Dear Parents

Our very own Franklyn features in this year's official Red Nose Day campaign!

We have had a brilliant Red Nose Day in aid of Comic Relief today and enjoyed seeing the children in red! Thank you for your donations today, you raised over £150 for a very worthy cause. We also had a celebrity webinar this Tuesday, when we watched a live broadcast from Dermot O'Leary who read from his latest book about Toto the Ninja Cat as part of the celebrations for the Essex Year of Reading. His books are available on Amazon (of course other retailers are available!), recommended for children aged 6 plus.

Parents' Evening appointments can now be booked via ParentMail. In addition, following feedback from parents, we will offer a chance to look at books with your children on the following mornings:

Year One - Tuesday 29th March 8.30-9.00
Year Two - Thursday 31st March 8.30-9.00

If you would like the books to be out for Parents' Evening instead, please let us know.

As you will be aware, we cancelled parent lunches earlier in the term as we had such a high level of Covid cases in school. We have re-booked these as follows:

Foxes - 11.45am, Wednesday 27th April
Squirrels - 11.45am, Wednesday 4th May
Turtles - 12.05pm, Wednesday 11th May
Parrots - 12.05pm, Wednesday 18th May
Dolphins - 12.05pm, Wednesday 25th May
Sharks - 12.05pm, Wednesday 8th June

All events are subject to change.

As we approach the end of term, please remember that next week is the final week for all clubs, except
Football Club which continues until Thursday 31st March and Young Architects' Club on Friday 1st April. Please check our lost property box as anything not claimed at the end of term will be recycled.

Finally, I am receiving an extraordinary number of leave of absence requests at the moment. I do appreciate that the pandemic has meant that many trips have been cancelled and some requests are due to family reasons. However, for holidays, please consider how much time the children have already missed with the lockdowns before taking children out again. Unless there are exceptional reasons for absence they will be unauthorised and further action may be taken, particularly if your child’s attendance is of concern.

Enjoy the spring sunshine this weekend!
Helen Castell

We are incredibly grateful for WISPA's tireless fundraising efforts so far this year. These have included Halloween and Christmas craft pack sales, the pumpkin competition, personalised Christmas cards and gifts, the Christmas craft evening, the fete and most recently the Usborne book fair. The money raised offers experiences for the children that the school could otherwise not afford, such as the Christmas pantomime, the Gruffalo's appearance on World Book Day and the Incredible Eggs chick hatching. WISPA is about to embark upon a project that will see its biggest expenditure in recent years, refurbishing the school library to become an inspiring place for children who love to read.

How you can help WISPA

Please email wispacharity@gmail.com or Whatsapp the number sent home by ParentMail, if you are able to offer even 20 minutes of your time to help organise or run events.
To support WISPA at no extra cost, you can do your online shopping through Easyfundraising or Amazon Smile and select WISPA as your chosen charity.
Please click on the following Eventbrite links to donate to WISPA's next events:

Someone Special Day - to coincide with Mother's Day on 27 March, donate to the WISPA charity and next Friday your child will bring home a luxury gift for someone special!
Easter Celebration Day - Friday 1 April, non uniform day and Easter Bonnet competition in exchange for a small donation to the WISPA charity online.

Please support WISPA if you can.

Thank you so much.

Free upright piano available, please let us know if you would like it!
Please can you ask your children not to run in the flower beds along the path, as we have had some damage to our delicate Spring bulbs!
Please ensure that children arrive at school between 8.45 - 8.55am. Persistent lateness will be followed up with parents.
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 - Lily for her fantastic independent instruction writing on how to make 17th century biscuits and Sophia for persevering with her reading comprehension work. Layla & Michael for inclusivity.

DOLPHINS - Stanley P for his enthusiastic attitude in his independent writing and Aria for her super independent 'journalistic' writing. Arjana for politeness and Scarlett for independence.

PARROTS - Molly for encouraging her friends to persevere and Jude for being polite to adults. Teddy G & Albie W for showing inclusivity.

TURTLES - Francesca and Max from Turtles for being independent during History. Henry K and Cienna for politeness. Claudia for honesty and Madeleine for independence.

SQUIRRELS - Annabelle for inclusivity and for persevering with hard work and Samuel for being polite and remembering his manners. Finley B for politeness. Alyra for perseverance.

FOXES - Filip for perseverance when trying to find two numbers that make 5. Albie for always being inclusive when sorting out problems. Archie J & Archie T for politeness.

This week we have learnt about how London was rebuilt after The Great Fire of London. We learnt about Sir Christopher Wren and his design for St Paul’s Cathedral. This week’s music lesson also had the same theme. Preparation for KS1 SATS has started with reading comprehension based on visiting London and a story about a little girl meeting the Queen. It was lovely to see so many of you at the SATS meeting, we hope you found it useful. Resources shared at the meeting have been put on the website for you to refer to. We also made 17th Century style biscuits. Ask the children to give you instructions and tell you how they made them. Fractions have been introduced by thinking about whole (groups) equal parts, in particular halves (making links with division/sharing).

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

This week, we have used some drama in the classroom to put ourselves in the shoes of the characters. We created a ‘conscious alley’ where we used our reasoning to decide what the character should do in a dangerous or difficult situations. We have revised our place value knowledge of numbers to 50 and represented using tens and ones. We have also learnt about a new religion this week, Islam! We learnt lots of information about how Muslims worship and different values they believe in. We also had a great Zoom call with Dermot O’Leary, where he shared his brand new story book with us!

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

This week we have been learning all about Squirrels and we loved our poem 'Furry, Furry Squirrel'. We learnt how to draw a squirrel and write the word. This week we have also found out about St Patrick's Day and what 'Red Nose Day' is all about. In PE we have been using balls, we had to roll the ball around whilst keeping control of it! In maths we have been finding out about the number ten and we also have been trying hard to remember all the different ways we can make 5 (number bonds). In phonics we have been revisiting sh, ch, th and ng and writing and reading words/sentences with these sounds in them. Miss Williams will be saying goodbye to us for a while on Tuesday as she is off to do another placement in Year 1 for 6 weeks. We will miss her but she will be back in Writtle Infant School on 26th May! Good luck Miss Williams. Have a sunny weekend!