The Chronicle

Dear Parents

This is the last full week of the school term and we have certainly had a busy week.  Junior 6 started the week very early when they boarded the coach to the make the journey to the Peak District at 6.00am on Monday morning.  I have heard so many wonderful stories and seen the photographs of the visit to Crowden Outdoor Education Centre and I know that the children had the most wonderful time.  The careful planning was certainly worth it, with many good memories made.  My thanks are extended to all those who made this trip possible including, Mrs Horan, Mrs Vaughan, Mrs Paphitis, Mr Cottrill, Mrs Thomas and the efficient office staff.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the adventure and I understand that it’s not just the Scottish Highlands that have their fair share of hungry midges!

We were able to enjoy a socially distanced Teddy Bears Picnic on our lawns on Wednesday morning.  Thankfully the weather held and it was a lovely morning for all.  Thank you to our Nursery Team for co-ordinating this event.

Music exams were able to continue with our COVID safety measures in place and I look forward to receiving the results of the efforts of all those who took part this week.  Thank you to Mrs Olden and our peripatetic music teachers for coaching and organising the examinations.

The class discos took place today within the safe area of each classroom and I can confirm that there was an eclectic mix of music coming from the classrooms; Three Lions was heard loud and clear from Mr Stedeford’s classroom!  (PS: we will make sure that Junior 4s are treated to their own disco when we are able). Thank you for the PTA for supplying refreshments and treats for the non-uniform day.  Please do take a look through this edition to read more about how to become involved in our PTA and discover what they have achieved this year.  Mrs Lamb and her team have been absolutely fantastic!  I should like to thank them all very much.

I hope you were able to watch this morning’s assembly where I congratulated our Stars of the Week who were: Little Crackers Badgers, All Reception, Charlie, Thomas, all Junior 2H, Ding, all Junior 3V, Jay, Eve, the whole of Junior 5 and Junior 6.  Bronze Awards were given to Stephanie and Mya in Junior 5, Alyx and Harry in Junior 6.  Ria, Olivia, Finley, Isla and Finley in Junior 3, Arisha, Sebastian and Jack in Junior 4.  Lots of our Reception also children achieved Bronze including Lily-Rose, Olivia, Josh, Xanthe, Cleo, Dalilah, Lewis, Charley, Liana and Aarav.   Gold Awards were ‘presented’ to Rory, Hugo, Fiorella, Chace, Cameron, Ashleigh, Sloane and Jai.  Well done to everybody, not just today but for your efforts during the whole of this school year.

Junior da Vinci’s were achieved by Sara, Molly and Arthur in July 3 and Theo and Lucas in Junior 4.  Overall this year, Junior 6 students Noah and Isabel received a total of 14 da Vinci awards between them.  Congratulations to you all as it takes an incredible amount of hard work to achieve a Junior da Vinci award.  Well done to those Junior 3 and Junior 4 pupils who excelled in the Junior Maths Challenge – look out for the article later in The Chronicle. Thank you to our J5 and J6 sports reporters and also the Junior 4s for their lovely performance in assembly.

Next Monday we will be holding our prize giving ceremonies online and links have been sent to parents.  I do hope that you are able to join us live at the appropriate time for your child’s annual prize giving, but if this is not possible, each prize giving will be recorded for you to watch later.  Junior 6 will be leaving Crackley Hall next week and Tuesday will inevitably be an emotional day for both children and parents as a special era in their childhood and education draws to an end.  It is also an exciting time, looking forward to a new beginning at a new school, new challenges and new friends.  I will say goodbye to you all next week and hope that we can give you a fitting send off.

I would like to thank all Junior 4 parents for your support and understanding this morning.  As soon as more information is available during the course of this weekend, I will be arranging for a further communication to be sent to you.

Further to my earlier correspondence today, I would strongly encourage parents to closely monitor their child’s health as we look to combat the spread of COVID in our community. Lateral flow tests are available and many families are already using these – thank you. Other families are taking the correct action and registering for PCR tests if their child or themselves show any of the symptoms – these can be a sore throat, runny nose, headache or fever. Of course, we should still also look out for symptoms of the previous variants of COVID.  As previously mentioned, please keep your child at home if they display any of the symptoms.

