Dear Parents

Our library has been decorated this week and the carpet is ready to be laid. My utmost thanks go to Vicky Hewitt, Lizzie Phillips, and Liz Murrell in conjunction with Zing Interior Architecture for giving up their time so generously when planning, designing and organising the works. Dan Segeth has very kindly arranged a donation from Showcase Interiors of new beanbags and children's tables and chairs, we are hugely grateful to them both. I must also thank Joan Gentle, our vice chair of governors, for boxing up all the books.

Our Year Two children have risen to the challenge with their SATS and we are very proud of them. The Year Two team ensured that they also had lots of outdoor activities and PE to help them enjoy the week and stay focussed. As these are now complete, all parents are now invited to Reading Monday on 16th May. We have Parrots' parents lunch on Wednesday 18th May and Dolphins' lunch will be on 25th May. Following feedback that we need a little more time to feed all the children, we will ask parents to arrive at 11.55am for these lunches. I will meet parents at the gate to the playground and lead you into the hall. If you arrive after the gate has been shut, please come in through the front door. Please avoid bringing younger siblings.

Our Year Two 3 Tees Cricket finalists! Further photos in our gallery

Amidst the SATS, our brilliant Year Two team went to the area finals for the 3 Tees Cricket on Tuesday and came second! We are now through to the county finals in June, which is amazing! Many thanks to Mrs Scott-Simons and Miss Wakeling who accompanied them.

I am getting an increasing number of holiday/absence requests at the moment. While I appreciate that circumstances have made it difficult to take holidays in the last two years, please consider that the children have missed so much time in school/nursery over two lockdowns. The government is paying very close attention to school attendance figures and may have further expectations of schools in regards to fines for unauthorised absence.

To link with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, we are having a theme week of Kings and Queens from Monday 23rd May. On 25th May we will be having a Family Learning Time session based on this theme. We are planning events throughout the week, including a street party style lunch for the children on Friday 27th, where we will ask children to wear something red white and blue alongside non uniform.

A reminder that all school events and dates are on our website and can be downloaded to the calendar on your phone.

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes

Helen Castell

A reminder that teachers cannot always check the class email during the day. Please send urgent messages to parents@writtleinfantschool.com.
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 - Isaac and Thomas for persevering with their engineering models and circuits! Charlie TB and Georgia Willingham for politeness.

DOLPHINS - Scarlett for perseverance in her reading SATs and Humphrey for his fabulous reasoning and problem solving! Audrey for independence and Olivia for perseverance.

PARROTS - Ruby V and Evie G for perseverance, Albie and Warren for inclusivity!

TURTLES - Mae for perseverance with phonics practice and doing so well, Alice for inclusivity and taking care of her friend when she was upset. Primrose, Prezlee and Carter for perseverance. Henry K for perseverance and independence.

SQUIRRELS - Nilha for independence with her beautiful independent writing. Eden for perseverance with reading and really starting to blend well. Ava for politeness in Forest School. Louie for perseverance with writing.
Finley T for politeness, Isla N for perseverance.

FOXES - Dorothy for her independence when picking up the chickens, Ruby for being so brave and always being polite. Albie M for politeness and Amelie for independence.

Firstly some great news! Congratulations to our Year 2 3 Tees cricket team who took 2nd place in the area final and have secured a place in the County finals in June. Their skills and ability to work as a team were admirable. We are so proud of you!

SATS have gone smoothly and we have been so impressed with their perseverance, independence and attitude. Well done Year 2, we hope you are proud of yourselves. The children have also enjoyed a variety of activities including; mindfulness, golf, Spanish flag making, Commonwealth games research, water play, making circuits and having fun with magnets (yes, we have been busy!). We would like to take this opportunity to thank our support team for their hard work in keeping the children calm, happy and focussed over the last 2 weeks. They have been essential to the smooth administration of the SATS and we couldn't have done it without them!

Home learning: As the children have worked so hard we think they deserve some R&R. Rest up, ready for a fun filled week to come!

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

The children have further explored ‘The Marvellous Moon Map’. They have created their own characters for the story and used adjectives to describe them. They continued to learn about famous astronauts, such as the British astronaut Tim Peake. In Maths this week, Year One have looked at finding ½ and ¼ of shapes and quantities. We have looked at different dance moves to combine that involve direction and levels.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

What a wonderful week we have had, we have really loved looking at the chickens that Mrs Limpkin brought in to show us. The chickens even wrote a letter to us saying what a fantastic time they had. Thank you Mrs Limpkin! This week we have learnt the story of 'The Little Red Hen' by heart and learnt some actions to go with it. We really enjoyed learning how bread is made and loved making toast and practising spreading butter! We have also written instructions for how to make toast. In Maths we have been revising shapes, matching shapes and talking about where they are, using positional language. In PE we continued to work on our ball skills and we practised throwing and catching. In Phonics we practised ow, oi, air and ear.