The Chronicle

Dear Parents

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Chronicle.  Today has seen a significant change in school with children returning to a whole school assembly; the first since lockdown started in March 2020.  Our youngest and newest pupils have never experienced an awards assembly and I was delighted with their attentiveness this morning.  Unfortunately, Junior 2 were unable to participate this week due to their visit to Warwick Castle but I look forward to Mrs Glen-Roots’ and Mrs Burley’s classes joining us next week.

There have been several communications to parents this week regarding events and changes in school.  I will continue to monitor the return to a ‘bubble free’ school and welcoming visitors into Crackley Hall and if there is a need to either halt or slow the return, I will of course let you know.  I am delighted that we will be welcoming parents to our nativities and advent service but please be reassured that these events will also be recorded if you are unable to attend for any reason.  Our Junior 4 Advent Service will finish after 6.00pm and aftercare arrangements for Wednesday 8 December will be communicated shortly.

As mentioned earlier, Junior 2 have visited Warwick Castle today.  Even though the weather may not be the best it could be, the children were incredibly excited boarding the coach today ready to experience the delights and history of the castle, which is even more special just at the moment with the Christmas decorations.  Thank you to Mrs Glen-Roots for organising this visit and Mrs Burley, Mrs Verma, Mrs Bhogal and Mrs Steeples for accompanying.

Junior 6 were due to participate in, and sing at, the Kenilworth Light Switch On this evening but, unfortunately, we received notification this morning that the local council has had to cancel the event due to the forecast high winds.  Mrs Olden shares my disappointment because we both know that Junior 6 were looking forward to performing and have rehearsing their carols well.  I hope to allow them to perform their carols during an afternoon next week when our Christmas tree arrives and will also hopefully record this for all parents to enjoy.

During assembly this morning we were privileged to watch a live performance from Willow, who sung beautifully for the whole school and it was a joy to personally present awards, including our Stars of the Week – Jacob, Ella, Aarav, Liana, Thomas, Oscar, Shuvan, Mahnoor, Isaac, Sienna, Jessie, Olivia, Lily and Marley.  There were also Bronze Awards presented to Daiya, Joseph, Manhoor and Grace in Junior 3.  Elsie, Wade, Elizabeth, Elora and Sienna in Junior 4 worked exceptionally well in RE and were presented with their Junior da Vinci certificates and Georgie was also awarded a Junior da Vinci for achieving a gold award in the recent primary maths challenge.  Congratulations on your exceptional efforts this week!   A recording of today’s assembly has been made and sent to all parents.

This term, Gilbert and Soames were asked to take the class and individual photographs and I am pleased to report that I have received many positive comments regarding the quality and standard of photographs.   We will continue to use this company and I look forward to the sports team photographs later this year.

As mentioned in my message to you on 12 November, Mrs Convey and Mme Tatton will be leaving Crackley Hall School at the end of this term.  If you would like to contribute to a leaving collection, please contact the school office and they will be able to send you details of how to do so.  In addition to Mrs Allen, Reception Class Teacher and Mrs Westerman, French Teacher, we have also welcomed Mrs Rachael Ambrose as a Teaching Assistant.  On Monday 29 November, Ms Ruby Rai will also be joining the Teaching Assistant team and Mrs Rhyss Houssineau will be leading the Aftercare team.  I am sure that you will make our new members of staff very welcome.

Please don’t forget that you can now book places for holiday club, seats for Nursery to Junior 2 Nativities and Junior 2 and 4 Advent Services online.  Links for these bookings have been sent in previous correspondence.   These events are only a few weeks away and booking will be closing shortly.  Please also look out for the information on the PTA Christmas Fair and the light trail.

I hope that you are all able to enjoy a happy and restful weekend.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Please use the below swiftqueue link in order to book a flu clinic or contact your GP direct.

https://www.swiftqueue.co.uk/userlogin.php

Sports Clubs now finish at 4.30, pick up from field/school will remain the same.

Holiday club will run from Wednesday 15 until Thursday 23 December 2021, and then again on Tuesday 4 January 2022.

It will be open from 8.30am to 5.00pm each day, and will cost £30 per child. Hot lunch will be provided.

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

Bookings for the Holiday Club are via My School Portal

Thank you

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

The Primary Mathematics Challenge (PMC) is a fun and exciting mathematical challenge aimed at pupils in Years 5 and 6. 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.

The PMC is designed to make pupils think outside the box. The questions asked are not necessarily subjects that have been covered in the curriculum by this time, but the questions can create a great starting point and lead to discussions later in the year. The questions are not heavily reliant on formal mathematical knowledge, but can be solved by logical reasoning.

At Crackley this year we had 19 Year 6 pupils and 16 Year 5 pupils take part in the Primary Maths Challenge.

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

Gold – Georgina Skrypchuk

Silver – Isabelle Cleary, George Knott, Lily Bryson, Jack Phillips-Gore, Matilda Clarke, Theo Cowlishaw, Lucas Hobson, Kate Knudsen, Julia Kozhan, Georgie Rea

Bronze – Alex Ainsworth, Aaron Anderson, Agnes Crinion, Dillon Horan, Jack McKay, Joseph McKeown, Penelope O’Neill, Elsie Roots, Jasmine Staveley, Kian Thandi, Nell Kiteley, Isabella Olden, Andrew Parizzi, Penny Thomas, Leo Warne.

