Dear Parents,

Firstly, an update on the Covid situation in school. We currently have 13 children absent with COVID, as well as 5 members of staff and others awaiting tests. Your support with testing has been vital in our efforts to keep the school running safely and to protect vulnerable children and members of staff. Please continue to keep children at home if they are unwell - we have seen a number of children in class this week who are feeling poorly. The symptoms of Omicron vary from case to case, so please use lateral flow tests if your child is ill and a PCR test if they have any of the 3 main Covid symptoms, however mild. Also please continue to wear masks inside the school building for the time being. A reminder that we have postponed lunches with parents and class assemblies, due to the number of people that would be mixing in the hall.

I met with our WISPA committee this week (outside!) to plan our library improvement project. They have some fantastic ideas to turn the existing library area into an inspirational space for children to indulge in their love of reading. We are finalising a list of things we need and will be putting out a plea to the school community for any help you might be able to offer.

My highlight of the week is often pupil perception time, where I talk to children from each class about their lessons, their reading and what they like and want to improve about school. I talk to 2 children from each class a week so if your child says they came to me with their books that is why!

Remember to save the date of Friday 11th February, when all children are invited to join the parade from the school to the village green at 4.30pm, celebrating Writtle's special place in the history of radio broadcasting and the centenary of the BBC. The children will be learning The Floral Dance in school to perform at the event. On the morning of 11th, storytellers from Chelmsford Ideas Hub will bring history to life in their session with each year group, while in the afternoon Years 1 and 2 will be learning some 1920s dances with Miss Emily. I will have further details next week.

Best wishes and stay safe.

Helen Castell

Our staff have asked that if children wear shoes with laces, it would be a huge help if you could help them to tie their own shoelaces. We've found this video to be very useful in school.
A reminder that we love to share awards, medals, trophies, even anecdotes from children’s achievements outside of school. Please hand them to me or email parents@writtleinfantschool.com for assemblies on Friday.
Diary dates and school events can added from our website to the calendar on your phone. Click on your chosen list of dates from the Links section and then click export at the bottom of the page.

SHARKS (including awards made during Forest School this week) - Lily for always being polite and friendly. Ibrahim for being a fantastic friend to others on the playground. Piper and Suzie for inclusivity.
Poppy, Piper, Phoebe and John Joseph for their politeness. Layla for her perseverance.

DOLPHINS - Roman for independently using suffixes and adjectives in his writing. Edie-May for persevering with her work and adopting a fantastic 'can-do' attitude and Audrey for being inspired to do some independent music learning at home.

PARROTS - Eva W for being honest even when it’s tricky. Hettie for persevering when writing at length . Hollie for persevering. Ruby D for her independence.

TURTLES - Yasin, Madeleine and Eric for inclusivity - asking a child to play who was on their own. Kim F for her politeness.

SQUIRRELS - Adley for being honest even though it can be hard. Alesha for persevering with her writing and doing fab super sentences. Lowen for her politeness.

FOXES - Felix for perseverance with his cutting skills and Archie T for inclusive behaviour when playing his fabulous detective game! Willow for politeness. Albie M for inclusivity.

We have been very busy this week. Our maths focus has been division, we have been looking at making equal groups using sharing and grouping. We then moved onto dividing by 2s, 5s and 10s, paying close attention to where our numbers go in a division number sentence as well as exploring odd and even numbers, working out the patterns for each. The children have explored the characters from our Moon Dragons story and have written some fabulous character profiles.

We have been improving our basketball skills outside, focusing on different types of throws and dribbling a ball ensuring they are in control. We have also been doing some gymnastics. The children have been working on rolling, jumping, balancing and traveling. We have even managed to get out some smaller apparatus and the children have come up with some gymnastic sequences.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

This week we have created story maps and started to retell the story of The Last Wolf. The children have started to write at length and are really beginning to build their writing stamina. We have begun counting and recognising numbers to 50 and representing them using tens and ones. We have continued to learn about different animal groups including: birds, mammals, fish etc. We have also been learning about what keeps us healthy including what we eat, and what is not so healthy.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

This week's poem was called 'Let's put on our Mittens'. We have enjoyed learning about clothes we wear in winter and learning about the season of winter too. In PE we had fun playing a relay team race with hats and gloves! This week in maths we have learnt about mass. We have loved being human balances and comparing the weight of different classroom objects. In phonics we have learnt the sounds qu,ch and sh and the tricky word said. For some children we are concentrating on reading and writing these sounds in words and not just recognising them on their own which is a tricky skill to learn. Next week we are learning about Chinese New year and it is also 'National Storytelling' week. We are also looking forward to dressing up as numbers on Friday!