The Chronicle

Dear Parents

Welcome back on site to Crackley Hall School!

At the end of the first week back, with everyone in the building, it feels as if everything is almost normal again.  However, we are still keeping to our bubbles, staff are wearing masks around school, we have maintained the enhanced cleaning schedule and all adults on site are required to take the LTF test, which we monitor closely.  Your co-operation during arrival and collection times is much appreciated as this will assist with the smooth and safe traffic flow during busy times.  Please remember, if you do arrive on foot at school; wear a mask, keep your distance and do not stay longer than absolutely necessary.

On Monday, children were welcomed back by their class teachers and spent an extended registration together which gave them an opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the routines and catch up with their friends.  The children have adapted well to the change in lunchtime arrangements as this is now taking place in the school hall which enables every child to have a hot lunch.  As this is the first week trialling the lunch arrangement, we will be reviewing the provision with Mr Sansum and will adjust where necessary.

During this morning’s assembly, I announced that William, Blythe, Ivy, Joshua, Rory, Thomas, Sienna, Louis, Jenson and Mikey all received their Bronze Awards.   Elle and Alfred both received a Junior da Vinci award for their English work and our stars of the week were: Theoharis, Dalihah, Hector, Charlie, Charlotte, all of Junior 3S, Joshua, Miley, Jack, Leo, Summer, Scarlett and Yung.  Well done girls and boys for your tremendous hard work!

It was also my pleasure to present the ISA Musical Theatre certificates today to those who represented the School nationally, Aaron, Olivia and Holly and to Julia who was placed 2nd nationally.  You will be able to read more about this later in the Chronicle and also be able to watch Julia’s performance.  It was a delight to watch all these performances and I hope that you enjoy watching ‘If I had a Brain’ as much as I did. 

At the end of today’s assembly we were able to bring you another performance, this time by Evie in Junior 3 who has her singing lessons with Mrs Goode.  Evie was initially surprised but, I think you will agree, stepped up to the challenge beautifully.

Next week, Junior 5 and 6 will be participating in their LAMDA examinations, Junior 3 will have an interesting virtual visit from Severn Trent Water and we will also be celebrating St Joseph’s Day on Friday, 19 March.  This year, a service will be recorded and sent to classes and parents so that we can all watch safely from within our bubbles or our homes.  My thanks to Father Kevin for his participation, I am sure he will be looking forward to returning to Crackley Hall as soon as he can.  I would also like to thank Mrs Jackson-Mayne, Mrs Paphitis and Mrs Horan for their time in arranging the service.

The Easter Holiday club booking system is now open and you can book this by visiting My School Portal and selecting ‘Clubs and Activities’.  This system will be open until 29 March after which date you will need to contact the School Office to enquire about availability.  We have lots of activities planned for this Easter break and hopefully the weather will be kind to us so that the children can enjoy playing outside too.

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend and that all the mums, grandmothers and mum’s to be have a restful day on Sunday.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

The Crackley Hall Holiday Club will take place on the following dates during the Easter holidays:

Wednesday 31 March to Thursday 1 April

Tuesday 6 April to Friday 9 April

Monday 12 April to Friday 16 April

You can book a place for your child by visiting My School Portal and selecting ‘Clubs and Activities’.

This system will be open until 29 March after which date you will need to contact the School Office to enquire about availability. We have lots of activities planned for this Easter break and hopefully the weather will be kind to us so that the children can enjoy playing outside too.

Princethorpe College will finish for the Easter holidays as per their published Term Dates on Friday 26 March. Monday 29 and Tuesday 30 March are in-service training (INSET) days at Princethorpe. These days will be used by the teaching staff for important safeguarding training, to revise our curriculum and schemes of work for all year groups in the weeks and months ahead and critically, to progress the work of gathering evidence, analysis and preparing the assessments that are required by the government to produce Teacher Assessed Grades for Year 11 and Upper Sixth in order to be able to award their GCSE and A-levels in the summer.

Both the Foundation preparatory schools, Crescent School and Crackley Hall School, have decided to forego their planned training and extend their term by two days to enable the children to have additional in school learning and will finish on Tuesday 30 March.

Please find more information below regarding school parking:

School Parking Information

Please can you check at home to see if you have any locker keys, if so please can you hand them into the school office.

Thank you 

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Junior 4 pupil, Julia, has just taken second place in the Junior Schools category of the Independent Schools Association (ISA) Musical Theatre competition.

Julia was one of some 200 entries from across the country who chose a song from their favourite musical, recorded a performance and sent it off for this year’s virtual competition.
Judged by musical theatre star Christopher Draper, who was very impressed by the standard of entries, Julia clearly dazzled with her performance of If Only I Had A Brain.

Julia, who takes singing lessons in school and also trains with Stagecoach, put a lot of preparation into her entry

Julia is delighted and a little stunned by her second place but very proud of herself as we all are of her, here at Crackley Hall.

