The Chronicle

Dear Parents

I am pleased that we have now reached the end of remote learning and that children and staff may return to school permanently from Monday.  We are obviously still being extremely cautious at school and thorough risk assessments have been carried out, taking into consideration all school activities.  I would like to reassure you that staff are carrying out twice weekly lateral flow tests and visitors to school are asked to do the same so that we can continue to provide a safe environment for all.   If, as a family, you wish to take a lateral flow test, this can be done by following one of the links in my recent letter to you regarding the return to school.

This afternoon, staff returned to school to make sure classes are ready for the children on Monday and to be fully briefed on the changes that have been put in place and I know that they are very keen to begin teaching in the classroom on Monday.  The timetable will revert back to our pre-Christmas timetable, early birds and after care will resume, hot lunches will be served in the school hall for Junior 1 to Junior 6 and extra-curricular clubs will also resume as per Mrs Vaughan’s recent communication.  Nursery and Reception will have their hot lunches taken to their rooms.  Assemblies, Mass and other gatherings will remain online until further notice as children must remain in their ‘bubbles’.

I hope you were able to watch this morning’s assembly where I announced our Stars of the Week:  Ciara, Hugo, all of Junior 1, Hardaya, Amelia, Phoebe, Arthur, Lexi, Arisha, Alex, Carolina, Isabella and Alyx.  In Junior 5, Bronze Awards were presented to Elle, Mikey and Isabella for their effort, good manners and following school rules.  Well done everyone and your certificates will be ready for you on Monday. 

There were more Junior da Vinci’s awarded this week.  In Junior 4, Joseph achieved his award for mathematics with 3 strands achieved for different pieces of work.  Mairen (J4) for her fable in English, Isabella and Jay in Junior 4 achieved their award for geography after completing research on pollution and a presentation to the class and Ralph, also Junior 4, received his da Vinci award for his English work. Olivia, Elsie, George, Aaron (all in J5) received their awards for their fantastic creative writing in English.  

There was some excellent news this morning received from the ISA.  Julia in Junior 4 took part in the Musical Theatre Competition which was held during lockdown and it has been announced today that she was placed 2nd in this national competition with her entry ‘If only I had a brain’.  There will be more news on this in next week’s Chronicle but congratulations to Julia!

I have seen some wonderful photographs from World Book Day which took place yesterday.  There were some fabulous creations across all year groups and I hope you enjoy looking at the photographs later on.  Thank you to everyone who took part and to Mrs Horan for her efforts too.  Book vouchers will be available to collect from school on Monday.

As some parents will have read online, our current Junior 2 class will be split into two classes from September.  This is the normal procedure when pupils move into Junior 3 at Crackley Hall.  Decisions on which class children will go to will be made later in the Trinity term after full consultation with the staff involved and just prior to ‘moving up day’ in late June; this day will provide the opportunity for children to visit their new classrooms.  From past experience, I can confirm that pupils will still stay in close contact, and maintain very close friendships, with their current classmates.

As normality begins to return to the school day, I would like to remind you about arrival and collection protocol.  Please arrive at the allocated time and place for your child so that we may keep the traffic flowing and children safe.  The local police have contacted me this week with a timely reminder about parking in the area, requesting that parents park legally and responsibly.  They have issued the attached visual which I have been asked to forward to all parents as we continue to work with the local residents.

I am pleased to confirm that holiday club will be held throughout the Easter break from 8.30am until 5.00pm, starting on Wednesday 31 March and the last day will be Friday 16 April.  We will not be having holiday club on Good Friday or Easter Monday.  Booking forms will be available next week.

I hope you enjoy your weekend and preparing for school on Monday.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Please find more information below regarding school parking:

School Parking Information

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

World Book Day is much-loved here at Crackley Hall and we always have lots of fun, from dressing up as book characters to revisiting our favourite books and a whole host of story themed activities in between. It’s a day we focus on books and reading simply for pleasure, a skill that we know is proven to help children get ahead. And this year whether they were at home or in Key School our Crackley book worms have loved joining in the World Book day fun.

In Nursey staff enjoyed dressing up and sharing their favourite stories and many of the children dressed up too, there was a Highway Rat, a Viking, a fantastic Snail and the Whale costume and a number of Gruffalo and dinosaur themed little people.

