The Chronicle

Dear Parents

I would like to start by thanking the PTA and families who took part in the quiz last week.  The response was super and I was delighted to see so many of you entering into the spirit of the occasion on a Friday evening.  Thank you to the PTA for organising this event, particularly the Card family for their initiative and input.  The PTA have been working incredibly hard this term to try to think of innovative and safe ways to continue to raise extra funds for school and they will be able to update on their latest news in this edition of the Chronicle. The PTA pre-loved book sale is postponed until we receive further news regarding lockdown.

During the next few weeks, leading up to the end of term, there are dates that you may wish to add to your diary which involve your child.  There will be separate communications for the individual events sent to relevant families but an overview is provided below.

24 November              LAMDA Exams Junior

25 November              LAMDA Exams Junior 3 and Junior 4

27 November              LAMDA Exams Junior 4

1 December                Advent Mass for Junior 5

2 December                Advent Mass

4 December                Music Exams, PTA Light Trail details issued

7 December                Flu vaccinations

8 December                Christmas Lunch for Junior 2, 4 and 6

9 December                Christmas Lunch for Nursery, Reception, Junior 1, 3 and 5

10 December              Nativity performances recorded in school

11 December              Christmas Jumper Day - £1 donation to Save the Children and £1 to enter design a jumper

11 December              Crackley Enchanted Christmas (Santa says to keep this quiet lease mums and dads)

14 December              End of term Mass

15 December              Last day of term - there will be various activities and a special lunch                                                                          provided by Mr Sansum

During assembly this morning I congratulated our Stars of the Week: Monty, Arabella, Isabel, Edward, Joseph, Arthur, Tommy, Joseph, Lexi, Morton, Holly, Amelia and Caythan.  Penny in J4 received a Bronze Award and a number of our Junior 5 and Junior 6 children were awarded certificates as a result of their efforts in the recent Primary Maths Challenge.  From J6, well done to Noah, who received Gold;  Sebastian, Jasper, Thomas, Helayna, Analise, Millie, Theo and Finlay who all received Silver; and  Niamh, Yung, Henry, Rosa, Joseph, Woody and Isabel who received Bronze.  Merryn, George and Joseph in Junior 5 also received Bronze.  This is a magnificent achievement and I hope that the children are proud of their hard work.

During assembly I also announced the results of our school Christmas card competition.  Thomas in Junior 6 submitted the winning entry, Sloane in Reception and Noah in Junior 6 were worthy runners-up and will also feature on the Christmas card that will be sent to families this year.  Ms Holmes will be sending these entries to the CISC card competition too and I will keep you informed of news in this respect.  I would like to congratulate Jenson on his lovely singing at the end (of assembly).

On Monday this week, we encouraged all children (and staff) to take part in Odd Sock Day which celebrated the fact that we are all unique.  Mr Cottrill gave an assembly supporting Anti-Bullying Week but this is not something that we focus on just for one week of the year; kindness is incredibly important in school and I am proud to say that we have very kind and caring children across the year groups at Crackley Hall.

Yesterday we held another online open event, this time for Nursery and Reception.  Given the restrictions in place, I believe that our ‘visitors’ enjoyed the experience and hopefully, next time, they will be able to visit school in person.  Thank you to Mrs Bird, Mrs Glen-Roots, Mrs Convey, Mrs O’Carroll-Bailey, Mrs Vaughan and the Princethorpe Marketing Team for their time to ensure the success of this event.

Finally, as you will be aware, a letter was sent to all parents earlier this week which also contained information from Warwickshire County Council.  I appreciate that this may have caused a little concern for some parents but I would like to reassure you that the letter is really targeted at schools who have a high number of positive cases.  We will continue with our rigorous cleaning, strict visitor policy and bubble procedures and trust that families will also continue to respect the need to be careful, even when lockdown is lifted.  If you are concerned about your child’s health you may still follow the test procedures outlined in the letter but I will not be requiring children to isolate for minor ailments (e.g. historical tonsillitis or headaches) unless the COVID-related symptoms are different to their usual symptoms, or if you have a concern.  It is generally good practice to be ever-vigilant and to react early, using own circumstances and a good dose of common sense.

