What’s On – Friday 28th April

Message from Mrs. Castell

Dear Parents

It was lovely to see so many of you at the fundraiser for Ellis last Sunday. The organisers and stallholders, many of whom are parents at the school, did a remarkable job in spite of the miserable weather, raising £7019.44. This is a truly overwhelming amount and we know the family are enormously grateful. Thanks to you all for your support for Ellis.

Family Learning Time

We hope those parents who were able to attend enjoyed Family Learning Time this week. As we begin to plan events for the next academic year, we would very much appreciate your feedback on these opportunities for parents to be involved in the classroom. Please get in touch at parents@writtleinfantschool.com.

Library Visits

Over the next few weeks, each class will visit Writtle Library for a morning. If they haven't been before, this is a great opportunity for the children to discover what the library has to offer and the library staff will share a story with them. The children will walk down to the green with the staff, a visit that is covered by the parental consent for local outings given in their initial registration form. Dates of the visits are as follows:

Parrots: 11 May
Turtles: 18 May
Dolphins: 8 June
Sharks: 15 June
Foxes: 22 June
Squirrels: 29 June

School Grounds

Can everyone please be vigilant to ensure that children take care of the school property at the beginning and end of the school day. We have seen lots of toys and other items thrown into the pond, children picking flowers which are growing in our planters and trampling on the flower beds along the path to the playground gate. We always celebrate the natural world in our lessons and part of that experience is to ensure that we look after plants and wildlife habitats. The children have had an assembly on this topic this week but we would appreciate you reinforcing the message at home.

Coronation celebrations

On Friday 5th May we will be celebrating the Coronation in school with a special assembly where I will be attempting to recreate a Coronation and a street party style lunch with an adapted menu to enable us to eat outside. The children will be asked to come to school in red white and blue non school uniform. WISPA are also planning a Make a Crown competition. Please see the attached poster for details.

Word Aware

This week's word is "pandemonium", chosen by Dolphins class. We would be grateful if you would discuss the meaning of this word and use it with your children.

Attendance

Attendance this week is 95.3% compared to our school target of 96%. While I appreciate measures that parents have taken to help improve attendance, I am really disappointed at the number of children taken out of school for long weekends and the number of holiday applications. We are striving as a school for every child to reach their potential and even one day lost means their learning is disrupted. 

Enjoy the long weekend, we'll see you on Tuesday 2nd May.

Helen Castell

Safeguarding

Childnet contains a wealth of information about keeping children safe online.

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

  • 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.
  • Please do not walk your children across the staff car park, it is not a thoroughfare and is very dangerous to cross. Thank you.
  • A reminder that you can email our Chairs of Governors, Matt Coffey and Esther Burton, at any time at chair@writtleinfantschool.com.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Awards

SHARKS - Jude for independence, he has tried really hard with some of the maths challenges this week. Henry for independence - he has been volunteering to read aloud during guided reading this week. His reading has really come on!

DOLPHINS - Yasin for his perseverance and independence in his learning, which has made him so confident, particularly in Reading and Maths. Bonnie for her enthusiasm and perseverance in her writing. Isabelle has nominated Joe for his perseverance and care in repairing a favourite book of the class AND Mrs Marshall has nominated Erol for his politeness when tidying up after lunchtime activities.

PARROTS - Albie M for independence, he has really been trying to improve his handwriting and begin joining letters. Willow also for independence, she has been working on writing smaller and on the line and has done a fantastic job this week

TURTLES - Norah for great perseverance with her learning. She has made huge efforts to improve her writing and we are very proud! Ayla for being so kind and caring to her friends. She is always very polite and always going above and beyond!

SQUIRRELS - Alexis for politeness - waiting her turn and standing aside to let people pass - well done Alexis! Mabel for inclusivity - playing with lots of children and inviting them into her games - how lovely! Matilda for inclusivity at playtime and Ruby for politeness to others.

