What’s On – Thursday 9th February

Message from Mrs. Castell

Dear Parents

I cannot believe it is already half term! We have had a wonderful theme week concentrating on Design and Technology and today each class visited the others to see their lovely work.

Thank you to all the parents who joined us for Reading Monday and Family Learning Time this week, we hope you enjoyed your time in the classroom. On Wednesday we welcomed Turtles parents for lunch. Remaining dates for parent lunches are as follows:

Parrots - Wednesday 22nd February, 12.05pm
Dolphins - Wednesday 1st March, 12.05pm
Sharks - Wednesday 8th March, 12.05pm

A reminder that Esther Burton, our joint Chair of Governors, will be on the playground at drop off on Thursdays and Fridays as we seek to make the governing body more available to parents.

Sharks and Turtles enjoyed their final Forest School sessions this week. Thank you to Mrs Winsley for her weekly accounts of the lessons, below, they are a joy to read. Next half term Dolphins class will have Forest School on Tuesdays and Parrots on Wednesdays. Please ensure your children have suitably warm clothing and footwear for these days, as we go outside whatever the weather!

World Book Day is Thursday 2nd March, which will come around very quickly after half term, so we are giving advance notice that we will have a Julia Donaldson theme on this day. This will include a specially themed dance workshop for all the children, led by dance professional Rachel Squier from Project Dance. For this reason, we will not be asking children to come into school in full costume on the day as it would not be easy to get them changed for the workshops. Instead, we would love them to bring a decorated hat to wear, based around any character or theme from the Julia Donaldson books. This way they can take their hats off easily! We hope you can use the half term break to design your hats, so get your thinking caps on, quite literally!

Attendance this week is 90.8% compared to our school target of 96%. Thank you for your support with attendance and punctuality this half term.

A reminder that tomorrow is a non-pupil day for staff training, so the school site is closed to pupils and there is no yoga club. As we will not have our Friday assembly there are no HIPIP awards this week. We return to school after the half term holiday on Monday 20th February at 8.45am. All clubs resume as normal after half term. Multi-sports club on Monday mornings at 8am is still low on numbers. The club is open to all pupils, from EYFS to Year 2, and parents can book online for next half term at https://www.cmxsc.co.uk/product-page/writtle-infant-school-multi-sports-club-year-1-2-1. The cost is £24.75 for 5 weeks.

Best wishes for a wonderful break.

Helen Castell

Safeguarding

The Essex Social Care Academy is a free e-learning platform for residents and organisations in Essex. To access the site you will need to create an account, but you can then access a range of e-learning modules including:

  • Safeguarding Children Level 1 e-learning
  • Exploitation Awareness e-learning
  • Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) Basic Awareness e-Learning
  • LGBTQ+ Community & Domestic Abuse Basic Awareness e-Learning
  • Domestic Abuse Introduction e-learning
  • Introduction to Drugs and Alcohol e-learning

We all have a duty to safeguard the children in our care and if the school suspects or knows that a child is at risk of significant harm, we will make a referral to Social Services. The school does not investigate any disclosures that children may make, we are a referring agency. Procedures on safeguarding from the Government make it clear that all staff should operate with an ‘it could happen here’ approach to any concerns they may have. If you have any concerns about a child please telephone the Essex Child and Families Hub on 0345 603 7627.

Notices

  • If anyone has any spare bird-feeders or teapots, we would love to hang them in the trees for Forest School!
  • As we have children in school with life-threatening allergies, please do not send products containing nuts into school, or egg-based foods such as egg mayo, scotch egg, omelette, frittata etc.
  • Teachers cannot 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.

Year 2 News

What a marvellous end to our Dragon Quest topic. As part of our Design & Technology theme week, the children have had a wonderful time working collaboratively to make vehicles to safely transport moon dragon eggs from the mountain to the forest. As part of Art and Design the children explored sculpture and created their very own moon dragons out of clay. As a treat, they also did some food technology, making and decorating dragon shortbread biscuits. They investigated sliding mechanisms to make moving dragons. All of these were on show so the rest of the school could see their fabulous work. The children were very proud of their achievements and demonstrated many of the HIPIP values throughout the week. We also participated in BBC Schools’ live lesson for Safer Internet Day. This gave us the opportunity to remind the children how to keep safe online and what to do if they have any concerns or worries. Thank you to all those who attended Reading Monday and Family Learning Time this week. Have a lovely half term!

Please click here for this week's home learning.

Year 1 News

Just like that, it’s half term! The children have worked so hard this half term, despite being short, we have definitely been super busy. Thank you so much to those that visited during reading Monday and Family Learning Time. It was lovely to hear what you got up to with Mrs Timms and Mrs Jones. Please do not worry if you were unable to attend, our next one will be for World Book Day. We explored questions and statements and decided which was which. We asked each other questions and ensured they were only questions, not statements! We also had the opportunity to show work that we were proud of to the other children in the school. We are so pleased the children acknowledged how much progress they have made. Have a restful half term!

Please click here for this week's home learning.

EYFS News

Wow, the first part of the Spring term has gone past so quickly! What a great time we've had!

It has been such a busy week. Thank you to all the parents who attended the family reading session on Monday and Family Learning Time on Tuesday. It was fantastic to see so many of you and I hope you enjoyed making the lions and bears. If you were not able to come, rest assured that the staff looked after your children and they were still able to take part in all the activities.
We have been focusing on design and technology this week. The children have really impressed us with their wonderful models made from Lego, paper, mobilo, Duplo and junk modelling. They have been practising their skills of joining in a variety of ways.
We did manage to fit in phonics and maths. We revised all the phonemes and digraphs we have learnt so far and practised blending skills. In maths we have practised working with numbers to 5, ready to move on to 6 after half term.
Have a lovely break everyone!

Forest School News

Sharks (Tue 7th Feb): This week was Children's Mental Health Week, so we focused on connecting with nature. We cleared the pond and introduced some new habitats for the wildlife; hanging bird feeders around the pond area. We dug an area of mud to prepare for a delivery of wood chippings next week. The children also made a see-saw and had lots of fun playing on it.
Turtles (Wed 8th Feb): It was a frosty morning and all the spider webs looked magical! We toasted marshmallows on the fire and made slushies from the ice in the mud kitchen, as well as delicious looking mud cakes! As it is Children's Mental Health Week we sat around the fire and had a moment of mindfulness; listening to the sound of the birds and the popping of the fire. We fed meal worms to our resident robin - he was within touching distance!