labelling bird pictures and we also even found time to don our binoculars to complete bird surveys in our gardens! Phew!

Not content with all of these great learning activities, we also explored the composition of the numbers 6, 7 and 8 and completed some terrific part whole models in Maths.

We’ve also been exercising our voices in Drama by re-enacting scenes from Little Red Riding Hood. In fact our wolf voices were so scary that Mrs Convey nearly fell off her chair several times!

2021 is the year of St Joseph. As he is the Patron of our school, we are busy planning activities linked with finding out more about the history of our school and the life of St Joseph. Look out for the different activities linked to this special year.

This Sunday’s Gospel

Gospel

Prayers for the Week

Prayers

Please click on the link below for this week's weekly mission;

Weekly Mission

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

This week Junior 4 have been exploring Parables. We know that Parables were the way that Jesus communicated a message to his followers. In RE lessons we learned sign language to help us think of ways of communicating. The results were amazing. 

Well done to Joseph, Jakob, Grace and Jack. Can you guess what Jack is signing?

Arisha is a shining star in RE for her wonderful, giant size Jesse tree! Look how creative she has been in using different objects for the symbols.

Mairen is a shining star in RE this week for her superb illustrations of the different objects used in Mass.

Well done to Junior 3 who have been thinking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Finley is a shining star for his explanation of what it is to be reconciled. Both Finley and Arthur are RE stars for their understanding of the importance of saying sorry and being able to forgive. In the gallery you can see them with their Lego bridges that are symbols for 'bridging the gap' when we say sorry.

What a ‘topsy turvey’ week, full of changing weather and play experiences!  We started the week with snow and a minus 5 reading on the car temperature gauge, and then the snow disappeared and we jumped to wet and rainy greyness, with a temperature jump to plus 5!  Wellies have been important all week, and the children have loved all their outdoor experiences, from throwing snowballs and making footprints and patterns on Mr Duigan’s lawn, to splashing in the puddles and smashing the ice from the sandpit!  Please check with us that we have wellies for your little ones, all the ones we have right now fit well, but it’s worth letting us know when other shoes need changing.  Can I just give all the nursery children a massive pat on the back, they have been so good at taking their shoes off, and putting them back on again with minimal help – even our youngest are ‘having a go’ at being super independent – well done!  Have a great weekend, and stay safe everyone.

Newsletter

In nursery this week we put the children in charge for a little bit of self-directed learning. Allowing them to choose what we do builds self-confidence and self-esteem.

After all our natural icy exploration and our conversations about the cold winter weather, they decided that what they really wanted was yet ‘more ice!’ Together they chose lots of colourful sparkles and filled different containers – recalling the previous activity and telling us all what we needed to do. Everyone enjoyed pouring in the water and putting their containers in the freezer – we can’t wait to see how they all turn out, especially the frozen gloves!

It was yet more freezy fun!

We hope that you enjoyed watching your child's performance in their nativity.

If you would like to purchase the downloadable video, please follow this link to the PTA website where you will be able to select the nativity performance for your own personal download.

www.pta-events.co.uk/crackleyhall

Friday 5 February - 6.30pm

Join us next Friday 5 February from 6.30pm from the comfort of your own home for Crackley Hall’s first family online Bingo.  

We encourage all Crackley Hall families and staff to come together for a fabulous night of entertainment! All ages are welcome to join in this evening, and we will also have some fun half-time entertainment.

Tickets are £5 per family to join (£1 of which will go towards a raffle at the end of the bingo). If that's not enough to tempt you, each family will be playing for your child’s house and a chance to increase their house points.

Please click here to sign up for tickets.

We hope this will be a night to remember and one your family will really enjoy!