The Chronicle

Dear Parents

As we near the end of this most recent lockdown, there is certainly some sense of positivity and hope becoming more evident.  I know that teachers are desperate to return to the classroom and I am sure that the children are more than ready to be reunited with their friends and the school routine.  I would encourage you to read the letter that is being sent to all parents which details the arrangements for returning to school on Monday 8 March.

Whilst I am certain that our Crackley Hall pupils, and those in most good schools, have managed to learn and to advance their education, there are many children around the country who would not have had much of a school experience or any learning at all. Skills learnt by our pupils during online teaching will certainly be utilised in the rapidly changing face of education.  Perhaps the biggest point for me is the real, face-to-face interaction that the children would have missed. Reassuringly, those who have returned at the later stages of the critical worker provision have very quickly integrated with their peers with no trouble at all.

Staff will be returning to school on the afternoon of Friday 5 March in order to prepare and be fully briefed regarding the return.  Whilst I am looking forward to school re-opening, it is important to remember that we are essentially still in a lockdown and the risk of COVID-19 remains which is why it is imperative to continue with our bubbles and adhering to risk assessments.

As is required in any business today, the school underwent planned IT and firewall upgrades over the half term break. Whilst the improvements will soon be in evidence, we have experienced some technological challenges this week, across most aspects of the IT provision, from internet to the various platforms in use by the teachers and pupils.  I apologise if this caused any frustration or difficulty and look forward to being able to fully utilise the improved provision. Of course, you might be one of those fortunate not to have been affected.

This week has seen a tremendous amount of student work celebrated.  As you may have seen in my assembly this morning, LAMDA certificates have now arrived in school and will be distributed to children from Monday 8 March.  It is wonderful to see how many children took part and not only passed but excelled during their exam.  Congratulations to you all!

Da Vinci awards have been received by Junior 6, Junior 4, Junior 3 and Junior 2 pupils.  Certificates will be posted to Jasper, Niamh, Joseph, Noah, Theo, Rafferty, Isabella, Alexa, Darcey, Beatrice, Joshua, Jenson, Ted, Blythe and Harrison.  Congratulations on your exceptional efforts and the da Vinci badges will be awarded once children have returned to school.

Morton, Alex, Elsie and Willow have received their Bronze Awards today for their super manners, kindness and helpfulness. Our stars of the week were: Oscar, Chace, Sophie, Rory, Mahnoor, Olivia, Sienna, Olivia, Evie, Harry, William, Rafferty and Daya – well done everyone on your achievements.

In addition to preparing for the return to school, next week we will also be hosting the online parent consultation evenings from Tuesday to Thursday. Please contact the school office if you have any difficulty booking your appointment.

World Book Day will be on Thursday next week and I look forward to seeing photographs of the outfits that are being worn that day.  Children attending Key Worker care can also dress up and book vouchers will be distributed when children arrive back in school.

I would like to wish everyone a happy and restful weekend – with lovely weather, if possible.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

A reminder that parents of children who have been offered a place at Princethorpe College need to confirm acceptance of their place with a £300 deposit by Thursday 4 March 2021. Please be aware that the College can only guarantee places which are accepted by the deadline date.

Once you have confirmed your acceptance of a place and sent your £300 deposit you will receive an acknowledgment and a receipt. A Joining Pack will then be sent to you during the Easter holidays, this will include various permission forms and essential information on school life.

The Registrar, Mrs Vanessa Rooney and her assistants, Miss Helen Morgan and Mrs Catherine Rogers will be pleased to help you with any questions you may have regarding the transition and induction process. You can contact them on 01926 634201/262/297 or by email at admissions@princethorpe.co.uk.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Crackley Hall School pupils are topping the leader board in the latest Independent School Association’s (ISA) Limitless Skills Series. The six-week programme of physical challenges is designed to encourage pupils to stay active and harnesses technology, in a fun and engaging way to transform time spent on-screen into time spent being active.

The Skills are challenges developed by physical education experts and come with tutorial videos and feedback from real coaches. Pupils can develop their Skills and also take part in Head to Head Challenges taking on other users moderated by the coaches. The challenges range in ability and interest to make them suitable for all ages and skill levels.

A super huge well done to Junior 3, Isaac Fox who is topping the pupil Global Leaderboard having completed more activities and earned more points than any other competitor.

Crackley Hall School is also currently the best performing school in the country sitting in first place thanks to the efforts of Isaac and pupils from across the school. Across the age groups this week’s top performers are:

Age 11: Isabella Card

Age 10: Alfred Cowell

Age 9: Carter Headland

Age 8: Arthur Cowell

Age 7: Isaac Fox

Age 6: Will Higginbotham

Age 4-5: Hugo Stokes

Head of Sport, Kat Vaughan explains, “Well done to Isaac for his commitment and relentless dedication to developing his skills, his hard work is really paying off. Well done also to all of the children, I have been really impressed by their enthusiasm. So much so that to encourage them all, next week House Points will be awarded to the top performers for the week, so even if pupils haven’t taken part so far next week is definitely the week to get stuck in! One last big push and we may even take the series!”

