Dear Parents

Thank you for your donations for Captain Tom day. We raised over £150 and the children had great fun with their 100 activities. There are some lovely pictures on our website to enjoy.

There are a few staff updates to share. Firstly some lovely news, Miss Williams is expecting a baby in September. She will remain with us until July as she was covering Mrs Espinosa-Davis's maternity leave. We said our goodbyes to Mrs Brown, who has left our midday team today. She will be missed and we wish her well for the future. Finally I am very sad to report that Mrs. Gannicott will be leaving us on Tuesday 25th May. Many children and families have had the benefit of her unique speech and language expertise during her 21 years with us and she has support several classes during that time. She will be missed enormously and is truly irreplaceable.

We are currently reviewing our procedures as the Covid situation continues to improve. In Years One and Two we will re-introduce children sitting around a table rather than being in rows. This gives the children the opportunity to develop their communication skills and facilitates appropriate discussion between them. If all goes to plan then after half term we will allow children to mix only within their own year groups. All changes will be subject to continual review. We are still expected to operate social distancing wherever possible so we will continue to keep year group bubbles separate, including staggered pick up and drop off times, until we are advised otherwise.

We have had a number of conversations with parents this week, so can I repeat my advice in last week's newsletter that if your child has any of the three Covid symptoms, they must take a PCR test at a test centre, rather than using a home test. This has not changed since March last year. We must follow this advice to avoid possible ten day isolations for our children.

There are an increasing number of messages for teachers both on email and Tapestry at weekends and evenings. If something is urgent, please use parents@ as this email address is regularly monitored, but we do not expect teachers to reply at weekends. Messages about pick ups and drop offs and queries about term dates should be sent to parents@. Also for daily information, please look at our website first.

The WISPA Mini Marathon is next Friday! We hope that family and friends are able to sponsor the children's 1 mile run around the playground, we're all looking forward to next week.

Have a lovely weekend.

Helen Castell

Well done to the following children who have been awarded Shooting Stars for setting a great example to others this week.

Sharks: Olive for doing amazing maths and working hard on her tennis! Casper for fabulous hard work in his writing!

Dolphins: Sylvia for a super creative diary entry imagining life as a pirate and Ted for marvellous maths mastery!

Turtles: Stanley for trying so hard with his concentration this week and really trying with his handwriting! Arjana for writing some super sentences about her weekend!

Parrots: Edie for working hard during phonics! Poppy for fantastic decoding and blending of phase 3 words!

Foxes: Kimberley for doing brilliantly with her writing and always upholding our HIPIP values!
Yasin for working so hard with your handwriting, all that art work is paying off!

Squirrels: Jude for wonderful litter picking for the 100 challenge - a real act of kindness! Ozzy for looking after his friends and sorting out disputes kindly!

Our pirate themed work has captured the children's imagination! This week they considered which job on board a pirate ship they are most suited to, and wrote a diary entry for a day on board a pirate ship at sea! In Maths we have been exploring position and direction - very important for every pirate searching for treasure! The other highlight this week was learning how to play 3 Tees Cricket!

Please click here for this week's home learning.

Our email addresses are dolphins@writtleinfantschool.com and sharks@writtleinfantschool.com.

This week we received a postcard from Grandma Bird and Noi from the story 'Grandma Bird' and we have looked at what makes a great postcard! We have been writing our own postcards to send to Grandma Bird and Noi. This week in maths, we have been sharing 1/2 of shapes and quantities. The children have worked so hard to share equally, we are so proud! We have been learning a new song called 'In the Groove' and we even got to play the glockenspiels, which was so much fun!

Please click here for this week's Year 1 Home Learning.

Our email addresses are parrots@writtleinfantschool.com and turtles@writtleinfantschool.com.

This week the weather has been perfect for our poem about the rain. It’s been great for the plants we are growing too. We will plant some of them outside soon. We have found out how it rains and about lightning too! We have been enjoying watching our tadpoles growing, some are starting to grow legs! This week we made an outside play charter. We discussed as a year group the types of play we enjoy and the play that we don’t like. We all worked together to make up some rules for outside play. The children should be able to tell you about them. Have a lovely weekend.

Our email addresses are foxes@writtleinfantschool.com and squirrels@writtleinfantschool.com.