The Chronicle

This week, a very excited Junior 6 have been deciding what areas they would like to help lead in school. The children have completed forms, selecting their four favourite topics from a list of 16, including Art, Computing, Science, Environment, Special Care, Playground and Gardening, to name but a few. Built into their timetable this year is a specific ‘Leadership’ slot, where they will have the opportunity to develop their leadership skills and work collaboratively to make positive changes within school, enabling every Junior 6 child the opportunity to lead in an area of interest to them.

Junior 5 returned to Crackley with an abundance of enthusiasm and energy and were invigorated and ready to learn once again.  We introduced and made all our new pupils feel welcome by playing a range of ice-breaking games.  This really encouraged our collaborative, co-operative and interpersonal skills – one of which is included in the new Crackley Compass which the pupils are all eagerly talking about.

In History, the children learned about chronology. We went outside and they practised by getting themselves in order of when they were born. They then tried to work out the chronological order of certain historical periods.  All Year 4 have returned to school positive and enthusiastic and all the Junior 4 team have been so impressed! They have written fabulous poems about themselves this week and used a range of powerful adjectives and sentence types to accompany their work.  

All the Junior 4’s have returned to school positive and enthusiastic and all of the Junior 4 team are impressed with them all. The Year 4’s have all written fabulous poems about themselves this week. They used a range of powerful adjectives and sentence types.

Junior 3 have made a wonderful start to the new academic year. We have loved finding out about the new Crackley Compass and Ms Holmes and Mrs Van Zyl have been so impressed with how many stars we have already earned. Between us, we have demonstrated all the attributes of excellent learners and recognised the difference we can make to ourselves and others when we apply them. We have also loved reading the story The Dot about a little girl who does not believe she can draw…yet. This prompted us to think about things that we cannot do yet, to have a growth mindset and always try our best to improve. We even drew our own pictures, starting with just a dot and wrote a 5-finger story to go with them. 

Junior 2 have been getting used to their new classroom and routines. We are very excited about this term’s topic on Castles and have started to explore why castles were built in certain locations and what they would have needed nearby to survive. We explored the school to get to know our way around and to look for different materials and their properties as part of our Science topic. We were lucky enough to walk past the minibus when it was being cleaned and asked them to cool us down with a spray of water. A great start Junior 2!

What a busy week Junior 1 have had! After welcoming Millie and Poppy to our class we have begun a new routine and are starting lots of different topics in all subject areas. Science has been the most exciting this week as we were looking at our bodies and what is inside them. Everyone had the chance to create a picture to show what our skeletons look like and they are now proudly on display in the classroom. In Geography we used Google Earth to zoom in on our country, then Kenilworth and finally our school to find out where we are in the world. There has been lots of opportunities to be creative and work together developing friendships along the way too, especially while in Forest school.

What a wonderful week our new Reception classes have had. From an exciting first day at school, arriving resplendent in our smart uniform, to today. All of us have had a week to remember.

We’ve explored our classrooms, been for an adventurous walk in the woodland, pretended to be the Gruffalo, designed robots, read books and so much more.

Mrs Malcolm and Mrs Convey have been so impressed with us and have particularly noticed how kind and caring we all are. Although we’ve had a busy few days, we are all looking forward to lots more fun, friendship and learning next week!