The gold and silver winners have had their scores submitted to go through to the next round but this will depend on what the threshold score is this year.

Well done to all pupils who took part!

The Crackley Hall Junior Da Vinci programme encourages all pupils to be inspired to be the best that they can be. The Junior Da Vinci programme embraces three adapted principles - Creativity, Practice and Mastery - that the children demonstrate in their learning.

This year we are ensuring that all pupils in the school have opportunities to achieve Junior Da Vinci awards. The attached leaflet gives more information about this programme. Look out for children achieving Junior Da Vinci's in the Chronicle over the year.

Da Vinci Leaflet

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's class is Eloise and Thea

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

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Holmes class is Theo

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

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

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

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

Well done all!

Place2Be, a mental health charity, has just created a website called 'Parenting Smart'.  This is a free online resource featuring practical advice and tried-and-tested tips for parents and carers of primary age children.  You can feel confident that all of the advice has the backing of Place2Be’s clinical experts.  

Parenting Smart is: 

• Created by Place2Be’s parenting experts
• Based on evidence and their experience of working with children and families 
• Designed with busy parents in mind, with short videos and articles  
• Includes topics from meltdowns to friendship difficulties, from anxiety to the transition to secondary school 

You can find out more here. 

Please click on 'View Gallery' to scroll through a few photos from this week.

This week in Junior 6, we have been studying the novel Northern Lights as our core text.  We focused on the first chapter and the setting of this, making some comparisons with the Great Hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series.  We thought about the concept of daemons and how these can take the form of their master’s personality and their inner consciousness.  We researched different animals and chose one that we thought would be a good daemon for us, remembering that it had to have similar characteristics to us.  Because we are children, we can have several different daemons!  Our daemons included dolphins, foxes, monkeys, squirrels, cats, dogs and many more! 

We have some amazing mathematicians in Junior 5, one of whom came FIRST in the Primary Maths Challenge, undertaken by Mrs Lammas’s group last week, which is a fantastic achievement! Everyone did well with some other great top scorers. Maths, in general, is going swimmingly and all children are demonstrating their understanding and knowledge daily. Mental mathematics is improving rapidly – all Junior 5s complete a 3-minute maths test each lesson and we can all see improvements across the whole year group. Keep up the AMAZING effort!

This week, Junior 4 have been getting themselves in the festive spirit, designing and creating brilliantly beautiful baubles for our Christmas tree. We were amazed by their creativity! In English, the children have been working hard to vary their sentence openers, whilst describing a jewellery box fit for a Queen, with secret compartments. The children doubled their adjectives, alliterated their words and used ambitious vocabulary like intricate, glistening and elegantly, to help describe their box. They have also been working hard to practise their Advent service, which we are all excited to see very soon. Well done, everyone!

Our Kenyan journey continues in Junior 3 as the children completed their safari tour in class, looking at all the wonderful wildlife and scenery of the savannah and the rainforests. The pupils are exploring the climate and temperatures of an equatorial country and finding out just how lucky we are in the UK not to experience searing heat, lack of food and sparse water supplies. We have been busy writing a full story using all the English skills we have learned in the past few weeks, similes, alliteration, fronted adverbials and powerful verbs - we can’t wait to read them! In Science, Junior 3 have been investigating which materials are magnetic. They enjoyed predicting which of a wide range of objects and materials might be magnetic, before going on to test each one. Finally, we identified that only some metals are magnetic and we tested small discs of differing metals to find which these are. Being avid readers, we are currently very excited about the imminent refurbishment of our school library (which is being overhauled by Mrs Steeples), and the pupils are excited to continue their learning journey through their love of literature.

What an incredible week Junior 2 have had; it has certainly passed by in a whirl of activity and fun! On Monday, we received an email from the professor at the University of Warwick, whose dragon eggs we have been safely nurturing. She wanted to remind us that they needed to return to the laboratory on Friday and she would be picking them up, so that they could hatch safely. On Tuesday, we completed our field study trip to Kenilworth. We looked at the variety of uses of the buildings, shops and green spaces and showed how clever we were at spotting the different types of shops and houses. We even spotted a clock tower, doctors. library, hotel, gym and even a vets! Our wonderful mini-bus drivers kindly drove us past the castle on the way home to ensure we had seen all of the sights. We really were astounded by how many places we didn’t even know existed! On Wednesday, we made our class Advent calendar in our RE lesson and learnt about the significance of this special time of preparation. Thursday began with another email from the dragonologist who needed instructions for how to catch one of her escaped dragons. And finally, Friday was our much-awaited trip to Warwick Castle. We are really loving our learning in J2 and can’t wait to see what the next couple of weeks bring!