I hope that you have a restful weekend.

God bless

Mr Duigan

The Flu Immunisation Team will be visiting the School on Monday 7 December to carry out Flu Vaccinations for all children from Reception to Junior 6. Unfortunately, we have no control over the date as it is set by the Immunisation Team on a rolling monthly timetable every year.

The immunisation (given to the children in the form of a nasal spray) will be carried out in class bubbles, in the school hall, with the area decontaminated between each year group.

Further details will be sent to you approximately two weeks before the immunisation date and this will contain a link to an e-consent form which should be returned directly to the Immunisation Team.

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.

The PMC 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 18 Year 6 pupils and 14 Year 5 pupils take the Primary Maths Challenge.

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

Gold – Noah Cowlishaw

Silver – Sebastian Darch, Jasper Nicholls, Thomas Zanyi, Helayna Collins, Annalise Milburn, Millie Lammas, Theo Read Jones, Finlay Williams

Bronze – Niamh O’ Halloran, Yung Fan, Henry Wright, Rosa Davis, Joseph Sheeran, Woody Osborn, Isabel Reddish, Merry Cleary, George Knott, Joseph Hughes.

The Gold and Silver certificate 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!

On Monday 16 November the children came to school wearing an assortment of odd socks.

Crackley Hall's pupils joined children at schools across the UK in wearing odd socks. Odd Socks Day was just one part of Anti-Bullying Week here at Crackley as the school joined in the national initiative that encourages children to embrace their differences and report bullying behaviour.

It was a lot of fun and allowed the children to express themselves and celebrate their individuality while encouraging them all to think before they speak and to consider how words and actions can affect others. 

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.

Parent Information

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Glen-Roots's class is Felix 

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

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's group is Ria

Mathlete of the week for Mrs VanZyl's class is Sienna

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Wildey's class is Lexi

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's group is Carter

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Roberts's group is Marley

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

Well done all! 

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

Junior 6 have been working incredibly hard this week to ensure a full understanding of all aspects of transforming shapes, in their continuing revision and preparations for examinations.  They have been learning how to translate shapes in different directions, reflect shapes across mirror lines and through horizontal and vertical axes and rotate shapes round a point or vertex.  They have also looked at how to relay the position of a shape by using coordinates and have used a four-quadrant grid to do this. 

Some of the children participated in the Primary Maths Challenge, while others had fun thinking about the properties of 2D and 3D shapes – we thought of humorous ways to remember the different triangles and even learned the name of an 11-sided shape!

Our Junior 5s have had a super week of learning. In Maths, we have looked at types of number from factors through to multiples – we are trying to master mathematical vocabulary as it helps us understand written and oral word problems and instructions! We have all interviewed a family member so we can write a biography about them. Wow, we have certainly learned lots about their lives.

In sports, we have been enjoying Winter Sports. Our girls have been honing their netball and hockey skills and our boys their football and rugby. We believe that School Games is now more important than ever as a way to help the children to resocialise and improve their physical and emotional wellbeing.

This week in J4B, we have really focused on Kindness.

It was World Kindness Day on Friday 13 November and we wrote some lovely notes to teachers around school. J4B have been noticing all of the kind actions and words that we use and acknowledging these and placing them on our wow work board. We found the 'ripple-effect' of doing this quite powerful and it was heart-warming to see and hear the kind things that we do and say to each other.

This theme has continued into Anti-Bullying Week and we have made a new display entitled 'Hanging Bullying Out To Dry'. We created our own odd socks and hung them on our washing line. We celebrate differences and as Isaiah 64:8 says, 'Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.' We think our socks look amazing and they all contain some important messages about how to deal with bullying. 

Year 4 have been working hard on alphabetical order in their VR lessons. We know that we have to 'Master' this to help us with our VR work in Year 5. We can even put words in alphabetical order to the fifth letter! 