Reception’s live lessons were full of super characters too including The Worst Witch, Lily Bobtail, Peter Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, the White Witch and many, many more! The children enjoyed sharing their favourite books and characters and even sang along to a special World Book Day rap!

Junior 1 all dressed up for World Book Day and excitedly showed off their costumes to the rest of their class on Teams. They then watched the story of The Huey’s In The New Jumper and had the chance to design Rupert a new jumper. There were so many lovely bright and colourful designs.

Junior 2 went on a book Scavenger Hunt – finding characters or events within stories they had at home. They then researched authors, Tom Fletcher and Jess French, before completing their own book review.

Junior 3 had great fun playing The Masked Reader and enjoyed watching an extract from David Walliams’ Fing. It linked in really nicely to their non-fiction writing on their own made-up creatures.

Across the Junior 4 classes pupils linked World Book Day to their Beowulf topic studying their favourite heroes and heroines. Endured Miss Trunchbull playing a book character guessing game and also enjoyed The Masked Reader. Some even studied one of our most famous modern poets, Michael Rosen, and watched a clip of two of his famous performance poems The Car Trip and Chocolate Cake.

Junior 5 studied a variety of books throughout the week, matching blurbs to book covers to inspire the children to read them. They focussed on authorial techniques such as ‘show rather then tell’ and had great fun in a challenge to read in the most unusual of places!

Finally, Junior 6 delved into all things Shakespearean continuing their focus on Romeo and Juliet. They chose from a range of activities including writing a comic strip, designing and making potions for the star-crossed lovers or even designing a symbol of peace. Tomorrow they have a very special extra treat, listening to the RSC and Michael Morpurgo introducing and discussing his new book ‘Tales from Shakespeare’.

We had such a busy World Book Day, we hope you enjoy seeing all the children's costumes in the class reports later in the Chronicle.

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

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

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's group is Isabelle

Mathletes of the week for Mrs VanZyl's group is Thomas

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

Mathletes of the week for Mrs Burley's group is James

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

Well done all! 

This week Dan has continued to cook with a helping hand from his daughters.

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

Youtube channel

Home School Bistro Pack

The Broadway Arts Festival are running a short story competition – it is the one that Seb Dibb won last year.

You can find the information here:

https://broadwayartsfestival.com/short-story-prize/

It is free to enter and there is no theme.  There is word limit of 2000 words and there is a prize of £50 for the U13 category.

The deadline for entries is 5pm on Wednesday 31 March.  All information on how to enter is on the website.

Please do have a look and encourage the children to enter.  We have some fantastic writers in all parts of the school!

The winning stories will be shared on the Broadway Arts Festival website - you can read Sebastian's winning story there!

Junior 6 have been having some riotous fun during their Thursday PSHECE lessons over the last two weeks. Their '30 Minutes of Madness' started last week with 'Bed hair' and a scavenger hunt. Some of the children have very creative ways of finding and representing different items! The 'something the smells bad' certainly triggered the imagination!

This week, the children celebrated World Book Day in their '30 Minutes of Madness' and earned House Points for some incredibly knowledgeable answers to questions about books and some very quick sourcing of book types and character names! There were some brilliant characters represented by the J6 cohort, led by Mrs Vaughan and Mrs Horan as Thing 1 and Thing 2!

J5L - As our final week of home-schooling comes to an end, we celebrate all of the hard work our J5s have done, all of the fun times and best of all we look forward to seeing each other in the flesh on Monday. This week, not only have we dressed up as book characters (check out our pics), but we have looked at a variety of books, matching the blurbs to the book covers to try to inspire our children to read them! We attended David Walliams' assembly on Tuesday, too, which was brilliant. We think this has been a great way to end this part of our journey.

J5R - We’ve really enjoyed celebrating World Book Day in J5 this week by dressing up as a book character. Over the week we have been looking at the various techniques that Author’s use to describe characters, and we have focussed on the “show not tell” technique. As an extension to this, Mrs Roberts’ English group then turned their cameras on and had to show an emotion with their facial expression, and we all had to guess it. Today, J5 had to match blurbs to book covers, read a book in an unusual place, and find as many words as they could from “World Book Day.” It’s been a super week!

