The Chronicle

Dear Parents

We have enjoyed another busy week, with more inter-school sports fixtures and quite a bit of rain!  I hope that you are looking forward to the weekend ahead which, with any luck, will bring some fair weather.

As mentioned, we were fortunate enough to be able to hold a sporting fixture on our school fields this week when Crescent School visited and took part in the cross-country event.  Children from Junior 5 and 6 were involved and, as you will see later in this edition, their smiles and look of determination is evidence of a wonderful afternoon.  Thank you to Crescent School for joining us, Mrs Vaughan and the Estates Team for setting the course and to Mrs Stephenson for capturing the event on camera.

I was delighted to welcome Father Kevin and Father David back into school, albeit briefly and socially distanced, as a number of our pupils received the Sacrament of Reconciliation and also to prepare the children for Holy Communion.  It is hopefully not too long before Mass can be celebrated in school again.  Thank you to both Fr Kevin and Fr David and also to Mrs Jackson-Mayne and Mrs Simmonds.

In assembly I congratulated our Stars of the Week:  Ryan, Ashleigh, Teo, Will, Mahnoor, Lizzie, Beatrice, Jia, Lucas, Dexter, Aaron, Sam and Maxwell.  Bronze merit certificates were ‘presented’ to Lexi-Jean, Elsie, Dillon and Henry with Oliver in Junior 5 receiving a Silver award.  Congratulations to you all.  Well done to all our netballers on their performances and to Georgie, Julia, Jia and Chloe for delivering the match reports so well.  To end the assembly, we were all treated to a drumming performance by Olivia in Junior 5 and I can vouch that Junior 3S enjoyed it judging by the foot tapping on my office ceiling whilst they tried to ‘drum’ along to the beat!

There was evidence of exemplary work displayed in many areas this week as Junior Da Vinci’s were awarded to: Isaac, Evie, George, Alex, Isabella, Penny T, Ding, Noah (x2), Yung, Annalise, Niamh, Woody, Joseph, Finlay, Thomas (x2), Helayna, Jasper, Lily and Isabel.  Super work from everyone.

From next week, should lockdown measures ease as planned, we will be able to make some minor changes in school which will have a positive impact in classes.  For example, children will be able to return to sitting in small groups facing each other in their class bubbles and some year group gatherings will be able to take place under in certain conditions.  We will continue with our rigorous cleaning of high traffic areas, lateral flow testing and other measures such as staggered arrival and dismissal times, limited and controlled visitor access to the site, amongst other measures.  All the while, we will be keeping a close eye on government guidelines and adhering to Princethorpe Foundation decisions and approaches.

As you will know, we take the safety of pupils, staff and visitors very seriously and we continue to take various measures to minimise the risk of an accident involving a vehicle on the school site. Please take care when driving onto the school site, particularly at busy times such as the start and end of the school day.  During busy times we usually have staff managing traffic on site and all drivers are asked to continue to cooperate and to follow instructions.  Thank you to all our parents who work with us in this regard. We have recently reviewed our risk assessment on the management of traffic on site, to ensure the safety of pedestrians and vehicles, which you will find here . Please remember to be mindful of your speed approaching school, ensure your car is stationary until your child has left the vehicle and switch off engines whilst waiting in your vehicle for any length of time. 

I hope you have a restful weekend with your families.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Please be advised that booking is now live for our half term holiday club.

To make a booking, please visit My School Portal and select 'Clubs and Activities'.

Holiday club will run from Tuesday 1 June to Friday 4 June, from 8.30am until 5.00pm, and costs £30.00 per day. Hot lunch will be included.

An information sheet including a basic list of activities planned, will be sent out shortly.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Children from the Junior 2 class at Crackley Hall School have come first in the country in a global maths competition that pitched children against their equivalent year group. The school’s Junior 3 class did nearly as well placing second nationally in the Year 3 league, while the Junior 1 children came fourth overall.

Pupils at Crackley Hall joined millions of children across the world on Wednesday 5 May in a Live Mathletics challenge, a world-wide event that saw schools go head-to-head in maths quizzes to mark World Maths Day. Pupils took part online, completing 20 rounds of number-based questions, against children in the same school year, answering as many sums as possible in 60 seconds.

Junior 2 were ranked 31st in the world with Junior 3 coming 39th globally and Junior 1 99th. Across the school there were also many excellent individual results with Junior 3 pupil, Arthur C. placing 13th nationally in his year group, and taking the honour of being the top achieving pupil at the school. Junior 3, Isaac F. came 2nd in school with Junior 6, Yung F. 3rd. 

