The Chronicle

Dear Parents

I should like to start today’s Chronicle by thanking all our families for their understanding, support and patience this week while we try to manage an ‘outbreak’ of COVID in school.  Parents have been contacted by text, phone and email this week and it has, at times, been worrying.  Please do bear with us as we continue to plot the best way forward and the most up to date advice from Public Health England.  The advice given by Public Health England differs from published Government advice as we try to manage the outbreak and reduce the increase in cases.

I have visited each class affected by the recent cases to speak with the children to reassure them about the situation.  Teachers have adapted their lessons this week to allow children who are isolating to learn online at home.  To this end, I am aware of some IT challenges, specifically logging into lessons in Junior 5 and Junior 6. The bulk of the work is available on Seesaw though and help can be obtained from your child’s class teacher.

The Crackley Compass was launched at the beginning of this term and I am delighted to see that children have started to collect their first stars.  Posters have been displayed around school and all children can work to achieve their stars by working towards one of the sections displayed on the compass.  This could be curious, kind, responsible, active, collaborative, kind, enthusiastic, learning and remembering that they can make a difference to school and other people. 

Unfortunately, there have been changes to the school calendar as a result of COVID cases and these include the PTA AGM, ‘flu vaccinations and school photographs.  I am pleased to confirm that the PTA AGM will go ahead next week and will be online.  We have yet to hear when ‘flu vaccinations will be rescheduled but school photographs will take place on Tuesday 12 October. 

Congratulations to our stars of the week: Harper, Wilf, Cole, Millie, Hardaya, Jess, Malachi, Joseph, Hollie, Alexa, Nell, Leo, Penelope and Kian.  I do hope you were able to watch assembly this morning which included Theo’s super trumpet performance as well as the sport match reports.

I am delighted that through all the challenges that we are facing, our pupils are working hard in class and remain focused in lessons. There is a sense of happiness and calm in classrooms and on the playground which, for me, is so reassuring.

It was another dismal Springbok rugby performance last week; I don’t hold out much hope for them against the All Blacks.  We have the Ryder Cup golf to look forward to this weekend though.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

If your child is absent from school and they have an external club at school or peri lesson on that day please can you contact the club or peri teacher directly to inform them.

Thank you 

Holiday club will be running again during the Autumn Half Term holidays, from Monday 18 October until Friday 29 October 2021. 

Holiday club will be open from 8.30am to 5.00pm and will cost £30 per day. Hot lunch will be provided.

More details on how to book will follow in next week's Chronicle.

Please find attached the termly curriculum sheet for your child's year group:

Reception

Junior 1

Junior 2

Junior 3

Junior 4

Junior 5

Junior 6

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Huge thanks to Crackley's PTA for organising Crackley Hall’s annual Macmillan Coffee fundraiser this morning, Friday 24 September.

At morning drop off parents responded generously to the PTA’s drive by collectors, while in school pupils were able to purchase pre-packaged cakes. It was a great morning of fundraising for a very worthy cause.

Macmillan Cancer’s annual fundraiser raised over £10 million for the charity last year but that figure was substantially down on previous totals. So, every penny contributed today is vital.

Crackley Hall is very grateful to parents, pupils and staff for their support for this good cause. You can read the PTA's own report on this morning in the PTA section of this newsletter.

And a shout out for PTA Chair Lucy Lamb who went the extra mile for Macmillan recently when she completed the Macmillan Mighty Hike walking 26 miles in just one day, in the Lake District, raising nearly £600! Well done to Lucy! Her JustGiving page is still taking donations here.

Isabella (J5L) recently completed a reading challenge for Myton Hospice.

She raised £70.00 and had a lot of fun exploring a wide range of authors.

She read 14 books in total and her favourite was certainly the one at the top.

Well done Isabella!

Over the summer holidays we were delighted to welcome a lovely group of past pupils to Crackley Hall after 36 years. Sarah Vasey (nee Dewsberry) contacted us, hoping to visit the school and grounds as part of a reunion with her old school friends who attended St Joseph’s convent in the 1980s. We were more than happy to oblige, and Mr Duigan met with the group of seven on a sunny Saturday afternoon back in August.