There is plenty of good sport to watch at the moment and I do hope that you are able to find the time to watch your preferred sport this weekend.  I would like to wish you all a relaxing weekend and are able to make the most of any good weather due.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Mrs Jackson-Mayne would really welcome your feedback on the RSHE Scheme which has been delivered to the children in the Lent and Michaelmas Term. Please could you take a minute to fill in the short survey by clicking on the link below. Your views are important to us as we try to develop the teaching of ‘Relationship Sex Health Education’ within the school.

If you have any further comments please email Mrs Jackson-Mayne at sjacksonmayne@crackleyhall.co.uk

RSHE Questionnaire for Parents

https://forms.office.com/r/kPSauHj9mF

Junior 4 concluded their lessons on RSHE this week exploring emotions. Over the last couple of weeks the pupils have been learning about Puberty. Through discussion groups we have talked about the changes experienced during puberty. In class this week the pupils worked in groups to make photographic images of different moods. The children tracked their moods and feelings on a mood graph to understand their feelings.

Please can you collect any medication that you child has in school from the school office on Tuesday 6 July.

Thank you

Holiday club will be running again this summer, from Thursday 8 July until Friday 3 September 2021. It will not be available on Monday 30 August due to the Bank Holiday, or Wednesday 1 September due to staff INSET Day.

Holiday club will only operate on the days where there are sufficient numbers to open, therefore it is important for you to book early as we may not be able to accommodate last minute bookings, due to staff ratios and COVID bubbles.

If you book a day and the numbers attending are not high enough, you will be contacted to either cancel or rearrange the day booked.

Due to the current restrictions, holiday club will be open from 08:30 to 17:00 and will cost £30 per day. Hot lunch will be provided.

A timetable of activities will be sent out shortly, once staffing has been arranged.

To make a booking, please contact the School Office on 01926 514444.

The First Mathematics Challenge is a fun and exciting mathematical challenge aimed at pupils in Years 3 and 4. The First Mathematics Challenge (FMC) has been specifically created to give pupils the opportunity to take part in a National Challenge. It is the intention that mathematics is portrayed as enjoyable, exciting and engaging for younger pupils and the FMC should provide an entertaining yet educational ending to the school year. It is not designed to be just another test in the school year, instead it encourages enthusiasm, boosts confidence in mathematics and shows how questions can be asked in different ways. The problem solving it requires is hugely important as a means of helping pupils develop their reasoning skills.

At Crackley this year we had 14 Year 4 pupils and 14 Year 3 pupils take the First Maths Challenge.

Many congratulations to the following pupils who were awarded certificates following the challenge:

Gold – Arthur Cowell, Ding Fan, Matilda Clarke, Theo Cowlishaw, Lucas Hobson, Kate Knudsen, Julia Kozhan, Jia Mehta, Andrew Parizzi, Georgie Rea,

Silver – Phoebe Ward, Sara Alvis, Beatrice Parizzi, Molly Hunka, Darcey Wilcox Smith, Thomas Reddish, Elizabeth Edkins, Finley O’Halloran, Mairen Steel, Isabella Olden, Elena, Jay Jonah, Leo Warne,

Bronze – Fraser Conniff, Sebastian Rotherham, Ted Higginbotham, Isaac Fox, Penny Thomas

Well done to all pupils who took part!

Summer Learning

RocketLearn are holding an online Summer School which enables children to participate in activities across PE, Well-being, Maths, English and Technology.  The Summer School is two weeks of activities -however children can access the materials as and when they choose over the Summer.  Crackley Hall parents are being offered a 50% discount - making the cost £25 for over 20 hours of interactive learning. If you would like to sign your child up for some light fun learning over the Summer please do so here using the code CRACKLEY to benefit from the discount.

Rocket learn Information

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

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

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

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

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Van Zyl's class is the whole of J3V

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's group is Kit and Ralph

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

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

Well done all!