FOXES - Noah for always persevering with everything to get things right. Laura for showing great independence and perseverance when working on writing her name correctly. Well done! Leo for including other children in games and Kiki for independence in class.

Year 2 News

We have had another fabulous week. It was lovely to see so many of you at Family Learning Time this week. We were so impressed with the fabulous vocabulary the children were using in their sentences to describe the bland, grey picture of a colossal boat which was smashed to smithereens when it crashed against the ferocious waves (these were some of the words used by the children). Hopefully this showed the importance of using adventurous vocabulary and how your work at home supports the children’s writing. We have also been enjoying our music lessons this half term. We have been looking at how music makes us feel and listening to different genres of music. This week we listened to the E.T theme and were super impressed with some children who noticed similarities with other pieces of music composed by John Williams. Enjoy the extended weekend!

Advanced notice: We have planned a school trip for the Year 2 children on Wednesday 5th July. This will be a day of nature workshops and a den building experience in Chatham Green, run by The Wilderness Foundation. Further details will follow!

Please click here for this week's home learning.

Year 1 News

What a marvellous week! Thank you to those that attended Family Learning Time, it was so lovely to have you and for you to see how your children have progressed. As always, if you were unable to attend, please do not worry! We have read our topic book ‘Marvellous Moon Map’ and created a fact file all about Neil Armstrong using our findings from last week. We discovered he was an American astronaut and was the first man to walk on the moon! We looked at what a fact file was and what we needed to include. We have continued to work on building arrays to multiply, the children have really persevered with this! We know how important it is to show our methods rather than simply remembering times tables and the children have been fantastic! We continued our tennis skills with Mrs Gowers and we will be ready for Wimbledon in no time! We hope you have a fantastic long weekend and look forward to seeing you next week.

Please click here for this week's home learning.

EYFS News

This week we have been learning about dinosaurs! The poem 'Oh Dinosaur' was a hit with the children. We have used our words of the week 'extinct' and 'mighty' a lot this week, perhaps you can use them at home too. We learnt about the different types of dinosaurs and played a game with giving dinosaurs some directions to help them find their food. We had a surprise egg turn up in class this week. The children wondered who had laid it, we wondered if it was a dinosaur and some thought it was a chicken or a rabbit! This week in maths we looked at the number 9 and found out how many different ways we can make number nine. In phonics we revised some of the tricky words and the went over some of the phase 3 phonemes.

Have a lovely weekend.

Forest School

Sharks - Tuesday 25th April
The children were encouraged to do a bug hunt which tied to their topic in class, they recorded the bugs they found in their own tally charts which will then be used in their computing lesson. Some of the children went into the pond area to retrieve toys that had been thrown in. The whole school has had an assembly regarding this matter this week as we must look after the wildlife in the pond. We will be returning next week to clear the planter of the weeds so the strawberries and herbs can grow more successfully.This was all done alongside the usual physical activities that we have out, as well as the mud kitchen, digging and polytunnel activities.

Foxes - Wednesday 26th April
The children are still getting to know the rules of the area before we introduce new activities such as the fire and tools. There were plenty of physical activities available as well as the calming hammock. We had moved a fake grass panel from the ground and found a record amount of worms which had been hiding underneath, this was very exciting! The forest fairy replied to the letters that were posted last week, we know that the fairy loves receiving letters from the children so they were encouraged to write some more!

Plant of the Month
We have introduced "Plant of the Month" for both year groups and this week we focused on Dandelions as they are so abundant at the moment and I have personally never seen them so tall. We learnt some facts about them and will be doing crafts / activities based on these for a few weeks. The children were surprised when they found out the beautiful white things they blow when making a wish are dandelions and started as a flower!

Donations wanted!
Frog spawn - if anybody has any frog spawn or tadpoles we would love them for our pond! Last year we saw a frog under our bath planter so we made a "frogitat" there and around the pond, but nothing has happened this year. Thank you very much!!