Come on Crackley Hall, we know you love a challenge!

The latest editions of the Minnacle and Pinnacle magazines have just been published. They showcase exceptional work by pupils from across the Foundation and are an inspiring read.

They are a testament to the dedication of pupils and staff to continue with their studies in the face of the ongoing pandemic restrictions. The Minnacle focuses on work at Crackley Hall School while the Pinnacle focuses on the work of pupils at Princethorpe College.

Why not sit down and have a read of our latest celebration of their superb work. Click here to read The Minnacle and The Pinnacle.

On World Book Day the children (and staff) are all encouraged to dress up as a character from a book, even though we will still be at home. Please do share photos of your wonderful costumes with your teachers as we are hoping to do a special feature in next Friday's Chronicle.

Mathletes of the week for Mrs Hardwick's class is Hardaya

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

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

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

Mathletes of the week for Mrs VanZyl's group are Blythe and Beatrice

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

Mathletes of the week for Mrs Burley's group are Carter and Ralph 

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

Well done all! 

This week Dan has continued to cook with a helping hand from his daughters.

All put together on a step by step basis for pupils and parents to watch and cook along!

Youtube channel

Home School Bistro Pack

The Broadway Arts Festival are running a short story competition – it is the one that Seb Dibb won last year.

You can find the information here:

https://broadwayartsfestival.com/short-story-prize/

It is free to enter and there is no theme.  There is word limit of 2000 words and there is a prize of £50 for the U13 category.

The deadline for entries is 5pm on Wednesday 31 March.  All information on how to enter is on the website.

Please do have a look and encourage the children to enter.  We have some fantastic writers in all parts of the school!

The winning stories will be shared on the Broadway Arts Festival website - you can read Sebastian's winning story there!

The Stratford Literary Festival have an annual Young Poets Competition for local children. The deadline for entry is next Friday 5 March. Please click on the link below for more details:

Young Poets Competition 2021

This week in Junior 6 we have started to learn about William Shakespeare. 

We briefly looked at his personal history, when and where he was born and how he built his own theatre in London. We discovered that you can even get soil from his birthplace!  We then moved on to look at Romeo and Juliet, one of his tragedies, continuing the theme, which we started when looking at The Highwayman.  We focused on the prologue to the play, tried to understand the language he used and thought about the rhythm and rhyme of the sonnet.  We then looked at the rivalry between the Montagues and the Capulets and how they might have insulted each other back then in Verona.

The J5's have returned to home learning, after half term, with vigour. 

After creating and describing their own Islands, they have enthusiastically written their own shipwreck stories, based on our class novel, Kensuke's Kingdom. These stories reflect their increasing ability to: describe (using a range of adjectives, alliteration and examples of figurative language); create tension;  resolve a problem; and finally to compose a detailed ending, whilst gripping the reader. Superb! We have a range of budding authors in our midst, J5!

We also had a fancy dress Friday - well done everyone!

Junior 4 have been very busy delving even deeper into the historical world of the Anglo-Saxons by reading the epic ancient poem, Beowolf. The children have been introduced to English folklore's world of wonderful monsters, heroes, warriors, kings and dragons through this study and are thoroughly enjoying it, to the point that many of the children have bought a copy of the book themselves!

In English and Drama lessons, the children have been studying the colourful characters of the poem through hot seating, drawing, observing, visualising, acting and writing. The gloomy swamp of Grendal's lair has been contrasted with the indoor splendour of Hrothgar's Great Hall and we have been holding out for the hero himself; Beowolf.

Next week the children will explore heroism more and find out about what makes Beowolf a true hero. 

Mrs Jackson-Mayne's English group have been focusing on improving sentences by with expanded noun phrases and 'wow' words. They have used an online thesaurus to find synonyms to widen their vocabulary and improve their description.

How loud is your ROAR?! Inspired by French artist, Henri Rousseau, Junior 3 have been producing some ROARsome pictures of tigers, this week.

This fearsome task was just what they needed, after sharing all of their exciting activities that they did during their half term break.

In English, the children have been exploring non-fiction, practising the difference between fact and opinion, as well as creating their own animal – unfortunately, we didn’t have any Duigottrills!

Exploration of the British coastline was on the menu for Geography, spotting features that we see when the land meets the sea. Well done, Junior 3 – you are all doing so well.

Half term came and went so quickly but we are now back and ready to learn.

This week we return to our History topic (it has a rest every half term!) We are going to find out all about Motte and Bailey castles, something that remains very close to Ms Holmes heart as she has always wanted to live in one! 2D and 3D shapes have arrived in Maths as we investigate all things flat and three dimensional and in English we are thinking about the tapestry of life as we find out about different members of our family – where they were born, how they came to be living here and what things they have done in their lives. Pupils have interviewed these family members and found out lots of exciting stuff, which they didn’t previously know!

Watch this space for brilliant fact finding.