This week, our Junior 6 children have finally had the opportunity to escape school and travel to the Peak District for an outdoor activities adventure. The excitement has been building for some time, with many concerns over whether the trip would be able to go ahead. However, at 5.45 on Monday morning, the children boarded the coach for two days of adventure! Activities included canoeing, archery, bush craft, crate stacking, zip wires and stream scrambling. Some very tired but exhilarated children then came back to school on Wednesday to continue their activities with a morning of Forest Schooling! 

J5 were very excited to be part of a book exchange this week. They all eagerly brought in books that they’d previously read and a £1 to exchange for new books. We have many avid readers in J5 and this was a huge success. As part of their Geography curriculum, J5 also went outdoors to partake in an exciting orienteering activity, with J5L having their first orienteering session, led by Mrs Thomas, which they thoroughly enjoyed. The J5 staff have really enjoyed teaching all of the year 5 pupils this year. They have all worked hard, made great progress, been fun to be with, and we wish them further success and happiness in J6! Good luck to the amazing Miss Draper (Alexis) too, as she goes off to University!

As part of the J4’s topic on Vikings, the children have designed themselves a piece of Viking style jewellery. First, they studied images of Viking jewellery and runes and subsequently designed their own small piece of jewellery in their sketchbooks. Next they used cuttlefish to carve a mould for their jewellery. They tested their mould with a piece of clay to see what the pewter cast might look like and then modified their design, if needed. This Monday they will be going to the woods with Mrs Clark to smelt pewter over the fire and pour the molten metal into their moulds. Continuing with the Viking theme, in music J4 became Viking singing warriors as they travelled in long boats across the mighty seas before battling with gusto to the finish line!  There have been many things to celebrate and remember this year and Mrs Wildey, Mrs Burley, Mrs Jackson-Mayne, Mrs Kaur and Mrs Hill are all so very proud how the pupils have embraced the change and focused on the many, many positives.

In our final full week of this academic year, Junior 3 have been busy completing some outstanding writing. We have edited and polished up our final letters to logging companies, persuading them the importance of taking immediate action to stop the destruction of the rainforest. We have also written about our own exciting adventure in the Amazon after making a virtual trip though this astonishing landscape. On Tuesday afternoon, we joined a live-streamed art class by the famous author and illustrator, Liz Pichon, where we learned to draw some of the fabulous characters from her latest novel ‘Shoe Wars’. It has certainly been an exciting final week and we are so proud of every pupils’ achievements, attitudes and, most of all, their ambitions for the future. Well done Junior 3 – you are superstars.

Well, it seems like only five minutes since Junior 2 began their year, and what a year it has been! The favourite part of everyone’s week is when they are writing, using pictures they have drawn, to help them. An incredibly creative bunch of children, we have loved all the books and stories we have read, including The Railway Children, Dogstar, The Boy at the Back of the Class, The Ice Palace and Oliver Twist, to name but a few. I think all the children would class Tilly and the Time Machine by Ade Edmondson as their favourite!. As we come to the end of Junior 2, the children have written a piece about a favourite holiday island, and here we see them today, working so hard to try and perfect their work. Such a positive little bunch, who we know will do so well in Junior 3. The veggie garden has thrived this year, mainly due to lots of rain and the first crops were harvested and eaten last night. How exciting! Ms Holmes and Mrs Bhogal have had a wonderful year with J2 and we wish them every success as they move up to J3. Happy holidays everyone, see you in September.

Junior 1 have made it to the end of the school year and what an incredible time it has been! As well as growing taller, they have also grown in their approach to learning and life; successfully moving from the Foundation Stage into the National Curriculum. There have been so many highlights of the year, including the books we have read  - such as Mrs Armitage On Wheels, discovering new facts about plants and animals in science, learning about toys, homes and transport in history and finding out about the four countries within the UK in our Geography lessons. This week the children have all finished their Maths topics for the year and we were able to consolidate and check their understanding by completing an overview of everything we have covered. This review of learning also took place in our phonics lessons, where everyone consolidated their understanding of phases 2, 3 4 and 5, phew! Finally, there was great excitement in our Music lessons when Mrs Olden showed the children the recording of Joseph And His Technicolour Dreamcoat where everyone had the chance to see themselves singing in the chorus. It really was such a lovely end to the school year. Mrs Glen-Roots, Mrs Hardwick, Mr Kefalas and Mrs Verma are all so proud of what the children have achieved this year and we know they are all more than ready to continue their journey in Junior 2. 