Bossy verbs, time adverbials, preposition and exciting introductions. These are just some of the skills that Junior 3 have been practising and demonstrating over the past week. Wrapping up our topic, both classes completed their hilarious instructions for How to Wash a '…….'. Some even chose to tell us how to wash a sabre tooth tiger but we weren’t sure whether it would pass the classroom risk assessment.

We are so proud of all the children, for showing such a wonderful attitude towards improving their writing. 

In Science the children learned the various types of joints and then created their own paper skull, to show the movement of a hinge joint, don't they all look amazing in the photos!

This week we have been looking at the famous artist Frida Kahlo, who is considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists, she is known for her painting of self-portraits in bright, vibrant colours. She began painting after a terrible bus accident which left her in a full body cast and totally bedridden for over three months.

We also learned that Frida contracted Polio when she was only six years old; this meant that she had one leg much shorter than the other causing her to have a complex about how she looked. Frida never drew or painted her legs but rather covered them in bright, colourful skirts. We really enjoyed exploring her work and studying the techniques she used to create her vibrant pictures.

We hope you like our lovely artwork, we very much enjoyed creating them.

Junior 1 have continued to amaze and inspire us this week with their hard work and enthusiasm for learning. Their joy of writing has continued and it is has been wonderful to see everyone filling their writing books with such big smiles on their faces. Our English focus has been to change words into plurals and also to identify and write our own rhymes. The perfect books for these elements have been ‘Oi Frog’ and ‘Oi Dog’ which have proven to be extremely popular. The children loved reading both stories and then moving on to inventing their own funny rhymes.

Our Maths lessons have all been as popular, with the children sorting, describing and investigating 3D shapes. They have thoroughly enjoyed the practical nature of these mathematical concepts. Finally, our Science lessons have inspired the children to observe the weather more closely and this week we took our individual rain gauges inside to analyse the rain fall over the last week.

What a perfect week to measure the rain! 

It has been another fun-filled week in Reception, as we embraced our topic of Diwali!

Throughout the week we have enjoyed learning more about this special celebration which is also known as the festival of light. Not only did we read the story of Rama and Sita, we also made masks and acted out the story too. We used our senses of sight, smell and taste as we tried some traditional Indian foods and thoroughly enjoyed our visit from Mrs Verma, who brought us each a bangle as a gift and showed us pictures of her own Diwali celebrations. Using rice, we made rangoli patterns and we discovered that we absolutely love the smell of the incense used in Diwali prayers.

Why not ask us to tell you what we know about Diwali?

Please click on the link below for the weekly mission:

Weekly Mission

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

RE book of the week has been awarded to Arabella (Reception) for her lovely work on the Random Acts of Kindness.

Arabella really got into the spirit of the task and tried her very best to help around the house, put others first and make life easier for the people around her with her kindness.

Well done!

The resounding feedback from parents at Little Crackers is that the nursery is friendly, caring, nurturing and brilliant preparation for school.

Little Crackers has just completed a parental satisfaction survey. Current nursery parents were asked to fill in a short online questionnaire that covered all aspects of the nursery provision, from the activities and accommodation to the staff and communication with parents.

The results were very positive with parents clearly valuing the input of our qualified early years teachers and the nursery staff. They also ranked the specialist teaching their children receive in subjects such as French, PE and Music highly, along with the benefits of outdoor play in Forest School. 100% of the respondents judged the overall quality of provision on offer and the range of activities as good or excellent and all respondents stated they would recommend Little Crackers to a friend.

Parent comments included: ‘We love how wonderful the ladies are at making our son love every minute of nursery’ and ‘Thank you for looking after our children so well’.

Comments, Sue Glen-Roots, Assistant Head (Head of Early Years and Key Stage 1), “Parental feedback is so important to us and these recent survey results are a great endorsement of all that the Nursery team do. We will be closely looking at the feedback to see how we can improve further.” 

