Dear Parents,

This has been our most challenging half term so far in terms of staffing. We have had more than 60 positive Covid cases among staff and children since our return in January, so keeping the school open and running has been a great achievement. We have tried to keep the disruption to the children and yourselves to a minimum and we thank you for your support and patience. A big thank you to the staff who have worn multiple hats throughout the past few weeks to ensure we remain open. We had a fire drill at lunchtime this week and the children did very well, understanding where to line up and what to do in the event of an emergency.

As part of Children's Mental Health Week, various activities on mindfulness, breathing techniques and calming exercises have taken place in class this week. Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service has sent us a flyer on virtual appointments available for parents who wat to support their child's emotional wellbeing - please see the community links news story for details.

Our focus this week has been on the theme of communication, including an assembly on sign language for Year Two, making a fact file about Guglielmo Marconi, listening to various radio broadcasts and making a timeline of the different forms of communication used throughout human history. We also discussed internet safety as Tuesday was Safer Internet Day. The children (and staff) look absolutely fantastic in their 1920s dress today and we really enjoyed the storytelling sessions this morning. Thank you to Chelmsford Ideas Hub for organising these events, we are all looking forward to this afternoon's parade through the village and are grateful that the weather has been kind to us today!

Thank you to WISPA for organising an online book fair through Usborne books in the run up to World Book Day. A letter and flyers have gone home in book bags and today we sent home the £1 World Book Day book tokens. These can be spent at the book fair or in book shops from 17th February to 27th March. World Book Day takes place on Thursday 3rd March and children are invited to dress up as any character from a book. WISPA is also arranging a competition to design a book cover which coincides with this event. There are exciting plans afoot to transform our rundown library into a fantastic space to inspire reading - please watch this space as we may ask for your help! My thanks go to the WISPA committee for all of their time so far in planning this and other events.

We return to school on Monday 21st February. I hope to reinstate parent events and volunteers helping in school, but I want to ensure that transmission numbers drop during half term to protect everyone. Have a lovely half term break and thank you again for your continuous support.

Helen Castell

If your child goes to after school childcare at YMCA or Ducklings, please ensure you let them know if there are any changes to these arrangements on the day, so they know not to expect them. If you could let us know as well we can make sure everyone is aware. Many thanks.
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.

What a fabulous week we’ve had! First we completed our dragon themed work which the children have all loved. We have been so impressed with their own dragon stories, paintings, sculptures and incredible dragon cakes! We are all so sad to finish this topic. In Dolphins class the children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about different dragons in The Incomplete Book of Dragons by Cressida Cowell.

We have enjoyed our communication theme week and have found out about lots of different ways we can communicate with others around the world. Year 2 looked absolutely fabulous in their 1920s dress and we managed to get some fantastic photos of them all. Keep an eye out for them to appear on the website. The children had a couple of visitors in school this week. Firstly we had a visit from Miss Wright’s mum who taught the children about British Sign Language and how to communicate with Deaf people. The children learned the signs to a greeting song and also learnt the animal signs for the Writtle Infant School classes. Ask them to show you what they can remember. We had another visit from a storyteller who told us an Icelandic story about a polar bear and a boy. We were talking about how people communicated thousands of years ago and created a history of communication timeline.

Some of the children became teachers this week as we allowed some of our children to teach us some words in another language. We learnt some Romanian, Spanish, Estonian and many other languages.

We hope you all have a wonderful half term and hopefully we can enjoy some sunshine.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

This week we have been learning about communication. We have found out about Marconi and how he invented wireless communication. We have listened to lots of BBC schools radio programmes, to support our listening skills. We have learnt the song 'The more we get together' using Makaton signs. The 'Singing Hands' on YouTube and are worth a look at if you are interested in this. We have learnt oa, igh and oo (as in moon) this week and have been finding out about the composition of number 7. We hope you have a wonderful week and we look forward to welcoming back the children after a restful half-term break.