The Chronicle

‘The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.’ William Arthur Ward

Dear Parents,

I hope this message finds you well. I'm glad that we've had some sunny weather this week and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it continues, especially for the upcoming cricket events, particularly the one that we are hosting next week. 
 
I write this message whilst at the ISA Head Teachers’ conference. This is an important event for Heads from the independent sector to come together, exchange ideas, be brought up to speed with the many new developments in education and to share best practices. However, I do miss being in school. My thanks are extended to Mr Cottrill and all the staff for their efforts in my absence. 
 
I was delighted to hear that the Reception classes had a wonderful trip to Sea Life Centre on Tuesday. The centre offers incredible views, including special viewing tunnels in Penguin Point. I look forward to seeing all the drawings from the children. 
 
On Thursday, our Key Stage 1 sports day took place (the first one that I have missed), and we were fortunate to have lovely, dry and warm weather, allowing the children to participate in their races. I want to express my appreciation to Mrs Vaughan for organizing the schedule and to all the staff who assisted on the day. I hear that the Junior 6 pupils were incredibly helpful, and we received wonderful support from families. Let us hope the sun continues to shine for our Key Stage 2 sports day. 
 
I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone who is involved in the Colour Run, whether you were participating, supporting, or helping with the arrangements. The tireless energy of our wonderful PTA is truly admirable, and I encourage parents to become involved whenever possible. I am sorry that I am unable to attend. 
 
Next week will be a busy one, and I wanted to remind you that there will be summer sports teams’ photographs and the whole school photo. You can find more information about the photos in this week’s Chronicle. 
 
I want to extend my gratitude to Mr Cottrill for hosting today’s assembly. This week’s stars of the week are: Mollie-Mae in Nursery, Teddy RA, Anas RM, Royce J1H, Sam J1G, Ashleigh J2, Alexander J3H, Thea J3V, Josh J4R, Ain J4S, Darcey J5L, Adreena J5W, Chloe J6H, Jia J6H, Olivia J6V. Birthday wishes to Olivia E J2H, May F-K J1G, Sherry G J1M, Rayane B J6V, Josephine-Jean S J5W, Arish S J6H. 
 
I received some sad news this week. A former Crackley Hall staff member, Breeda Higgins, who was much-loved by many, has sadly passed away. Breeda will be remembered fondly by several of our longer-serving colleagues. She has attended some of our past pupil and staff events when she was able. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family during this difficult time as we pray for the repose of her soul. 
 
The holiday club has informed us that there are increasingly limited places available. Ms Osborn has arranged an action-packed week to keep all the children entertained. If you are interested, please email holidayclub@crackleyhall.co.uk 
 
Please may I remind parents that if you are attending assembly on a Friday, you should park on the field to ease congestion at morning drop-off time around the bottom car park.   
 
It was fantastic to see that Coventry City have reached the play-off final. Best wishes to them when they take to the Wembley pitch against Luton Town. I would like to wish you all a restful weekend with your families. 

God Bless,

Rob Duigan 

Please remember that if your child(ren) are being collected by someone else other than you, then the office must be informed in good time so that we can ensure the teaching staff releasing the children at the end of the day are aware.

We are unable to allow your child to leave with any other adult other than those you have specified. 

Next week here at Crackley Hall our school photographers Gillman and Soame are coming and we have two school photograph days:

Whole School Photograph – Monday 22 May

Children need to wear their summer uniform, with blazers.

Please bring any sports kit, if needed, in a separate bag.

Summer Sports Photographs (Juniors 3, 4, 5 & 6) – Tuesday 23 May

Children in Juniors 3, 4, 5 & 6 will need to wear their summer sports kit.

If they have cricket whites, these are to be brought to school with their blazer, in a separate bag.

At Crackley Hall we do everything possible on our own systems to ensure all correspondents receive emails from the school. However, sometimes emails do not get through to parents due to automated filters on email providers, such as Gmail or Outlook. Most email providers allow you to whitelist email addresses and domains, so you will always receive emails from these addresses in your inbox. Therefore, it is sensible to do this for the crackleyhall.co.uk domain to ensure no emails from the school end up in your spam or junk folders.

The following link shows you how to whitelist email addresses and domains for a variety of popular email providers: How to Whitelist an Email in Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo

If you have any issues with receiving emails from Crackley Hall and would like support with this, please email servicedesk@princethorpe.co.uk with details of the issue and one of our team will be in touch to help.

We can confirm that Holiday Club will run this Half Term from Tuesday 30 May to Friday 2 June.

Please click here for more information.

If you would like to book and confirm your place, please email, holidayclub@crackleyhall.co.uk or fill in the attached booking form and return to the school office.

Reminder - Summer Uniform

• Girls are to wear a maroon and white striped dress, white knee high or ankle socks. Junior 6 are to wear skirts and blouses, maroon school hat.
• Boys should wear school black shorts, white short sleeved shirt, black ankle socks, school tie, maroon cap. 

