Dear Parents

I hope you all had a lovely half term break and enjoyed the Jubilee celebrations. We have had a packed schedule on our first week back. I am so proud of Year Two for winning the area Mini Games tournament on Thursday! The children were complimented on their behaviour and there were individual medals for Coen, Michael, Evelyn and Aria. My thanks go to all of the staff who went with them and to the children for representing our school so well. Well done to our Year One children and some Year Two children who persevered so well with their phonics screening this week. We had the last of our parents' lunches on Wednesday and my thanks go to our caterers, Miquill, for all of their hard work.

A few reminders: clubs resumed as usual this week, please note any changes which have been emailed to parents. The club dates are listed on our website. Parents reading in class will be on Mondays as usual this half term, if there are any changes to this we will inform you in advance. The lost property box is already bulging, so if you're missing anything please check it! Everything will be recycled at the end of term. Finally, toys from home are not permitted in school, as they can cause issues between children.

Each year group has a school trip planned for this term. Parents of children in Years 1 and 2 have received consent forms and payment details by ParentMail, please complete these by the deadline specified. EYFS parents will receive details of their trip to Hylands Park next week. It will be on Monday 4th July and there is no cost, but a parent/relative will be asked to accompany their child for the day.

Our thoughts are with Avia in Foxes and her family. She is very poorly and currently undergoing treatment at Great Ormond Street Hospital. We are keeping in touch with her mum, who would dearly like us to raise money as a thank you for the hospital. We will have collections at our year group performances on 1st July (Year 1), 14th July (EYFS) and 15th July (Year 2).

Finally our parents' association Summer Fayre is just 2 weeks away on Saturday 25th June, 11.30am-2pm. It is joint event with Writtle Junior School and will be on the Junior School playground and field. Many hands make light work, so please consider if you can volunteer a little of your time to help set up, man a stall or clear away at the end - contact the school office or WISPA if you can! We hope to raise much needed funds for our library. We will hold 2 dress down days in advance of the Fayre, no money is required on these days but donations of goods for our stalls would be welcomed, details are below. Please ensure that dress down clothes are suitable for active play and sport, so no sandals or flip-flops please.

Friday 17th June - please donate good quality books and toys
Friday 24th June - please donate sweets, cakes* and bottles**

*Cakes can be shop-bought or homemade, but we do need to display a full list of ingredients if the cake is homemade.
**Bottles can be alcohol, soft drinks, toiletries or condiments like tomato ketchup!

Have a good weekend.

Best wishes
Helen Castell

Lodge Road will not be covered by a School Crossing Patrol officer from Monday 20th June until the end of term. Please take extra care.
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 - Poppy for her independence in writing some fantastic facts about Kenya. Hannan for trying so hard and persevering with his phonics! Thomas J for politeness and Edie for inclusivity.

DOLPHINS - Marwan for including others in his play and Edie-May for fabulous phonics. Alexa for inclusivity
and George for perseverance.

PARROTS - Annabel and Eva for persevering with their decoding and blending skills. Bobby for inclusivity and
Hollie for politeness.

TURTLES - Prezlee for being so helpful to Mrs Duff in the office. Felix for independence and doing well in phonics and reading. Franklyn for inclusivity and Farrah for politeness.

SQUIRRELS - Hayden for honesty this week, even when it was hard to do. Finley T for independence when getting changed for PE. Misha for always being polite and remembering to say please and thank you. Ava M for politeness and Melody for inclusivity.

FOXES - Henry for being more independent and persevering. Amelie for being inclusive and kind to her friends.
Poppy for always being cheerful and polite. Dorothy for politeness and Dylan for inclusivity.

Welcome back to a winning start to the half term! Our fabulous year group were winners of the Mini Games event at Chelmsford Sport and Athletic Centre on Thursday morning! Coen, Michael, Evelyn and Aria were also individual medallists. Many thanks to the parents who were able to come and give their support, it was greatly appreciated. We are incredibly proud of their sporting ability, stamina and fitness. They will shortly be bringing home a drawstring goodie bag and certificate.

Our new topic is going to take us on an ‘African Adventure’ to explore Kenya through the story of "Lila and the Secret of Rain" by David Conway and Jude Daly. Our work will culminate in a production of ‘Animal Rumble Grumble’ at the Year 2 celebration assembly.

REMINDER: Please make sure the children wear trainers every day and have a full PE kit in school, as we’re using every available opportunity to prepare for Sports Day.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

The children have been introduced to this half term’s topic book ‘Grandma Bird’. We listened to descriptions of the characters and used clues to draw what we think the front cover looks like. In Maths, we have begun to represent numbers 0-100 using dienes and using ‘partition’ to split the numbers into tens and ones. We have revised some of our favourite songs during music and began to practise some of the events for our Sports Day, such as javelin.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

We have really enjoyed our week learning about snails! We loved hunting for snails and had to look really closely to find them! The snail races were fun, we chose our own snails and cheered them on as they raced. We made some snail art and learnt about how snails grow. In Phonics we have been working in different groups to support children's learning, his week we revisited Phase 3 sounds. Please keep practising the words and sounds and reading as much as you can. In Maths we have been learning about 15 and practising taking away. This week in PE we practised for Sports Day, we were amazed how well the children did and their skills are improving. We are looking forward to our Sports Day in a few weeks.