'If you are going to get anywhere in life, you need to read a lot of books.' Roald Dahl. 

Year 4 have had a splendiferous World Book Day. It was great fun sharing our costumes and guessing what characters we all were. Throughout the week, we have enjoyed various World Book Day activities including watching a special assembly by David Walliams. 

This image brilliantly demonstrates the importance of reading and we are very excited to return to school next week to find out what you have been reading and to encourage your love of books even more. 

Well Junior 3, as Roald Dahl might say ‘what a whizzpopper of a week!’

In our final week of remote learning, you have gone all out to make it the most spectacular yet. Fully embracing our new science topic of ‘Rocks and Soils’, you have been literally devouring non-fiction texts and finding out so much about different types of rocks and fascinating fossils. You have made replica fossils, learned about the erosion of coastal areas and really channelled your inner palaeontologist! We have even had a fossil worthy of being a museum exhibit, shared in our live form time by Darcey.

All of this ‘rocking and rolling’ has been finished off with a wonderful ‘World Book Day’, full of laughter, sharing stories and fun games. We could not be more proud of you for all the enthusiasm you have shown, and we are filled with excitement to see you all next week. Junior 3 – YOU ROCK !!

Last week saw ‘Biography Week’ in Junior 2. The children set to work interviewing friends and family members to find out as much as they could about their lives, and we uncovered some really interesting information. Who knew there was a royal ‘shoe designer’, a member of the Police Force (before becoming a teacher!) and a Grandma who worked in the electronics industry? Fascinating stuff.

The early spring sunshine heralded the arrival of the ‘Plants’ topic in Science and the pupils watched seeds germinating before beginning to grow their own 'cress' heads….watch this space. Ms Holmes is a week or two ahead with hers so see if yours can catch hers up!

World Book Day saw the children investigating their own collections in a Scavenger Hunt and they also found out about how authors get their ideas for writing.

As our home learning comes to an end, Junior 1 have once again surpassed our expectations with their commitment to learning and the way in which they have fully engaged with their school work.

After creating superheroes last week, this saw them coming to life in a cartoon strip, complete with conversation. They were challenged to look at clues in suitcases full of clothes to determine where each one was destined to go in Geography and an opportunity was given to dress up in appropriate winter and summer clothes too.

In Science we looked at birds, what they are and what features they have that are different to other creatures. This linked in nicely with some DT work – making a paper rocking bird.

We can’t wait to be back in school next week and see all our friends!

With World Book Day having taken place this week, Reception enjoyed reading ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ and thinking about alien and space-related themes.

Making alien ‘oobleck’ slime was definitely a highlight of this week’s Understanding the World lessons. It behaved very strangely indeed, acting like a liquid when poured but like a solid when tapped.

We also learnt some fantastic facts about our solar system and designed a pair of underpants for those cheeky aliens! Using our talents has been the focus of our RE lessons, whilst ordering the numbers 9 and 10 has seen us counting up and down like astronauts blasting off and landing, in Maths. We have worked so hard at home, but are excited to be back at school next week!

This week's assembly on the Transfiguration led by Mrs Jackson-Mayne reminded pupils that we are all invited to be with Jesus. In Collective Worship pupils reflected on the Holy Family, as part of our special focus on St Joseph. Many of you sent in beautiful photos of your family and it has been very heartening to hear that the positives of lockdown has been spending time together, as a family.

Junior 3 have continued to focus on the Eucharist in their RE lessons. Look at the gallery to see our Shining Stars this week who have drawn and labelled some beautiful pictures of a Monstrance, which is used to display the Holy Bread. Thank you to Jenson, Elsie, Darcey, Blythe  and Beatrice,

Finley, Patrick and Austin also took time to make the unleavened bread. I was impressed with how they followed the recipe carefully.

Junior 4 have continued to work on their Beatitudes, Olivia took time to explain happiness and what the Beatitudes meant to her. Theo managed to make a Beatitude Catcher to help him remember them all.