Headmaster, Rob Duigan, was delighted with the results and said, “This is a super achievement and I am very proud of the children. Their success in this competition reflects the high standard of teaching and learning here at Crackley Hall. Having fun with maths is important to embedding maths skills, we use Mathletics to enhance and embed our pupils’ learning and the children really enjoyed this Mathletics Challenge.”

The competition was part of a week of mathematical activities at the school that culminated in a themed Number Day.

Crackley Hall joined schools across the country on Friday 7 May for a mega maths fundraising day for the NSPCC. It was a fantastic end to a whole week of mathematical fun after pupils in Junior 1 through to Junior 6 also took part in the Mathletics World Maths Day challenge earlier in the week.

Maths lead, Mrs Van Zyl, and her Junior 3 class gave 100% out on the playground in their Maths lesson and across the school the children took part in a host of mathematical activities. Pupils made a donation to come to school in number themed costumes raising a final total of £433.21 that will be donated to support the work of the NSPCC.

In Reception the children’s day started with a surprise visit from Buddy, the NSPCC mascot, who was thrilled to see all their wonderful number-related costumes. Together they read the story ‘Monster Maths’, created animal tangram pictures, investigated Numberblocks to 20 and sang and danced along to number songs.

Buddy was also a big part of Junior 1’s Number Day and pupils enjoyed solving a series of number challenges to unlock Buddy from his number puzzle. After counting the busy bees and dividing up the cheeky chicks they were all so excited when Buddy popped in to thank them and say hello.

Junior 2 really enjoyed Number Day too, they took on a Murder Mystery-style ‘who dunnit’ challenge that linked beautifully to their work on The Great Fire of London, pupils had to use a range of maths skills within 50 to sleuth their way through a series of clues.

Junior 3 took their maths beyond the classroom and investigated multiplication patterns in circles on the playground. They also took part in a game of fraction frenzy and completed the Buddy key challenge.

Mrs Wildey’s Junior 4 group had to escape crystal mazes by solving multiplication tables puzzles. Excellent times table knowledge and speedy recall helped all the children break free. They then worked as a group to complete a round robin game of random multiplication questions and their co-operation, collaboration, maths talk and enjoyment of maths was wonderful to see. While Junior 4B explored percentages and how they relate to fractions and one pupil made a ‘rounding snake’ which Mrs Burley had taught them to use to help with rounding numbers.

For Junior 5 it was all about proportions and they explored whether they were similar to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man by measuring different parts of their bodies and comparing these to Vitruvius’ statements.

In Junior 6 the children threw themselves into some competitive mental maths, Mrs Vaughan’s group competed in teams for the top spot in ‘Who Wants to be a Mathionnaire’! with two groups achieving the accolade of reaching and completing the 1,000,000 point question! While Mrs Horan’s group worked their way through some mind-bending word problems with a twist, which weren’t as straight forward as they seemed.

And the children in Little Crackers Nursery even joined in the fun, counting forwards and backwards, matching, recognising, adding, taking away inside, outside and even at lunchtime!

All the children and staff thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to ‘play’ with maths for the day.

Junior 3, Lizzie, produced this beautiful wooden bird box at home and was so pleased with it that she brought it into school to show us all. The bird box was part of a craft set Lizzie received as a present from her grandmother and creative Lizzie really enjoyed making and decorating it. Her teachers were so impressed with her design technology skills that they decided that the bird box could be hung in the Forest School, so with Mrs Clark’s help, Lizzie hung it there.

Well done Lizzie on your really wonderful work!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well done all!

Wednesday 26 May 2021 - 5.00pm to 7.30pm

Please share news of our Open Evening for prospective pupils.

Prospective pupils and their parents are warmly invited to Crackley Hall's Open Evening on Wednesday 26 May from 5.00pm.

The evening will consist of a welcome from our Headmaster, Rob Duigan, and a guided tour around the school. Families will also have an opportunity to ask questions to our Senior Leadership Team. 

The evening will be split into two, hour-long sessions, so that we can manage numbers and adhere to government guidelines. A maximum of two family members will be able to attend with the prospective pupil/s.

To book your place, please click here.

For more information on admission to Crackley Hall and Little Crackers please email Jenny Vaughan at admissions@crackleyhall.co.uk or call 01926 514410.

In their last term of French at Crackley Hall, J6 are working towards performing a role-play at the shop of their choice. This week, they looked at how to say “some” in French to ensure they get exactly what they want to buy: a whole chicken or just some chicken? They also now know that “une boite” is a homonym, as it means both “a tin”, “a can” and “a box!”

The children are all really looking forward to acting out their encounters at their chosen shop.