Sarah commented on how they were ‘surprised’ by the changes to the grounds and gardens, however they could see how we had made some positive additions with the ‘multi-purpose hall, up-to-date music rooms, a lovely early year’s department and a Forest School in the woods.’ The friends reflected on how the original convent buildings give a ‘sense of history and tradition’ whilst the new, shows ‘the school is moving forward into an exciting future.’

School friends, Sarah, Karen, Sangeeta, Rachel, Christine, Rebecca and Julie, were so grateful to Mr Duigan for giving his time on a Saturday during the holidays. Their visit to the school was followed by a pub lunch and then a walk around Abbey Fields before heading back to the pub for an evening of cocktails and for some, a stay over in a hotel. Even after 36 years, time was of no consequence, and they very much enjoyed laughing and sharing memories of their sixteen-year-old-selves which were extremely positive. Sarah has a particularly fond memory of the orchard in the convent gardens and a specific year when she was chosen to help pick the crab apples. Delighted to miss lessons, Sarah spent the morning in the garden with the nuns who lived in the convent but didn't teach, then joined them in the kitchen to make crab apple jelly. A couple of days later she was given a mini glass jar with her name on that she proudly took home. That Sunday, she remembers eating it with roast lamb and all her family said how delicious it was and how impressed they were with her achievement!

We were thrilled to hear how enjoyable their reunion was. In Sarah’s words, ‘the current pupils are very fortunate to attend Crackley Hall and long may the school continue for future generations of children to benefit from a nurturing and rounded education.’

We look forward to welcoming them, and other past-pupils, back next year for the postponed 75th Anniversary Celebrations. Firstly, the 75th Anniversary Open House and St Joseph's Day Mass on Saturday 13 March and all-being well, the 75th Anniversary Ball on Saturday 14 May.

If you would like to register your interest for these events, or to add your details to the Alumni database, please go to https://www.crackleyhall.co.uk/past-pupils where you will find a wealth of information.

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's class is Francesca

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

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

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

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's class is Elora

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Robert's class is Molly

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Widey's group is Grace 

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

Well done all!

The ISA Comic Strip Competition encourages pupils to create their own storyboard or cartoon as a means of exploring a topical subject.

This year, pupils in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 are invited to create comic strips on the theme of Zero Waste.

So come on all you Crackley creatives, get your thinking caps on and your pencils ready and get sketching.

The deadline for entry to the competition is Thursday 16 December 2021.

Please click here for further details 

Wednesday 29 September - 9.30am to 10.45am

Don’t forget that next Wednesday Stay ‘n’ Play’ will be hosting a Forest School session at Crackley Hall School. We are really looking forward to welcoming everyone especially all the lovely little ones kitted out in their bright wellies and raincoats. The session will take place in the school’s own wood and will be led by Mrs Clark, Forest School Practitioner. There will be different activities to participate in as well as the opportunity for plenty of fantastic free play.

To book your place please email staynplay@littlecrackers.co.uk

Thursday 7 October 2021 - 10.00am to 3.00pm

We are opening our doors for an Open Day on Thursday 7 October 2021 from 10.00am to 3.00pm.

This is an opportunity for prospective families to look around the school and nursery, and to meet staff. The day will be by appointment only in order to keep our pupils, staff and visitors. Please register your interest in attending our Open Day and our Admissions Secretary will be in touch nearer the time. 

To book your place please click here.

We have places available in Nursery and will be recruiting for places in Reception 2022. Please speak to our Admissions Secretary, Mrs Jenny Vaughan for availability in other years.

If you can't make the Open Day but would like to look around the school, please call our Admissions Secretary, Mrs Jenny Vaughan on 01926 514410 or email admissions@crackleyhall.co.uk and come on a day to suit you, we welcome visitors on most days.

For more information visit www.crackleyhall.co.uk

We have enjoyed another busy week in Junior 6 this week and we have had particular fun learning about what school was like in Victorian times.  We researched what the classrooms were like in the late 1800s, what subjects pupils studied back then, what the punishments were like for poor behaviour and what equipment children would have used.  We decided that we are quite happy being at Crackley Hall today in our colourful classrooms with the range of subjects that we do, and we definitely don't want the Victorian punishments!