It is hard to believe that we are now at the end of term and the summer holidays are beckoning. However, Reception, as ever, have worked hard and played hard as we investigated positional language through the story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – not only in the classroom, but outside in Forest School too. Much fun was had at our disco where we boogied to favourites such as Club Tropicana, Let it Go and Rasputin. In fact, Mrs Convey and Mrs Green marvelled at our eclectic taste! Our final French lesson of the year allowed us to demonstrate our super accents and in RE we wrote lovely prayers of thanks. What a fantastic year we have had!  

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

Summer Mission

Please see the attachment below for information regarding a holiday club running during the Summer holidays.

The club is provided by an external provider and not Crackley Hall School.

Tennis Camp Information

In Lego Club this week we reflected on all the models we had made this past year.  From summer gardens drenched with palm trees, to wildlife explorers in the jungle.  We had the super-cool strengths of the mighty Superheroes, to princesses with a difference and Ninjas making the odd appearance.  We investigated the oceans with Bo the seal and Shelley the turtle and played daring sea rescue adventures.  We pretended we were astronauts and invented the most awesome space rockets.  We went to infinity and beyond with Star Wars and the impressive Marvel heroes.  We problem-solved, created and experimented together as a team; we persevered when we thought we couldn’t finish our model, managing our frustration in the process and celebrating in the happiness when we did. But most of all, we had fun firing our imaginations with new ways of learning. Enjoy the summer.  Lego Club will be back!

Nursery has been busy again this week, especially as we changed some of the environment again!  We spend a lot of time observing the children in nursery, especially watching how they play, who they play with and how they use particular areas.  With this in mind, and after our training last weekend on the new Early Years Curriculum, we decided to make a few ‘tweaks’ here and there.  The children loved watching us begin moving things, and were impressed when they saw the new room the next morning.  Since then they have been making the most of our larger creative space with a ‘work bench’, our quieter book space and the bigger writing area.  It’s amazing how a change round feels so exciting!  I can hardly believe we are so close to the end of the term, with school closing next Tuesday, so if you are heading off to enjoy the summer, we wish you a happy and safe time, and if you’re staying with us during the next few weeks, we have lots of exciting things planned.  Please enjoy this weekend, and stay safe.

Newsletter

Thank you in abundance!

The PTA Committee would like to pass on a very big thank you for your incredible support this year which has helped us to raise a great deal of money for our school. We couldn't have done it without all the volunteers that have helped us along the way, particularly those that helped set up the events that were allowed to go ahead and the regular volunteers that are always happy to help at every event come rain or shine, in particular the ‘The pre loved uniform shop‘. A big thank you also to all the parent, guardians, grandparents, class reps, and staff  who have helped this year. Your continued support is very much appreciated.

Final PTA Newsletter

Please find a list of forthcoming events attached below:

Forthcoming Events

Countdown to the first draw - 10 Days
 
Welcome to Crackley Hall PTA's raffle page. We're excited to join The Big PTA Summer Raffle 2021, this has been a really tough year for everyone and this is an opportunity to have some fun and raise money for our school.

For every ticket you will have 12 chances to win up to £5,000! At the same time we will raise 50% from every ticket sold supporting our PTA. It's a fantastic way to bring Parents, Carers, Teachers and the wider community together, in partnership with our PTA, and at the same time give something back. We hope to raise funds that can support and enrich the education of our children - we aim to provide extra resources for the children, improve the school environment as well as run extracurricular activities such as music, art and sport.

https://www.bigptaraffle.co.uk/support/crackley-hall-pta-cv8

Your support is greatly appreciated and we wish you good luck!

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!

Parents, please ensure that all items of school uniform and sports kits are named.

Could you please regularly check all uniform and sports kits at home – if it does not belong to your child, please return it to the School Office as soon as possible.

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Olivia (Rec) has lost her unicorn water bottle

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We have a selection of water bottles - please cna you take a look at the picture and if you recognise any, please come to the office and collect them.

Thank you