Book Lovers Prayer

RE book of the week is awarded to Isabel (J6V)

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

Please find a link to the Lent calendar below:

Calendar

Message for Parents from James Roe

Our tennis courts are not allowed to open until week beginning Monday 29 March, therefore we will resume the after school club after the Easter holidays, week beginning Monday 19 April.

Thank you

How exciting to think that next week we will all be back to normal. We will welcome back some familiar faces, as well as new children who have been waiting to join us, and I don’t mind saying how fabulous that will be.  However, before we move on I must say an enormous thank you to the staff, parents and children who have supported us during the last few weeks.  This latest, and hopefully last, period of lockdown has been hard on everyone, and yet our children are not merely coping, they are thriving and happy.  As parents, you must and should be proud of yourselves.

This week we have been rearranging the rooms again to accommodate the next stage of changes and the children particularly like our new ‘dining room’ where we will continue to eat hot meals each day, and the creative ‘zone’ full of opportunities to paint, draw, cut, stick, dig in the sand and explore the water.  We hope to welcome back the regular Forest School visits, as well as music and PE with the school teachers – it’s going to be great!  I wish you all a happy, safe and relaxed weekend and we will see you next week.

Newsletter

Little Crackers Nursery celebrated their favourite books yesterday. Some children dressed up, some played out stories, others shared the stories they love and retold them to friends, then everyone joined the Very Hungry Caterpillar to munch on watermelon at snack time!

The grown-ups loved sharing their favourite stories too, and the children were able to meet Alice in Wonderland and Miss Trunchbull, even Burglar Bill tiptoed in to see what we were having for snack, he spotted the watermelon, and said, “I’ll have that!” Of course we shared it nicely. We all enjoyed World Book Day.

The latest edition of our Stay ‘n’ Play at Home virtual videos, featuring activities such as settle down for story-time, join in our sing-a-long and get creative with craft, is released today.

It’s another exciting edition full of lots of fun. This time families and their little ones can listen to the classic story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and discover what happened after the caterpillar filled his hungry tummy. Then it was St David’s Day on Monday, so the craft activity is all about making bright yellow daffodils. And to finish there is a super sing-a-long where you can join in singing popular nursery songs including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Families can join in with Stay 'n' Play at Home by emailing Jenny Vaughan at staynplay@littlecrackers.co.uk.

The PTA Ordinary Meeting will take place on Wednesday 17 March at 7.30pm via Teams. A link to join will be sent nearer the time.

All welcome to attend - many hands make light work.

Dust off the dresses, shine those shoes and un-crease those coats.  As always, thank you, to our wonderful second hand uniform team, Nikki, Linda and Katie, for being ever patient and serving our wonderful school community with much needed preloved uniform.

Please feel to contact them on ptauniform@crackleyhall.co.uk to arrange an appointment, or to simply check stock availability.

To offer this service, we rely on wonderful donations from you. So if you have any good quality uniform your child has outgrown, please use the collection box in the school front entrance.  It will then be quarantined for 72 hours before offering for sale.

All money raised from the PTA Uniform shop is spent on extras for your children throughout the year at school and helps the children’s day become even more special!

Cyber-crime – please be extra vigilant

Parents are asked to be vigilant when reading emails relating to the payment of school fees and any other items to the Foundation. You can protect yourselves by only making payments to us in line with our normal, published methods. Any email offering a large discount on fees for the coming academic year if paid immediately is fraudulent.

There has been no change to the bank details of Princethorpe College, Crackley Hall or Crescent and there is no intention to make any changes in the foreseeable future. Any electronic notification that appears to be from any of the Foundation schools changing these details may be fraudulent.  Our bank details are available on the Parent Bills, the Online Payment Portal and in the Information Booklet for each school, and only those details should be used.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or my colleagues in the Bursary if you are have any doubts about the correct details or indeed if anything appears suspicious.

Eddie Tolcher
Foundation Bursar

We are recruiting for a variety of roles currently, as you will see below, so please do share with friends and family by word of mouth.

Further information and application forms on all roles are available on our website   https://www.theprincethorpefoundation.co.uk/join-us

• Teacher of English - Princethorpe College
• Teacher of Mathematics – maternity cover - Princethorpe College
• Teacher of Science and DT - Crescent School