Dear Parents,

What a wonderful performance of "Animal Rumble Grumble" by Year Two at their celebration assembly today! Congratulations to all of you for such beautiful singing and acting. Thank you to the staff for preparing the children so well, and for cooling down a hot audience with misted water spray! We were very proud to present every child with a certificate and a special t-shirt to commemorate the end of their journey at Writtle Infant School. We also presented awards to the following children who displayed exceptional qualities during their time with us.

Max Meadows Award for Scientific Knowledge – Gabriel and Isaac
Graham Gowers Award for Musical Talent – Millie and Nuala
Dick Candler Award for Sporting Achievement – Aria, Roman, Michael and Blythe
Barry Grainger Award for Knowledge of the World – Rowan and Dudley
Eileen Thomas School Ambassador Award – Florence, Henry M, Poppy and Charlie M
Special Award for Outstanding Home Learning - Lincoln and Alexa

This afternoon we are lucky to have entertainment for our Year 2 children from magician Nicky Trix. Thank you to WISPA for funding this event and to Miquill for treating the children with cupcakes.

Foxes and Squirrels also wowed us on Thursday with their end of year extravaganza, they have come such a long way since September! Thank you for your kind donations for Great Ormond Street Hospital and the NHS over the last 2 weeks, we have raised approximately £400.

This will be the final newsletter of the term. As we come to the end of the academic year I want to thank parents for being so supportive and I am delighted we managed to run a normal school year, bar a few changes during the madness of the spring term. Despite record numbers of COVID for both staff and children, we kept open and reading the reports and looking at results I am so proud of what we have achieved. The true stars are the children who amaze us with their resilience and spark. I am proud of our team and how we have pulled together during the most challenging year so far. Our teachers, our LSA and midday teams, our site manager and office team work closely together to ensure that the children achieve their best and that things run (mostly!) very smoothly during the school year.

During the break we will monitor emails to parents@writtleinfantschool.com but class emails will not be routinely monitored. We have had a number of queries due to different and sometimes inaccurate information being on parent Whatsapp groups from what we have sent out from school, please refer to the newsletter or website in the first instance.

Extreme heat on Monday and Tuesday
A reminder that Monday and Tuesday are non-uniform days and we will be doing as much as possible to stay cool, with quiet and calm games and activities. All children must have a named sun hat and water bottle, with sunscreen applied liberally before school.

Meet the teacher reminder
For children going into Year One and Year Two only, there is an informal meet the teacher opportunity on Tuesday 19th July at 3.20. Please allow us to dismiss all the children first and then you will be invited back into the building. Miss Smith, our new teacher for Turtles will be present. The new Turtles class also met her on Wednesday.

Clubs
All clubs have now finished for this term.

Lateness
We again have an increasing number of children late in after 8.55. This causes issues with registration and the ordering of school lunches, which need to be calculated early in the school day. I know it is the end of term, but please work with us.

Attendance
As we look towards a new academic year, please do not book holidays, non-urgent appointments or events in term time. The government is currently reviewing its expectations of schools, possibly including a directive that fines must be considered for holidays.The school’s attendance is the lowest it has been since my time at the school and we cannot ignore the impact on already disrupted learning from lockdown. A high number of children are classed as persistent absentees, i.e. below 90% attendance. In some cases there are of course valid reasons for this. However, there has also been a rise in children staying home after an illness to see how they are. If your child has been unwell but appears to be better, please bring them in. We will always call you if needed. Thank you for your cooperation.

Community Links
Please check our Community Links page for lots of information about local events and activities over the holidays.

The children return on Monday 5th September at 8.45am. I wish you all a lovely summer break and thank you for your continued support throughout this year.

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.

Wow, what a wonderful week! We had a brilliant day at Danbury Country Park. As you probably realised the children had a fabulous time playing water-based games, den building in the shaded woods, and cooling off in the stream (apologies for the muddy feet and clothes!). We then had an exciting morning at the Junior School, meeting our new teachers, touring the school and impressing the staff with our knowledge and polite behaviour.

What can we say about today's assembly, we have run out of superlatives! Needless to say we are incredibly proud of the children and hope that it will have created a lasting memory for years to come. It will certainly be a performance we won't forget! Thank you to WISPA for booking a very special treat for the children this afternoon - the magician Nicky Trix.

Next week we are focussing on staying cool with calm games and activities, just enjoying our final days with your lovely children. We can't wait for the air-conditioning of a cinema on Wednesday morning and we are all very much looking forward to seeing The Railway Children Return!

Can we take this opportunity to thank you all for your incredible support over the last year. We are hugely grateful.

There is no home learning this weekend please just rest and stay cool, ready to enjoy your last few days of the school year!

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

Thank you to all parents for your support this year, your children have been fabulous during their first non-lockdown year! We are so grateful for the way they have coped with changes and cannot thank you enough for your help to support them. This week we have done a lot of transition work, including spending time as a new class in the Year 2 classrooms with Mrs Wilson, Mrs Scott-Simons and Miss Wright. We will truly miss all our lovely Year 1 children, but look forward to seeing how you progress in the next academic year. There is no home learning this weekend, please enjoy the sunshine and stay cool!

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

This week we practised for our end of year show! Well, didn't the children do well, we are very proud of them and how well they recited the poems, sang the song and said their lines. We will put the videos on Tapestry today for you to keep. Please remember to download your child's journal as soon as possible as we will remove the children at the beginning of the summer holiday. We have also posted some pictures and a video of Miss Williams' SCITT presentation on Tapestry, she is now a Teacher and what a fabulous one she will be! We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.