As part of our cross-curricular topic, in Art this week J5 were looking at Aztec art.  The Aztecs had some incredible ways of creating the vibrant colours they used to dye their clothes.  They also used pigments for paintings, murals and to cover sculptures. Every colour was valuable for the Aztecs, but there were ten or so that had a special meaning. The most important and certainly the most prevalent in terms of surviving artefacts was blue-turquoise. The pupils have started to design an Aztec brooch or Aztec headdress using free drawing and including as much detail as possible.  In the coming weeks they will be learning how to papercraft using scissors and coloured paper to create their designs. We have also been busy creating the PTA Christmas cards - they look fabulous - look out for the sample card which will be arriving in the next few weeks!

There’s been lots of excitement in J4 this week, as our pupils have started to make and test out string telephones. This ties in with our topic of 'Sound'. We wanted to investigate how sound waves/vibrations travel not only through the air but through materials. In pairs, Junior 4 excitedly made their phones and then went outside and tested them. They took it in turns to place their mouths tightly into their cups, to create a vacuum, and sent messages to each other. They were really impressed to learn that the sound waves/vibrations did travel along the string and into each other’s ears. The string needed to be pulled fairly tight and not touched to create maximum clarity. Super Junior 4 Scientists!

Junior 3 have been getting to grips this week with their reading practice. Lots of chapter books are flying off the shelves from The Boy who Grew Dragons to The Worst Witch Saves the Day! It’s so wonderful watching the children progress and flourish, loving reading and embracing life in Junior 3. We have also introduced pupils to Verbal Reasoning, taking things very slowly at first to ensure all the skills are taught carefully. Verbal Reasoning – or VR as we call it, is a fabulous way of helping children to use logic and thinking skills, playing with letters and words.

This week in Art, the children are beginning their work on Stonehenge….finding out about why it may be there, what it may have been used for and, more importantly, how the stones were brought to the site. The children will use their sketchbooks to find out how to make simple drawings into more detailed and colourful work. A happy Autumn Equinox everyone!

This week, Mrs Jackson Mayne spoke about friendship in our Monday assembly and we all loved singing We get by with a little help from our Friends whilst standing in the sunshine in the playground. Junior 2 have been reflecting on the concept of friendship in class. We have talked about what makes a good friend and how we can help each other. Everyone joined their own paper loop onto a friendship chain to display in class, to show how we can all work together. In Thursday’s assembly we talked about how everyone is special to God and how He is looking for the small things we can do for each other. Junior 2 agreed that kindness can be more difficult if it is someone you aren’t friends with, so we reflected on what we could all do to show kindness to people we don’t know. Everyone agreed that a smile and a thank you would be a wonderful way to make someone’s day! We are now looking forward to sharing our kindness with others.

Another jammed packed week in Junior 1 this week started with using our sense of taste in Science to try different food to see which ones we liked and which we didn’t. We then had to decide if each food was sour, bitter, salty or sweet. Unsurprisingly, the favourites all come from the sweet group! In Geography we went for a walk around our local area, looking for some landmarks to help us recognise where we were. It was a lot of fun to be out in the sunshine and then put the features we saw in the right places on a map of the area. We have also begun to look at the story of the Three Little Pigs in more detail this week – learning the story and adding actions to it and sequencing it in the correct order.

It’s hard to believe that we are already at the end of our third week in Reception! Once more, we have had an action-packed week and have really enjoyed our Maths topic of sorting and comparing. Using buttons, cubes, camels and teddies we discovered that there are lots of ways in which objects can be sorted. In RE we learned about the story of Creation and drew some brilliant pictures of some of the things God created, with the stars, tigers and fish being popular choices. Today we have enjoyed delicious cakes from the PTA and helped to raise funds for Macmillan – what a great way to end another busy week!

Each week Mrs Jackson-Mayne will lead a ‘Prayer and Meditation’ workshop with a class.

Junior 3 enjoyed racing their fish after discussing the meaning of the Bible quote, ‘I will make you Fishers of Men’

On Wednesdays pupils in Juniors 3 and 4 were invited to join Mrs Jackson-Mayne boogying on down and getting fit to Faith and Worship tunes. Next term Junior 5 and 6 can ‘Bop and Praise’. Look out for the Junior 4 picture next week.

