Message from Mrs. Castell
Dear Parents
Turtles enjoyed their library visit this week! Thank you again to Mrs Soden for telling the children all about how the library works and how we borrow books. Visits resume again after half term.
Thursday 13th July - Year 2 Leavers' Assembly/EYFS trip
We are aware that the date change of the Year 2 Leavers' Assembly creates a clash with the EYFS trip for a few parents with children in both year groups. Please be assured that we will take the EYFS children to the trip and then if they are able to, parents can meet their children at Hylands Park after the Leavers Assembly. We try not to change any dates but were only notified of the cricket final date this week and wanted to balance the team being able to take part with all the other events going on. Due to several other events the week of 10th July, including the class swap agreed with the Junior School, we could not find another morning, so the move to 13th July was unavoidable.
Prem Aware Award
Our teachers have all been undertaking training from The Smallest Things Charity to gain a wider understanding of premature birth and possible impact on education and beyond and we hope to gain our award from the charity soon. We ask parents of new entrants if they mind disclosing if their child was premature, in order to help us identify possible needs, but if you want to make us aware of anything that you have not done already, please be assured that you can contact us in confidence.
Parking/Travel Restrictions Next Week
Due to the Creamfields festival at Hylands Park, there will be restrictions on Margaretting Road next Friday from 9am. Please ensure you leave extra time for your journey as parking may be difficult on this day. Please also visit our Community News page for details of the Ride London event which will affect local travel next weekend.
Word Aware
As part of our commitment to developing vocabulary with our children, each class will be choosing a word of the week and we will share it with you. This week's word is "lurking", chosen by Squirrels class. We would be grateful if you would discuss this and use it with your children.
Attendance
We are delighted to say that attendance this week is 96.9% compared to our school target of 96%.
Enjoy your weekend.
Helen Castell
Safeguarding
Website Awareness – OMEGLE E-Safety KS1 to KS2
The 2 John’s at E-Safety Training have shared an advisory post highlighting the increase in concerns of young children accessing the website OMEGLE. OMEGLE is a cam chat site, and although it has an app, it seems to be more likely that children will use a web browser to access it. Although the site asks you to confirm that you are 18 years of age before being able to access it, it has no age verification mechanism in place.
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 - Mae for independence with her Mondrian picture. Carter for always showing kindness towards others and being inclusive. Annabel for politeness to all her friends and adults! Xander and Parker for including people in their games.
DOLPHINS - Semyon for his amazing independence in maths. Alice for her independence and amazing attitude in her reading along with maths. Erol for perseverance with his maths!
PARROTS - Ellie & Violet for perseverance, we have been solving fractions and the girls used their growth mindset and didn't give up and could solve 1/2 and 1/4 number sentences. Henry H for independence in Cheerleading.
TURTLES - Adley has been persevering in maths and is now a more confident mathematician, well done you! Filippos wrote the most amazing sentence independently "Hydrogen is rare in Ireland and Kazakhstan." Melody has been super independent and working really hard in all lessons.
SQUIRRELS - Libby for politeness she always remembers her manners. Eric for perseverance with his lovely letter formation.
FOXES - Matthieu for perseverance with your handwriting and always being so cheerful and willing to give everything a go! Emmini for your creativity and independence during your play and for persevering this week, even though you have been poorly!
Year 2 News
We are pleased to inform you that the SATS assessment period is now over. We have been incredibly impressed with the children’s perseverance, independence and resilience. We know things have been a little different over the past few weeks but normal service has resumed. Our thanks got to our wonderful year 2 support team who have kept the children settled and calm with lots of fun and exciting activities. This week the highlights were Wednesday’s National Numeracy Day where the children participated in a live lesson with Bobby Seagull and Katya Jones. They then completed some outdoor art challenges that also had an element of maths included. They also had great fun playing shops and have been learning some playground games to teach some of the younger ones in school.
Click here for this week's home learning and important reminders.
Year 1 News
This week we have continued our fraction number sentences and solving ¼ of shapes and quantities. We have been super sharers and know what a numerator and denominator is. In English, we have explored similes and metaphors and used them to describe the moon. We designed a story map for the marvellous moon map using pictures and captions. In P.E, we practised our tennis skills again and used a net to practise our hitting skills. We also have used musical instruments both to perform our song ‘Up and Down’ but also to create a soundscape for our topic book ‘marvellous moon map’. During PSHE we discussed personal hygiene and ways we can keep our bodies healthy through washing our hands. We also looked at how day length can vary during the seasons. Have a lovely weekend!
EYFS News
This week we enjoyed learning our poem 'Hungry Birdies'. We loved the visit from Angie and her white homing pigeons.She told us all about them, she had two baby pigeons with her and they were only 14 weeks old so she couldn't let them go. Today we talked about the visit and wrote about it too. We have learnt about the life cycle of birds and made nests after a walk in the field to collect natural resources. We also made our own birds using clay. We thought about how to keep birds safe and worked in teams to make nests made from a variety of resources. In phonics we have revised ear, air, ure and er. In maths we have worked with numbers within ten, counting back from 10/20 and comparing numbers within 10.
Have a lovely weekend.
Forest School
Tuesday - Sharks
The weather was lovely, so we toasted some marshmallows on the fire which we all agreed was delicious! A new slack line was put in place, the children loved being the first to test this line, we made it a little higher than the last line to make it a little more challenging and to practice perseverance at its best! All the usual activities were available.
Wednesday - Foxes
To tie in with their topic in class we had a close look at some real birds nests. We had a large one donated to us, mostly made of mud, but shockingly it had a lot of plastic weaved into the nest as well. We discussed the important topic of pollution.
We had the fire on today and toasted marshmallows for the first time. The children loved it, they had to gather some fire wood first and talked about what makes a fire (fuel, heat and oxygen). Some of the children continued to sit around the fire rather than play, just to listen to the crackles!
It is World Bee Day on Saturday 20th May, so we were talking about the importance of bees and to raise awareness of the pollinators, the threats they face and some facts. We even found out that the Queen Consort sells her own honey from her own bees at Fortnum & Mason with the money going to charity, there is a special Coronation edition!
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