Message from Mrs. Castell
Dear Parents,
It was lovely to see so many of you at the Harvest Festival on Wednesday. The children were amazing! We were so impressed with their singing and well done to our narrators for speaking so clearly. Thank you for your very generous donations to our collection. We raised £208 for the Link Club, for which they are incredibly grateful.
As I write, 1 in 6 children are absent from school with a variety of symptoms, including those being tested for Covid. Please ensure that you arrange a PCR test, not a home test, if your child develops a new cough or temperature. Children must also be kept at home for 48 hours after the last instance of vomiting or diarrhoea. Please report all absences to the school office via parents@writtleinfantschool.com or ParentMail, rather than using the class email addresses or Tapestry.
Next Tuesday we are holding a Coffee Morning for Year One parents, straight after drop off at 8.45am. Kittle Photographic will be in school next Wednesday to take individual and sibling photographs of the children. Please check your ParentMail emails for details of these events. Apologies to Turtles class, who need to arrive in school uniform on Wednesday but bring their Forest School clothes to change into after their photograph. Due to the availability of the hall we cannot always avoid things happening on the same day!
On Wednesday 20th October we will invite parents into the classroom for the first 30 minutes of the school day. This is our first Family Learning Time for some time and the focus will be on well-being, as part of a themed week which ends with our Well-being Day on Friday 22nd October. Further details will be sent by ParentMail. Apologies again for the postponement of Reading Mondays until after half term. I don’t miss much, but I missed putting that on the newsletter last week and I am genuinely so sorry! We will start this from Monday 1st November, so you can come straight into class with your children in the morning. Can I remind you that we ask parents to carry out a lateral flow test prior to attending any school event and arrangements are subject to change if there is a significant rise in Covid cases.
Thank you to all of those children who offered to be our School Council representatives this week. We had a wonderful suggestion from Florence that as children could not stand last year , there should be second opportunity halfway through the year to give more children a chance. Our EYFS children also join the School Council in the Spring term. The councillors for the first half of the school year are:
Turtles: Amy and Stanley W
Parrots: Hettie and Jude
Dolphins: Aria and Henry M
Sharks: Charlie M and Suzie
I am very grateful to the parents who attended WISPA's AGM last Friday, at which the new committee was elected as follows.
Co-chairs: Lizzie Phillips and Liz Rochester Shaddock
Secretary: Emma Pamphilon
Treasurer: Vicky Hewitt
A copy of the WISPA Chair's report for 2020-21 has been published on our website. The new committee has lots of great ideas and will seek the children’s views via the School Council. Please consider volunteering a little of your time to support WISPA at key events, or offer your feedback or expertise. They would love to hear from you at wispacharity@gmail.com. You can raise money for WISPA at no additional cost simply by registering with Easyfundraising or Amazon Smile for your online shopping - please click the links, sign up and choose Writtle Infant School Parents' Association as your chosen charity.
Finally, we were all rooting for Miss Wakeling (pictured, right) and the GB Women's Ice Hockey team last night, as they bid for their place in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. If you missed the game, we are delighted to say that the final score was Great Britain 5, Iceland 0. Tonight's match against Slovenia will be on Freesports TV at 7pm, with the final game against Korea on Sunday at 5pm. Go Team GB!
Have a lovely weekend.
Warm regards
Helen Castell
Awards
Well done to the following children who have received HIPIP awards this week!
Hannan, Isaac R, Stanley M, Lola, Phoebe, Henry D, Florence, Luca G, Yasin, Evie L, Hettie, Eden-Rose
Year 2 News
We have to start this week by saying how proud we are of the children. Harvest was always going to be special and the children were exceptional. We were so impressed with their enthusiastic singing, clear, fluent and confident narration and their impeccable behaviour. We are sure that all of you who managed to join us were incredibly proud too! The children obviously enjoyed themselves as they wrote marvellous recounts of their Harvest assembly experience. We have continued to practice our handwriting and we have looked at capital letters this week. In Maths, we have revised number bonds to 10 in preparation for addition and subtraction. They also displayed their scientific knowledge and vocabulary which impressed a school governor and the science subject leader when observing lessons about woodland habitats.
Click here for this week's home learning.
Our email addresses are dolphins@writtleinfantschool.com and sharks@writtleinfantschool.com.
Year 1 News
We have had a fun week! We practised for our fire drill on Tuesday and the children were so sensible and listened to adults well. In English, we have focussed on our guided reading and phonics sessions. The children are responding well to our daily routines of assemblies and then Phonics, followed by guided reading. In Maths, we have learned all about the addition symbol, focusing on part-whole models and understanding that two parts make one whole. We have also discussed parts of the human body in Science, such as heads, legs, arms and chests. We went into more detail about elbows, shoulders etc. The children had so much fun with our parts of the body song too! In P.E we have continued to practise our ball skills and team activities with Mrs Gowers, which has been fun too.
Click the link for this week's home learning.
Our email addresses are parrots@writtleinfantschool.com and turtles@writtleinfantschool.com.
EYFS News
This week we have enjoyed our poem 'Leaves are Falling' and have been learning all about Autumn. Some children enjoyed making leaf rubbings and leaf printing. We have loved exploring rhyme. We have listened to the 'Oi Frog' series by Kes Grey and have been playing games together to help the children hear words that rhyme and follow a rhyming string such as cat, sat, fat, mat... In maths we have been comparing sizes and weights using objects in our class.
Please remember to label your child's snack and water bottle. Remember that children do not need to bring in any extra bags for snacks. Thank you, have a great weekend!
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