Dear Parents

We are delighted to share with you that Mrs Espinosa Pardo is expecting her second child in September. She will start her maternity leave from September. Congratulations to the whole family!

We have had a very busy week with class photos, all clubs restarting and Foxes parents in for lunch. You should have had a photo card in your child's book bag to order the class photo if you wish. In the first of our celebrations for the Platinum Jubilee, the children took part in On Your Feet Britain Day 2022, an initiative led by Active Essex in which the children performed many different dances from The Queen's 70 year reign.

Coming up after the Bank Holiday weekend is Squirrels parents lunch on Wednesday 4th May (11.45) and our GB athlete visit and WISPA's Mini Marathon on Friday 6th May. Please complete your sponsor forms if you haven't already done so. Choir will commence next Tuesday, as this week I had to attend statutory training. All children are welcome to attend choir on a Tuesday lunchtime, or to try one week with no obligation to continue. The following week, we invite Year 1 and EYFS parents for Reading Mondays, but as Year 2 will be taking their SATS, Year 2 will not have Reading Monday on 9th May and this will be postponed until the following week.

Theme week - Kings and Queens
To link with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, the week of 23rd May will be themed around Kings and Queens. On Wednesday 25th May at 8.45am, our Family Learning Time session will be based on this theme. We are planning events throughout the week, including a street party style lunch for the children on Friday 27th May, where we will ask children to wear non-uniform, something red white and blue. Thank you in advance to our caterers who will provide a special menu on that day.

The government have released guidance for parents to help with reading, which will be useful for you all:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend. Year Two begin their SATS next week and I am sure they will all do their best.

Best wishes
Helen Castell

SHARKS - Austin for independently working through his maths work on time. Edie for persevering with her letter formation. Zara, Charlie M and Ted for independence. Phoebe for politeness.

DOLPHINS - Roman for inclusivity. Dill and Florence for perseverance. Freddie W for politeness.

PARROTS - Bobby for being inclusive and involving children in his games, Zara for settling in so well but also for being super polite to adults and her new friends. Hettie for independence and Bobby for inclusivity.

TURTLES - Alex for independence with his sewing and Henry for perseverance with sewing. Raury and Stanley W for perseverance. Amy F for inclusivity.

SQUIRRELS - Jack for showing politeness and lovely manners and Skyla for independence - she was able to get her apron and wellies on for water play with no help. Forest School staff nominated all of Squirrels for their perseverance and independence. Louie for independence. Finley T for politeness and Misha for perseverance.

FOXES - Ellie for persevering when learning her sounds and sounding out words and also for politeness. Jessica-Rose for always being inclusive and friendly. Felix B for perseverance.

Our new topic this half term is ‘A World Without Colour’. Activities will be based around the text ‘Grey Island, Red Boat’ by Ian Beck. The children are hooked already and can’t wait to find out why the Island of Ashes is grey and why Wendell Lightfoot has magic powers! This week we have explored emphasis in reading, shared some new vocabulary and used dictionaries to find synonyms and antonyms for the word banished. We learnt about the Christian creation story and discussed how the universe may have come to be. This was a big question with some very philosophical answers.

Next week, we will commence KS1 SATS. PLEASE DO NOT STRESS! The children will have a lovely time as we will work with a group at a time and have planned lots of fun science, art and physical activities outside when they are not working with us. Just make sure your children have had a good breakfast and are well rested before they come into school each day.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

We are so pleased with how well the children have settled back after a long break. We have also welcomed Miss Simon to our Year One team who is currently training to become a teacher. We have introduced our new topic book ‘The Marvellous Moon Map’. We reviewed whether we enjoyed the story or not and wrote our favourite parts. We’ve used dictionaries to find definitions of characteristics. This week we have worked practically to share and add equal groups and completed some multiplication and division number sentences. We looked at different astronauts including Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin. We listened to and ordered the Hindu Creation story. In music, we created a soundscape to match our new topic book. We’ve started to learn some important skills to play tennis.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

This week our poem 'I have a Little Frog' has been so much fun! We loved finding out about frogs and how they grow. We looked at the frog life cycle and put it in the correct order and printed the life cycle with paint too. We have also learnt about St George and many of us made the English flag. We have found out about Ramadan this week and next week we shall learn about Eid al-Fitr. In phonics we have revisited ee, igh, oa and oo and have been writing/reading words and sentences with these sounds in them. In Maths we have looked at the number 11 and began to use the numbers 11-20 in our maths lessons. In PE we have moved on to learning how to bounce a basketball, that was fun! Have a lovely weekend.