The Chronicle

Junior 6 have started the new term full of vim and vigour, showing us their enthusiasm and passion for learning while still being outstanding role models for the younger children. We were especially impressed by the children’s scientific knowledge and understanding as they thought about classifying curious critters based on their physical features. Keep up the hard work Junior 6, you are all super stars!

Junior 5 have made a fantastic start to the academic year. They have settled in splendidly, becoming more and more used to the different routines. The children have created some wonderful pieces of work over the summer: Aztec artwork, letters from the Americas and posters about planets. In school, they have shown their enthusiasm in all subjects; demonstrating their Bible reading skills, mathematic knowledge, spelling skills, artistic talent and much more. The Junior 5 team will be looking forward to teaching and seeing the pupils grow during the year.

Junior 4 returned this week to experience a super PE lesson led by Mr Vaughan. They enthusiastically competed in their Houses and participated in an array of physical activities, whilst also learning about the muscles they were using, and adapting their skills of balance and coordination. They also learnt what they would do if they were a beach lifeguard. These key skills were an essential preparation for their upcoming swimming lessons, which begin next week.

It has been wonderful to welcome Junior 3 back to school and up into Key Stage 2. All pupils have made such a responsible start to the year, and we are very excited to see what the rest of the year will bring. This week we have done lots of activities that involve collaborating within a group, or with our learning partner, earning ourselves some stars for our Crackley Compass star charts. We were very excited to find out a little about negative numbers as we played an addition and subtraction strategy game together. A very warm welcome to our new pupils, Laura, Kenji and Michael, who we are delighted have joined us on our Junior 3 learning adventure.

Well done on our first week in Junior 2 everybody, we have been super stars! We have been learning our new routines and expectations and we know we are going to have a fabulous year. We have started our Castles topic and we were amazed with what we could remember about William the Conqueror, where he came from, how many years ago and why he introduced castles into Britain? In English we have started to delve into the beautiful book Inside the Villains and we have been focusing on characters and we even created our own. We have been getting our brains going again in Maths and it is so lovely to see how we were able to use reasoning to explain our answers. A big difference this year, is that Junior 2 are venturing over to the sports field for one of their Games lessons. Well done, Junior 2 for being so sensible. 

Junior 1 have had the most amazing start to the school year. This week we have been working on our independence in school and learning how to complete our tasks as a whole class. We have also had our break times in the bigger playgrounds and have been given the chance to choose our own lunch. What a lot of growing up we have done in one week! Our Phonics lessons have begun at pace with a quick recap of our Reception digraphs and lots of reminders about writing our letters correctly. We had to think carefully about where to start each letter and which way round we had to go. This week, Science was so much fun with the children learning about skeletons and then making their own. We were so excited to learn that the smallest bone in our bodies is actually in the ear!

What an amazing first week we have had in Reception! We have been so proud of all of our children as they have started their Crackley Hall journey. They have been busy making new friends, learning new routines and trying lessons for the first time. In phonics, we have learnt 4 digrpahs and then children have happily practised them around the classroom, telling us what sounds they can see, writing them beautifully and ‘robot-talking’ too. We are so excited for this year!

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