Junior 5L took part in an RE Workshop on Wednesday this week. They all had the opportunity to explore different ways we 'greet' each other. Chloe and Matilda greeted each other with a 'spin'.  Then the children reflected on how they could help 'carry someone else’s cup of problems' or ask God to hold their 'cup of problems' for a while.

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

On Monday evening after school Crackley Hall took part in Princethorpe’s Primary Schools’ U10 Football Tournament. This year only four teams were playing so Crackley played each team in turn in a ten minute each-way match. It was lovely to get out in the glorious autumn sunshine and the children really enjoyed playing football on the College’s playing fields. Crackley finished in third place overall. A great afternoon of sport and thanks to all the parents who turned up to support. 

Our U11 A & B Rugby teams won against Bilton Grange last Wednesday 15 September in their home matches on the school playing fields.

The A team Captain was George (J6V) with (J6H) as Vice Captain 

The B team Captain was Dillon (J6V)

We took part in big discoveries in Lego Club this week when we had a go at making volcanoes – to coincide with what Junior 4 are learning in Geography.  With an array of brown, black and glowing red bricks at the ready, we made hot lava flow with mighty eruptions and clouds of smoke with volcanic ash and gases escaping from a magma chamber below the surface.  Keen to carry on with volcano knowledge, we learnt that there are over 1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide. Now that’s hot news!

The beautiful weather this week has provided the perfect excuse to spend as much time as possible outside and we have all loved it.  We got to explore our fabulous new ‘secret garden’; beyond the gate and under the tree, where we have been playing hide and seek.  It is a lovely area, newly filled with bark chippings and we are having lots of fun taking our learning activities outside.  Our other favourite activity has been the ‘scrimbling.’ This week we added our favourite coloured paint to the shaving foam on the table top, and practiced making big and small swirly circles before placing the paper on top to ‘catch’ the images.  It looks like the sunshine is going to stay for a while, so please everyone, have a safe and enjoyable weekend.

Newsletter

Wednesday 29 September 7.00pm – now online

Sadly, due to the recent positive COVID cases in school, the PTA AGM & Ordinary Meeting had to be rescheduled to next Wednesday 29 September and the meeting will now be online.

If you would like to join in please email ccamilleriwillis@gmail.com and the link will be shared with you on the day, we really look forward to catching up with both current, and, hopefully lots of new members at the meeting.

Please see the flyer attached for more information on PTA dates for your diary this year. We would love you to get involved!

Save the date information

Friday 8 October

This year we are supporting a wonderful charity for non-school uniform day, Coventry, and Warwickshire Mind, who are raising money during World Mental Health week which falls during the last week of half term. You can find ouot more here: https://cwmind.org.uk/

We are asking children to come into school in non-uniform and to ideally wear a hat too, as part of Hats Off for Mental Health.

We are asking for a donation of £1 with a proportion of that going to the local Mind charity

Friday 24 September 

Our first charitable event of the year took place in a quite different format to what we had hoped yet remained a success and we would like to thank each one of you for helping raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Even better than the money raised, was the great number of parents, pupils who came forward to help with the running on this event. Unfortunately, COVID regulations meant that numbers were to be kept to a bare minimum, but please keep up your enthusiasm to help, as our events later this term will be requiring much more parent support!

We are still counting and will announce the total figure next week’s Chronicle.

Donations can be made online here too. https://thyg.uk/BUU004324912

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.

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.

Unfortunately due to the COVID outbreak at school, we are unable to go into school at present to be able to process any new orders for second hand uniform, we will advise you when we are able to restart this service.

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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Patrick (J4R) has lost his new named metal water bottle

Joshua (J2G) left his grey Next hoodie at holiday club

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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 - Join Us

• After School Care Leader – Crackley Hall School
• Teacher of English - Princethorpe College - fixed term contract
• Lunchtime Supervisor - Crescent School
• Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages - Crackley Hall School
• Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages - Cescent School
• Caretaker - Crescent School
• IT Service Desk Team Leader - Princethorpe College
• Estates Assistants- Princethorpe College