It was an exciting week for our Crackley Year 5's in their Games lessons, as all our pupils were involved in a Cross-Country tournament against Crescent School. The sun shone and the rain kept away, as all our eager competitors ran the one-mile course. 

It was wonderful to see all trying their best and Crackley emerged victorious. George M and Sid were neck and neck throughout the race, showing their great stamina, and then George pipped Sid in the last few metres. George M came first, Sid second and Leonardo third! Elle led from the start and ran a fabulous race, and won with flying colours, with Issey coming third!

Congratulations to all six of these pupils and to all for taking part.

Our science topic of 'Living things and their habitats' is keeping Year 4 very busy! We have been exploring a variety of ways to identify, sort, group and classify living things. We have learned how animals are split into 'vertebrates' and 'invertebrates' and we are beginning to consider the differences between living things within these classifications.

We have been using and creating classification keys to group, identify and name living things from the local habitat and beyond. We had great fun on an invertebrate hunt and were amazed at how many animals we have in our school! 

Building on our theme of ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, Junior 3 have been finding out how to stay safe in the sun in our Science lessons. We now have a few good tips for Icarus and anyone else lucky enough to spot a few rays of sunshine. We put our knowledge of writing different types of sentences to good use and created sun safety posters with questions, commands, exclamations and statements in them.

We have also become experts at adding and subtracting fractions and have even begun to simplify our answers.

Finally, our collaborative art project has been finished off this week and we ‘took to the skies’ on our new wings. Remember, boys and girls, ‘until you spread your wings, you have no idea how far you can fly.’ 

Junior 2 have been so busy this week, as have their fruit and vegetables we planted for Science! The carrots and beans are expanding, the sunflower seeds germinating nicely; plus we have a rogue mushroom! In English, we have been learning how to write a news report! We even had Mahnoor in Pakistan joining in, as a roving reporter, from across the miles. Happy Eid to her and her family!

The children have been finding out about ‘curious’ journalists -  how and why they want to get news to the masses. The Fire of London will be our theme and the pupils will imagine they are talking to the Londoners fleeing the chaos. Should make for some interesting reading.

In Maths we are loving the tricky ‘Time’ topic – analogue is always challenging.

RE has seen us making mini churches as we learn about the focus for spiritual community. The pupils loved designing their churches and assembling them into 3D images.

This week has been a very noisy one in Junior1! However, we really haven’t minded as we have been learning about the concept of onomatopoeia in our English lessons! The children all had so much fun saying the different ‘noisy’ words and thinking of their own. There really has been a ‘whoosh’ of excitement in the classrooms.

In Maths we have continued to learn about halves and quarters, extending our knowledge to splitting numbers rather than shapes.

Our Geography lessons have been a tasty affair with the children learning all about traditional English food. It certainly made us all very hungry as everyone’s tummy rumbled around the room!

Our History topic is beginning to draw to an end and this week the focus was on the bicycle. The children were so interested to learn that the early bicycles had no pedals, as they eagerly completed their timelines.

Reception have been exercising their green fingers this week as we planted seeds in our Understanding the World lessons. Complete with compost, plant pots, cress and salad leaf seeds, we headed outside for some gardening fun. Hopefully our plants won’t take too long to grow and we can then taste them!

Thinking about what conditions plants need to grow, we discovered that light, water, warmth and soil are all needed, so we are keeping a close eye on our seedlings.

We have also been busy practising our tricky words in phonics and have been wowing Mrs Green and Mrs Convey with our brilliant maths too!  

Our Shining Stars this week who each receive a Creativity/Mastery Da Vinci include, Jack, Penny, Matilda and Esme in J4W and Jay, Olivia, Kate and Andrew in J4B who all had an excellent understanding of the seven ‘I Am’ sayings which Jesus said.  The I Am sayings included,  I Am the Bread of Life; I Am the Light of the World; I Am the Gate for the Sheep; I am the Good Shepherd; I Am the Resurrection and the Life; I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life; I Am the True Vine.

Junior 3 have been exploring different Psalms in their RE lessons this week. After reading and sharing psalms in class, they decided to add their own actions to the words to make them easier to remember. Group leaders directed the groups so that they all agreed on the symbols they would use.

In Junior 1, Isabel retold the story from John 21, when Jesus appeared to His disciples on the shore of Galilee. Peter and some of the disciples had just spent all night fishing, but caught nothing. Jesus stood on the shore and yelled out to the men to cast their nets on the right side of the boat if they wanted to catch fish. Miraculously, to their amazement, they immediately caught lots of big fish. They then joined Jesus on the shore where he cooked them breakfast. This was the third time that Jesus had appeared to His disciples and this time He showed His love by sharing a meal with them.