Rob Duigan, Headteacher, said, “Huge congratulations to Julia for her incredible achievement in this national competition. We encourage all our children to take part in the performing arts as it helps to build their confidence and it is wonderful to see pupils achieve success.”

Julia’s performance can be viewed here.

Crackley Hall School has thoroughly enjoyed celebrating British Science Week and exploring this year’s theme Innovating For The Future. Junior 5 Teacher and Science Lead, Julia Roberts explains, “It’s been so interesting for the children to learn about famous inventions from the past. Across the school pupils have been fascinated by the variety, range and ingenuity of the scientists and their inventions and have really enjoyed the challenge of thinking up their own.”

Junior 1 learnt about Chester Greenwood, the 15-year-old who invented ear-muffs. They went on to investigate which materials were good at keeping things warm, testing different materials wrapped around containers of hot water. Their temperature measurements showed a towel did the best at keeping the heat in and Junior 1 agreed that if used for ear muffs it would be soft and warm on your ears!

In Junior 2 the children studied John Boyd Dunlop who developed the first practical inflatable tyre and John McAdam, the man behind the Tarmacadam Empire. They also enjoyed watching Wallace and Gromit as inspiration for Heath Robinson style invention ideas and then had great fun creating their own. Charlotte invented a ‘Fur Protector’ which stops you from being allergic to animal fur, and is hoping that she will now be able to have a cat! While Malachi made a fantastic invention that helps look after your dog. Not only does it wash and dry your dog, it will play with it and clean up after it. They had so many creative ideas.

Junior 3 read the story of Rosie Revere Engineer as inspiration for their innovations and found out that after many set-backs, Rosie eventually invents a machine to help her great aunt fly. The children loved it and were inspired to create their own marvellous creations. They also studied fossils and pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning and many children chose to invent tools and machines that would help fossil hunters, including Sara’s particularly innovative fossil hat.

During the week Junior 4 considered two very famous scientists, Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier, who were responsible for discovering oxygen. They went on to complete experiments observing how the amount of oxygen affects the length of time a flame will burn. Year 4 made sensible predictions before testing out their thoughts. The children are creating their very own inventions this weekend and we can’t wait to see them all next week.

Junior 5 discussed, planned, drew and then pitched (Dragon’s Den style) their inventions to the class. The audience pretended to be the ‘Dragons’ and lent their (pretend) money, as an investment, there were so many young scientific entrepreneurs.

In their lessons, Junior 6 considered how different inventions have affected our lives and set out to create their own ingenious ideas to change the world for the better. They also studied Stephen Hawking and his theories on Black Holes, developing an understanding of the Event Horizon and what happens if they should cross that! They had great fun discussing what might be on the other side and then went on to create their very own versions of Black Holes.

Mrs Roberts, continued, “The British Science Week topic Innovating For The Future has really inspired us all and I think we may just have some future scientists and inventors within our creative Crackley community!”

Crackley Hall School has taken first place in the latest Independent Schools Association (ISA) Limitless Skills Challenge scoring a huge total of 7,558 points, nearly double the score of the second placed school.

The six-week programme of physical challenges was designed to encourage pupils to stay active during the latest lockdown, harnessing technology in a fun and engaging way to transform time spent on-screen into time being active. The 40 skill challenges were developed by physical education experts and were supported with tutorial videos and feedback from real coaches. Pupils could develop their Skills and then take part in Head to Head Challenges taking on other users moderated by the coaches. The challenges ranged in ability and interest to make them suitable for all ages and levels.

Crackley Hall had four pupils in the top performing 25 and Junior 3 pupils, Isaac and Ted placed 1st and 3rd respectively in the Ages 7 and under category.

Head of Sport, Kat Vaughan explains, “A huge well done Crackley Hall. You really threw yourselves into this challenge and your commitment, determination and sheer enthusiasm has helped us take the top spot. I am very proud of you all.”

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Glen-Root's class is Francesca

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

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs VanZyl's group is Elsie

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

Mathletes of the week for Mrs Burley's group are Olivia and Lennon 

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Lammas's class is Elsie

Well done all! 

Calling all budding artists and inventors!

Please click and read through this information to enter the British Science Week 2021 poster competition on the theme of Innovating For The Future.

https://www.britishscienceweek.org/plan-your-activities/poster-competition/

Scroll through to the last page which gives details for the poster competition:

https://www.britishscienceweek.org/app/uploads/2021/02/BSQ_BSW_PACKS_0221_Primary_v15.pdf

Please send a photo of you holding your poster (make sure we can see it all clearly), or of your poster only, to me at juliaroberts@crackleyhall.co.uk by Friday 23 April, at the latest. Please ensure you send me details of your full name and your age, so that you get entered into the correct category.

Good luck!

Mrs Roberts

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!

It has been fantastic to have our Junior 6 children back in school this week!

We have spent the week getting used to our regular school routine and re-kindling relationships, whilst continuing our theme of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in English. Our handwriting practice even took on the Romeo and Juliet theme!

Maths has seen Junior 6 take their first leap into algebra, with some of the children developing the skills to develop and translate algebraic equations. Einstein would be proud! The week culminated in exploration of a famous scientific mind and black holes!