Our Planet by Harrison 

Junior 1 have certainly hit the ground running since returning from half term! They have tackled some very challenging maths problems by using their knowledge of number bonds to ten to solve calculations to twenty, as well as comparing different additions to find out how they can be the same.

Their English has seen them learning all about what makes a superhero and then contrasting this with villains. They even found some real life superheroes in their own families! Geography has been a highlight of the week with the children recording their own weather forecasts using the map of the UK, weather symbols and even some props. Everyone had to remember all four countries within the UK as well as what the different weather may be. Mrs Glen-Roots and Mrs Hardwick were ‘blown away’ by how professional they all were!

Our Science and History lessons have been equally enjoyable with the children learning about mammals and the history of crayons, and there has been some fabulous work submitted to Seesaw.

Well done Junior 1, just one more week of home learning to go!

People who help us has been this week’s theme in Reception. We have enjoyed finding out about occupations such as Fire Fighters, Police Officers, Doctors and Nurses and have even made our own stethoscopes! Drawing and labelling pictures of people who help us, together with writing fantastic facts about their occupations, continues to help us perfect both our letter formation and presentation too.

Maths has seen us exploring the numbers 9 and 10 and we had great fun representing, sorting, and ordering these numerals – we even had a game of Bingo too! Our French skills continue to grow as we learned how to tell someone where we live; whilst in RE we began to learn about the season of Lent.

What a busy week we have had!

Please find a link to the Lent calendar below:

Calendar

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

This week's Mission Assembly celebrated the life of St Joseph. As the Pope has named 2021, 'The Year of St Joseph', during March - when we celebrate his feast day - we will be reflecting on his role in the Holy Family.

In RE lessons this week Junior 3 have been exploring the Feast of the Passover to help them understand the significance of the Last Supper. They have learned about the seder plate and Jewish celebratory meal

Junior 4 have looked at the Beatitudes - discussing their relevance to the way we all live our lives. They have produced cartoon strips, made up dances and actions as well as reciting raps to help remember them.

This Week's Shining Stars are:

Arthur who produced a labelled drawing of the seder plate. Darcey, Lizzie, Molly Ted, Beatrice and Phoebe had fun making the flat bread used in the Passover Feast.

Lucas had a go at putting actions to the Beatitudes, Esme put 100% into rapping the lines from the Sermon on the Mount, whilst Matilda used her gymnastic skills to remind us that it can be found in Matthew Chapter 5.

Message for Parents from James Roe

Our tennis courts are not allowed to open until week beginning Monday 29 March, therefore we will resume the after school club after the Easter holidays, week beginning Monday 19 April.

Thank you

This week we began our Transport theme, focussing predominantly on cars.  This was very popular as I am sure you can imagine, and the children have loved exploring the theme in a variety of ways across the EYFS curriculum.  In Maths we explored the concept of composition, splitting big numbers into smaller ones by playing with buses and cars in the carpark… there were 5 spaces, then 10 spaces, and the children played and counted the buses and cars that would fit.  However, the top activity, just beating the outdoor car painting, was setting up the carwash outside!  The children used cloths, warm soapy water and hand held sprays to squeeze, splash and scrub the play cars - leading to wet wellies, a large amount of giggles, and some great conversations about bubbles and the steam rising in the cool air.  Next week we will be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday, and as usual the children are encouraged to dress up as a favourite character.  Please don’t feel you need to go to any trouble over the costume, the simplest ones are often the most effective!  I hope you all have a great weekend, enjoy the beginnings of spring!

Newsletter

Our Little Crackers' explorers are drawn to the mud and make the most of getting their wellies on, getting outside and digging through it.  Their goal is always to find a worm, but how wonderful it is to see the total enjoyment in the process, the skilled use of tools and the gentle hands, eventually returning the worms to the soil.

Exploring nature is a natural process for our early learners, whether at Forest School, or in our outdoor area, we love being out and about whatever the weather. There is nothing like getting hands on with our outdoor learning.

Dust off the dresses, shine those shoes and un-crease those coats.  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.

Please feel to contact them on ptauniform@crackleyhall.co.uk to arrange an appointment, or to simply check stock availability.

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!

Cyber-crime – please be extra vigilant

Parents are asked to be vigilant when reading emails relating to the payment of school fees and any other items to the Foundation. You can protect yourselves by only making payments to us in line with our normal, published methods. Any email offering a large discount on fees for the coming academic year if paid immediately is fraudulent.

There has been no change to the bank details of Princethorpe College, Crackley Hall or Crescent and there is no intention to make any changes in the foreseeable future. Any electronic notification that appears to be from any of the Foundation schools changing these details may be fraudulent.  Our bank details are available on the Parent Bills, the Online Payment Portal and in the Information Booklet for each school, and only those details should be used.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or my colleagues in the Bursary if you are have any doubts about the correct details or indeed if anything appears suspicious.

Eddie Tolcher
Foundation Bursar

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   https://www.theprincethorpefoundation.co.uk/join-us

• Teacher of Chemistry - Princethorpe College
• Teacher of Science and DT - Crescent School