If you are unsure and need advice please contact the school office or email the uniform shop at Princethorpe on uniform@princethorpe.co.uk

With thanks to Mrs Olden, children from Crackley Hall Chamber Choir and Orchestra have been lucky enough to experience Orchestral performances at the Warwick Arts Centre this week. The children went to watch the Estonian Symphony Orchestra and pianist Barry Douglas. Mr Douglas spoke to children who attended. Mr Douglas is a respected musician, whose international music career is flourishing, that has been awarded an OBE and CBE for his services to music. 

What an amazing opportunity for our musicians.

The Feast of Ascension was celebrated on Thursday with a special Collective Worship led by Mrs Jackson-Mayne. Children were asked to think of their favourite superheroes and then think about their own superpower!

Mrs Jackson-Mayne used 11 balloons to name all the disciples. Pupils held their breaths with excitement as one further balloon, filled with helium, ascended to the rafters of The Gables, symbolising the Ascension. Using the picture of the Sacred Heart, Mrs Jackson-Mayne reminded pupils on the mission of the disciples, which was to use their hearts to reflect God’s love. She called up siblings to look at similarities between them. We saw the same smiles, the same freckles, hair and eyes. The children reflected on the idea that we have all been given Jesus’ heart and it is up to us how we use this Super Power.

When Jesus left, He asked the disciples to continue His work and tell everyone the message of love.

We held our much-anticipated Key Stage 1 Sports Day on Thursday 18 May and the children all enjoyed a super morning out on the ‘big field’.

Crackley’s sports stars of the future jumped, sprinted and threw their way through a jam-packed morning of sporting fun, enthusiastically taking on the carousel of different activities. Proudly wearing their House colours and with big, enormous smiles, the children clearly all had a super time.

It was lovely to see so many parents out on the field cheering their youngsters on. Many thanks to Junior 6 for organising all the activities this year and a huge well done to everyone who took part.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Wednesday 7 June - 6.30pm - 8.30pm

Princethorpe College's annual Summer Open Evening will take place on Wednesday 7 June from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. This is a perfect opportunity for prospective families looking for a place in September 2024 and beyond to visit the school, for children to take part in departmental activities and for parents to meet and chat to members of staff and pupils.

The Headmaster will also address visitors during the evening. Light refreshments will be available.

Please click here to book your place. 

Scroll through the gallery to see photos from our Celebration Assembly this morning.

This week, Junior 6 were organising and preparing to lead the KS1 Sports Day. The children were hard at work, getting themselves into groups and learning the various events so that they could demonstrate and adjudicate for the younger children. It was a great opportunity for the children to bolster their confidence and work on their leadership and teamwork skills, which will be so useful for the greatly anticipated residential trip to Scotland and their future development. Keep up the great work Junior 6!

In Geography this week, Junior 5W were starting their Mapping topic. We were fascinated with the globes and used them to find out the location of countries by imagining we were moles burying down through the earth and estimating where we’d end up on the other side! We then recorded these discoveries on a flat map of the world. It was so interesting to notice the differences between looking at our world as a 3D sphere, and as a 2D map. What a fantastic start to our new topic!

After nurturing their sunflowers from seeds into young plants in the classroom, Junior 4 finally took them outside and prepared to plant them, hoping they would flourish in the improved weather. All the children prepared a hole, added some compost and gently eased their sunflower out of its pot and into the ground. Much like all of the children, the sunflowers will now continue to grow and blossom into amazing living organisms! We just need to make sure that they are well watered and that we keep our fingers crossed for their favourite type of food – sunshine!

Junior 3H have had enormous fun this week finding out all about ‘newspaper reporting’ and ‘journalism’. Who knew that a children’s newspaper, First News! would be so inspiring to the pupils? There was great excitement on Tuesday as copies of this super resource were distributed around the classroom. Children felt quite grown-up as they scoured the editorials and articles for the best piece of news…..which turned out to be something on Minecraft! Pupils have loved finding all the features of a report and are busy challenging themselves to spot different parts in our Cretan Chronicle. It would seem that Mrs Minotaur from Labyrinth Road aged 41, gave her quote to the reporter in a broad Yorkshire accent (thank you Beatrice!)

In other areas, we are finding Money in Maths very interesting. Who knew that a bank card actually took money from your own account which you have earned and that a pint of milk wasn’t £17! Joking aside, the pupils have worked so hard on getting to grips with coin and note converting and adding amounts or giving change. Lots of practise required please mums and dads. Have a great weekend all.

What a fantastic day the children in KS1 had during our sports day. The weather was beautiful and every child joined in with enthusiasm and enjoyment. During Maths we have been learning all about different ways to add two digit numbers. Whilst it was tricky at first, we managed to learn a very useful skill. Science this week has been great fun too as we have been learning all about how plants grow and what they need to become healthy and strong.

Junior 1 have been learning about money this week in their Maths lessons and the classrooms have been awash with coins of all denominations. It has been fascinating to see the children handling the coins, looking closely at the pictures of lions or the queen and finding the numbers on the coins. The children were amazed to see how a bigger coin was worth less than a smaller coin when comparing a 2p and 5p or 20p coin. Junior 1 staff were interested to see how the children weren’t used to handling coins as technology moves us towards online shopping and ‘tap and go’ machines in shops. Our Science lesson was also very hands on this week when we went outside to find as many minibeasts as we could. How excited we all were when we found centipedes and millipedes in the outdoor classroom after learning about them in class!