This week has continued to be busy, with the fabulous Nativity rehearsals, rugby, forest school, painting with trains and making our own playdough with tea! 

As the weather has changed, it hasn’t stopped us and the children have loved being outside, creating the longest bridges we have ever seen with our great big outside building blocks. The children are getting so confident at testing the bridges, moving planks and working together, it is lovely to see. 

Thank you to everyone who has sent in costumes for the Nativity, we are excited about performing, disappointed that you can’t all be there to watch, but working hard to ensure we produce a great show for you all.  Fingers crossed it doesn’t get too cold this weekend, and we can all enjoy getting out and about for walks. 

Please continue to keep yourselves and your families safe, and have a great couple of days.

Newsletter

Getting a head start in Maths is so important in the early years, so here at Little Crackers Nursery we never miss an opportunity to put the spotlight on Maths.

Last week we played with poppies, picking up petals and putting the poppies in order in the Maths area. We asked so many questions…

How many petals? How many poppies? What happens if we share the petals? What if there were more? What if there were less? Can you make one the same? What do you need? We swapped and shared the petals to explore a whole lot of different mathematical ideas, developing our knowledge of numbers, as well as sharing, adding, subtracting and matching – without even realising it was Maths!

Learning through play is vital to cement these early mathematical concepts, so essential to a child’s development, and our children have lots of opportunity to do just that, embedding a love of learning, as well as a love of this important subject.

A big THANK YOU !

Wow.... just wow. What an incredible night we were all treated to last Friday for the first ever Crackley Hall Virtual Quiz. The PTA have been blown away by the abundance of messages received following the evening to say how much your families all enjoyed the event. We would like to thank you all for your support, encouragement and your enthusiasm in donning your house colours and costumes on the evening to build up an amazing atmosphere and sense of togetherness whilst all being in our own homes.

We would like to particularly extend our thanks to the ultimate quiz master himself. I am sure you will all agree that Mr Duigan did a fabulous job in keeping us entertained throughout... although we don't want him getting any ideas about a career change to quiz MC! Also putting on a show for us were the superb music duo the Vaughan’s... a little added bonus halfway through the evening!

This event would not have happened without the initial idea from Tara Card, who, together with her husband Gavin, organised many of the details for the evening including questions, technology and logistics... so a huge thank you to them. The PTA would also like to show their gratitude to the wider community for their support - The Cross restaurant and Kenilworth Books in particular for their kind generosity in donating prizes for the event, as well as Kleen2Clean.

Congratulations to all the winners - COVID-19 or not, perhaps this event could be the start of a new Crackley Hall tradition!

Thank you to our wonderful second hand uniform team, Nikki, Linda and Katie, for being ever patient and serving our school community with much needed pre-loved uniform.

We are having a coat sale and are offering 2 sizes at reduced prices; size 69cm and 74cm for £12.50, instead of the normal £17.50 - a special deal due to the colder weather.

Please feel to contact them on ptauniform@crackley.co.uk

Postponed but absolutely not cancelled!

The PTA have been absolutely overwhelmed by your generosity and support for the school book swap.

We would like to say a huge thank you for all of those who have taken the time to rummage through your book shelves at home to find some great books to donate to the sale.

Due to the current lockdown restrictions, it has been decided to alter the date for the sale. This will ensure the amount of additional adults needing to go into the school during this lockdown period is kept to an absolute minimum.

We can announce with pleasure that the book sale will continue to go ahead, but at a date post -Wednesday 2 December. This date change has had the bonus of allowing us to extend the deadline for receiving books and will also mean that the books can be sorted and categorised earlier with greater time for quarantine.

Thanks again for all your support!

Thank you so much to all the families who have volunteered their houses for the Christmas light trail.

The maps are underway and will come home in the children’s school bags on Friday 4 December.

Any families that live a little bit further out and couldn’t be included, please do take photos of your displays and we will upload them onto the Crackley Hall Facebook page.

Thank you for your continued support.

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.