It was lovely to welcome both Father David and Father Kevin into Crackley this week – things really feel like they are getting back to normal. Junior 3 pupils began their week by crowning the statue of ‘Our Lady’ with a beautiful crown, organised by Mrs Simmonds. Pupils read the prayer ‘Hail Mary’ around the statue to remind us that May is a special month for Mary. Later this month, Junior 3 will also take part in Mass to honour Mary, the mother of Jesus.

On Thursday afternoon, seven pupils in Junior 3 and one in Junior 5 received the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time and nine pupils in J4 also received Reconciliation, in preparation for their First Holy Communion in June.

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

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

Weekly Mission

Crackley Hall was excited to welcome Crescent's Year 5 and Year 6 boys and girls on Wednesday for our first ever Foundation Junior Schools' cross-country race.

The children were keen to compete and enjoyed the winding 1500m course around the school field. They set off with plenty of energy and enthusiasm and demonstrated great determination and perseverance to complete the course. For each race the first six athletes positions counted for the team score.

The U10 girls' race was the first to get going and it was a close matched affair with Elle running a good tactical race. From the start she tucked in behind Crescent’s Evie and matched her great pace, in the end it all came down to the final sprint and Elle pushed hard and was delighted to finish first in 6 minutes 11 seconds. Agnes ran well to come in third.

The U10 boys were next to go, strong competition between the Crackley boys saw a fast pace set with the Crescent boys following on. It was incredibly close with George and Sid fighting for the lead the whole way around. In the end George just pipped Sid to finish in 5.47 but both boys pushed themselves out of their comfort zone in an excellent performance. Leonardo finished third. The Crackley boys' strong run helped the team to claim the win.

The U11 girls showed grit, determination, and maturity. Fantastic running from Rosa saw her lead from the front and come home first in 6.23 with Francesca following on and taking third place.

The final race was U11 boys which again did not disappoint with pupils giving their all and showing a fabulous work ethic and team spirit. Max ran a strong and determined race to claim victory in 5.58 with Rafferty finishing third, again the boys’ efforts helped Crackley claim the team win.

All in all a fantastic performance by all of Crackley's pupils of which we are very proud, not only whilst running but also for their support of one another cheering and encouraging all the runners along. Well done all.

Please find more details of an externally provided Netball Camp on the flyer.

Thank you 

Creative and versatile, our Lego Club continues to inspire and this week was no exception.  We had a confident, powerful and kind princess whose BFF was a dragon.  We realised that princesses can be anyone, come from anywhere and do anything – heroes in tiaras!  

Princess Aurora shone in her signature pink and blue gown, accompanied by a bridge, water mill, bunny and squirrel.  What could possibly disrupt the bliss of Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted forest?  Ninjas Zane and Jay Legacy armed with cool weapons and mega-blasters could!

Thankfully our resident Bo the Seal and Shelley the turtle came to everyone’s rescue.  Hooray!

I can hardly believe we have still been dodging the raindrops this week, but we have done our best to get outside as often as possible.  Luckily the rain is keeping our seeds well-watered, and we have spotted a few seedlings beginning to pop out of the earth.  This is a great time of year for exploring the world around us, and we have been looking at nests, our beautiful butterflies that emerged just this week, and the fabulous wormery we built with Miss Anupa.  It is the perfect time for our magnifying glasses to become useful as we record the changes on clipboards, making observational drawings of the developments going on around us.  It must be said however, that as wonderful as the rain is for the growing garden, we would like a little sunshine too – especially if we are to let out butterflies fly free next week. 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, don’t forget to take an umbrella if you’re out and about, and maybe a camera too – we’d love to share your pictures!

Newsletter

Watch this space…..

The PTA are currently in discussions with school to see how we can ‘ safely’  put on some exciting events for the children before the end of Trinity Term, whilst keeping in line with government restrictions. Please keep your eye on the Chronicle for further announcements.

The PTA would like to thank all the parents who have recently joined the committee, it great to see so many new faces and we welcome you all with open arms. If you would like any further information or to be added to our email list, please contact Chanel Camilleri-Willis ccamilleriwillis@gmail.com

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!

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 - Join Us

• Health and Safety Manager - Princethorpe College
• IT Infrastructure Engineer - Princethorpe College
• Early Years Assistant - Crackley Hall School

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.

----------------------------------------------------------

Lost Property

Mairen (J4B) has lost her sports fleece and also her watch (pink wristband with butterflies)

----------------------------------------------------------