This week, Reception went to the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. They had a fantastic day trying to find all the answers to questions they had thought of last week. They learnt so many interesting facts about creatures that live in the sea. They were amazed by all the different colours, patterns, shapes and sizes of the animals. This then inspired some lovely under the sea artwork and writing on their return to school.

Please click here for this week's newsletter 

During the Monday Mission Assembly, Mr Duigan and Mrs Jackson-Mayne congratulated once more the recent First Holy Communion children. They both commented on how proud they were of the ten children and of everyone in the church last Friday - the readers, the Chamber Choir and the response to the prayers and how much faith was felt everywhere in the church on this special day.

Mr Duigan reminded the school about Ascension Thursday which was celebrated this week. Mr Duigan explained that the Ascension is the 40th day after Easter when Jesus visited His disciples for the last time before He went up to heaven. Jesus gave His disciples an instruction, similar to our lives which are full of instructions, from being guided on how to drive a car, to learning how to play a particular sport, and linked this to the disciples being instructed by Jesus to go out to the nations and spead the word of Jesus. Jesus promised He would never leave His disciples and He sent the Holy Spirit to be in all of our hearts and minds to guide us. Real friends will help us too as the Holy Spirit is working through everyone. Living out the Ten Commandments by being kind to each other will also help us to recognise the Holy Spirit working within us all.

This week, Reception learnt all about what a Miracle is as they were introduced to the Miracle of Jesus Feeding the 5,000. They recognised that this Miracle demonstrated just how much Jesus loved everyone and how He wanted to share His love with so many people. The children also realised how Jesus can take something small and turn it into something big. We role-played the event as Jesus and His disciples, and we remembered lots of the disciples' names from Mrs Jackson-Mayne's Ascension Assembly earlier in the day. The children even pointed out that the leftover scraps at the end was a message that Jesus wanted to spread His love to lots of other people too! 

This week Junior 3 pupils celebrated the life of Our Lady by making rosary bracelets. Small groups of children each had a turn at crowning the statue of Mary and joined in the Hail Mary together. Mrs Simmonds made little fairy cakes to celebrate this special month of May. It was lovely to hear the children join in the decade of the rosary outside in the garden, as we prayed for our special intentions.

Please click on the link below for this week's Weekly Mission:

Weekly Mission

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

Jesus prays for His friends and for us, that we all might be one, united in love. We reflect on how we can come together with others to change the world.

Activity Sheet 

On Monday evening after school Crackley Hall took part in Princethorpe’s Primary Schools’ U10 Football Tournament. There were nine teams competing, including our two teams from Crackley Hall, with both boys and girls delighted to pull on their boots and head out on to Princethorpe’s Astro for a succession of fast paced eight-minute matches.

It was lovely to get out in the glorious spring sunshine and the children really enjoyed the chance to play football against other primary school teams. Everyone had great fun and it was a super afternoon of friendly sport.

Many thanks to the staff who took the teams and to all the parents who turned up to support.

Trains and boats and planes…and cars were the theme in Lego Club this week, and with the excitement of the music tech workshop at Princethorpe still fresh in our minds, we had cars and boats galore busy transporting Lego characters back to Princethorpe in style. We had Ninjago, Iron Man and a new recruit called Glutinous, a very nervous and frightened creature who apparently has great respect for his master Kalmaar, but he was having a spot of bother with travel sickness, so he had to stay behind to look after the farm animals. Carline at Princethorpe must have looked very interesting indeed, with Luke Walker's landspeeder, a Batmobile, a Ferrari 488 GTE which converted into Harry Potter’s flying Ford Anglia, a police patrol boat with rubber dinghy, the Ghostbuster crew, and an icecream truck! What a cool carline parade that must have looked!

We have a large amount of lost property in school which is unnamed and, therefore, impossible to be returned to its rightful owner.

A table of lost property is put in the Gables Foyer before Celebration Assembly. Lost property is put out for two weeks, to cover KS1 and KS2 Assemblies, with any unclaimed uniform being then donated to the PTA for re-sale.

Any unnamed, unclaimed water bottles, lunchboxes and snackboxes will be disposed of, which may well end up in landfill, we want to reduce this as much as possible so please help us to do everything we can to prevent these ending up there.

Please help us to return your child's property to them by labelling everything clearly.

Please check labels in your own child's clothing to see if you are in possession of someone else's items. Scan the photos to see if you identify anything and let the office know in order for it to be returned to you.  

George in J3 has lost his swimming kit.  

Olivia in J2 has lost her Sports Fleece and Harry Potter Lunchbox.

Poppy in J2 has lost her blazer.

The Foundation term dates for 2024-25 can be viewed below:

Princethorpe Foundation Term Dates

We regularly recruit for a variety of roles, please do share news of the vacancies with interested friends and family. Current vacancies include:

Princethorpe College

• Teacher of RE
• Rugby Coach
• Graduate Sports Coach
• Graduate Teaching Assistant

Further information and application forms on all roles are available on the Foundation's website - www.princethorpe.co.uk/join-us