Junior 5 have returned to school full of excitement and ready to learn! We launched the week in a scientific way, as it‘s British Science Week, and all the J5s have been inspired to discuss, plan, draw and share a range of fabulous inventions.

In addition, we have been working hard to create suspense in our writing this week, and the J5s have been working hard to use a range of literary techniques to build suspense and to captivate the reader.

In Geography, we have been looking at news headlines around the world, and then used our mapping skills to find the countries featured.  We subsequently labelled these carefully onto our world maps. We will be mapping these on a weekly basis. 

Year 4 have had a wonderful week back in school. It was like we were never away; the children are back into our routines and it has been amazing to see how much they have grown!

It has been British Science Week, so the children have been learning about two very famous scientists who were responsible for discovering oxygen. We have also discussed what it takes to be an innovator of new ideas and inventions in our ever-changing world.

The children are creating their very own inventions this weekend to share with us at school next week- we think they will come up with some marvellous ideas to help with some everyday problems. 

This week, Junior 3 have been busy this week studying the amazing work by 19th Century Paleontologist, Mary Anning. Everyone was lured in by her mysterious ‘curiosities’ (pronounced in your best Dorset accent) and enjoyed learning about her astonishing discoveries, such as the incredible Ichtyosaurus fossil.

Each child has been continuing their learning of non-fiction writing, developing their ability to write in paragraphs and to use connectives, to add some extra detail. After some excellent practice, the children then worked together to produce wonderful 3D non-chronological reports, to display their findings all about the amazing innovator, from the sleepy coastal town of Lyme Regis.

Well done Junior 3, for settling back into school with such a brilliant and enthusiastic attitude towards your learning. It has been simply wonderful, to have you all back in the classroom.

Junior 2 have returned to school with renewed vigour and have loved seeing each other and catching up with all their news! We are currently loving the book Journey, by Aaron Becker which is a wordless picture book; absolutely brilliant for inspiring writing. Our topic of 'Castles’ continues with excitement in History, where this week, the children have explored ‘defence and attack’; from the crenellations to the magnificent trebuchet, firing hot stones and rocks on the fortresses around Britain.

In Science our continuation of our Plants topic ensured the children knew which parts of plants they are eating when onions, tomatoes, potatoes and broccoli are on their plates. A busy week of catch ups and plenty of new skills!

All of the J1 team have been so delighted to see the children return to school with such happy faces and enthusiasm. Home learning has definitely not affected their love for learning!

This week has been dedicated to a very important person in everyone’s life – their mummy! With Mother’s Day arriving on Sunday, everyone has been thinking about their mummy all week. The children have been busy writing acrostic poems and making beautiful cards. We have also decorated heart biscuits and put them in a special basket for each mummy.

For this week’s extended writing, we thought carefully about what our mummy looks like and used adjectives to describe them. We also used the words ‘and’ or ‘because’, to connect our sentences when we wrote about why we love our mummy. Our week of thoughtfulness also extended to our RE lessons when everybody thought about how they could make the world a little better, by considering which acts of kindness everyone could try during Lent.

We would like to wish a very Happy Mother’s Day to every precious mummy in our lives.

Returning to school on Monday, the children were full of excitement at being together at long last and it was wonderful to see laughter and smiles all around!

It has been a busy week as we pretended to be baby bear from Whatever Next, zooming into space and having a picnic on the moon. Linking to this, our space role play area has launched many missions and moon landings courtesy of our resident astronauts.

As it has been British Science Week, we have also been busy investigating and exploring this field and enjoyed conducting a diffusion experiment using Skittles.

With Mother’s Day this weekend we have been discussing how much we love our mummies and sharing the kind things they do – what lucky children we are! 

In RE lessons this week, pupils in Junior 3 have been learning about Holy Week through Art. They have begun making an Easter wreath to show the different events – watch this space for photographs. Junior 4 have been reflecting on the meaning of the Nicene Creed, using pictures and cartoons to show the meaning. They have also had the opportunity to explore their own beliefs and write their own personal creed. 

Junior 6 are preparing for the St Joseph Service which will be shown online on Friday 19 March. Chamber Choir will join the celebrations on the special feast day. 

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

This week we have been thinking about our lovely mums as we made beautiful flowery cards to give to them on Sunday.  The flowery theme ran through other activities too, a popular one was our rose scented playdough with real roses!  The children were able to cut the petals and leaves to add to their dough and had a wonderful time mixing, squeezing and squashing.

Our letter of the week was b, and the pre-school children enjoyed adding objects and pictures to the phonics tree in the garden room, whilst our youngest have been mark making in the shaving foam. 

It has been bustling and busy having everyone back this week, along with some lovely new faces and nursery felt fabulous.  Thank you again to all of you for supporting the changes to drop off and pick up again, we really appreciate all those smiles every morning.  I hope all of you Mum’s have a wonderful day on Sunday, have a Happy Mother’s Day!

Newsletter

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