We finished looking at the artist Paul Klee this week and we have worked very carefully to develop our drawing, colouring and painting skills to create a number of pieces of artwork inspired by him, including a new display for the Art Room! In Geography after looking at why farmers keep animals and all the things we use them for, we moved onto looking at Arable farms and why it takes all year for farmers to grow crops and how this keeps them busy. Over in History we looked at how our clothing has changed over the years. We decided that our clothes are much more comfortable, and we would prefer to wear modern clothes to those worn in Victorian times because the colours are brighter and we can change them more often and not worry about keeping them clean for a whole week.

It’s been a jam-packed week in Reception. We are working very hard in our Nativity rehearsals, and we can’t wait to sing and perform it in a few weeks time! Using lots of manipulatives, we have explored one more and one less in Maths, and thoroughly enjoyed building Lego staircases to understand this concept. Using Google Earth to locate the USA, we learnt why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, and the different foods they eat with their families and friends at this time. It was amazing to see the huge Thanksgiving parades in New York city, particularly the gigantic inflatables – the Elf on the Shelf inflatable was our favourite!

Thank you to everyone for their wonderful efforts, the Christmas tree is now covered with amazing ‘emotion baubles’. Mrs Simmonds and I were extremely proud as we switched the lights on and put on the last bauble – our tree is unique and is a reminder of how it is important to look after our mental health and wellbeing.

Please go and visit St Nicholas Church, in Abbey Fields over the weekend. There are some lovely trees on display. Members of the public are invited to vote for the best tree and all donations are going towards supporting initiatives to raise awareness of mental health.

The final Mass of the term will be for the whole school. It is at 2pm on Monday 13 December.

It will be lovely to celebrate the season of Advent together in this way.

In Junior 2 we have been looking at the Bible story from St Mark’s gospel in the New Testament when John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus.  We related this to Advent and linked how this was a special time of preparation for Jesus’ birthday.  We talked about the ways in which we could prepare for the season of Advent and created a class Advent calendar with something special to do each day.  Some of the messages included counting our blessings each day and being grateful; talking to someone if they are feeling lonely; reaching for the stars and always doing our best; protecting injured and sick animals, culminating in the Christmas Eve message – Remember the love of Jesus on His birthday and have a Happy Christmas.

Prayer and Meditation Workshop

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

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

Last Friday, ten Junior 5 boys took part in the ISA National Rugby Tournament.  They started off with a superb victory and then followed this up with a hard-fought draw before losing two more matches.  This meant they finished 4th in our pool.  We then played against the team who'd finished 4th in the other pool where we narrowly lost 3-2.  Overall, Crackley Hall finished a very creditable 8th place out of ten teams.  The boys really tackled their hearts out all day and ran hard against some very physical teams.  Well done boys!

For the First Time in Forever, we continued with our castle theme this week and with the weather becoming colder, we decided to set the scene for Disney’s Frozen by recreating moments from this epic film. With our imaginations spiralling into frozen fractals, we thought about the grand ice palace having a sliding bridge, a snow fort, a revolving staircase and an outdoor playground for our very cold pets who wanted to Build a Snowman! With our beloved minifigures watching in dreaded anticipation on the sidelines, we tried to turn our favourites of Captain America, Harry Potter, Batman and Darth Vader into Elsa, Anna, Olaf and Marshmellow, which went down like a thunderous snowstorm, with Batman, in particular, kicking off about becoming Olaf! Not discouraged by this impetuous outburst, we managed to add even more sparkle and Let it Go with an array of robots, spaceships, missiles and Batmobiles soaring into battle with Elsa and Anna. Thankfully, with magic in her hands, Queen Elsa saved the day with her mystical  powers by turning our exasperated Batman into a playful reindeer.  Lovely!  Hope you managed to spot the songs?!!

What a proper blustery day to end the week! The children have been watching the leaves flying around the nursery windows, and listening to the wind and rain in the garden room… but we’ve been as warm as toast inside.  The children in the Badgers made us all really proud as we joined the whole school for the first Celebration Assembly in a very long time. They sat so quietly and enjoyed watching the older children – they were fabulous.  Some of our children have been continuing with their gentle Christmas preparations, beginning to make cards, and we have continued to practice songs and lines for our nativity. I hope everyone has had the information regarding booking tickets now, and you’re celebrating not having to draw straws!  We are looking forward to welcoming two people per family on the day.  Unfortunately I have heard that there will no longer be a celebration to turn the lights on tonight in Kenilworth, because of the blustery evening ahead, but if you are out and about at other Christmas events this weekend, please stay warm and safe.  

Newsletter

We need more volunteers to help prepare and run the different stalls at the Children's Christmas Fayre on Friday 3 December from 4.45pm to 6.45pm and then on Monday 6 December from 9.00am to 2.00pm. If you are available, please send an email to Tara Card on cardtara@gmail.com

The Big PTA Christmas Raffle is still open!

For every ticket purchased, 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. 

We have a goal of 500 tickets sold... So get involved if you haven't already!

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

The November Flash Sale on Jumpers and Winter Coats is still on!

Jumpers £5 and Winter Coats £12.50 

Many sizes available at this reduced price.

To order email:uniform@pta.Crackleyhall.co.uk

All other stock available at the usual amazing discount!

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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 Evie (J5W) has lost her named school hat (with badge)