What’s On – Friday 15th October

Message from Mrs. Castell

Dear Parents

Thank you to the Year One parents who attended our Coffee Morning on Tuesday, it was a pleasure to see you all. On Wednesday Kittle Photographic took pictures of all children and their siblings - online ordering details will be sent to parents as soon as we receive them. My thanks go to Mrs Pluck for coordinating the photos between the two schools.

Thank you to Mrs Winsley for the wonderful Autumnal display outside the main entrance!

Years One and Two had an assembly given by Neil Soanes from Essex County Fire & Rescue Service on Thursday. He explained to the children how they could stay safe at Halloween and on Bonfire Night. The presentation is available to view online. You will have received a message from WISPA about their non-uniform day next Friday. Children are welcome to wear Halloween costumes if they wish, but please ensure they are suitable for learning and playing outside. A £2 donation is suggested, which also covers entry to the pumpkin carving competition. Please leave your pumpkins on the lawn at the front of the school on Friday morning, under the trees. You can collect them at the end of the day. WISPA will also have Halloween craft kits and treat bags for sale next week.

As it is cough and cold season, we are seeing a number of children struggling in school with illness. Please keep your child at home and arrange a PCR (lab) test for them if they have a cough or a temperature. If children are not well enough to learn in school, they should be kept at home to prevent the spread of symptoms to others, who may then require isolation and testing themselves. I appreciate that you may be disappointed at our postponement of next week's Family Learning Time, but with the increasing number of cases in our wider school community it would be irresponsible of me to put so many people together in one small room. Thank you for your understanding.

Please remember there are no staff clubs next week, as our Parents' Evenings will be held on Wednesday and Thursday. All parent events are subject to change at the moment, but as appointments are held out of school hours, we can enhance our Covid safety measures by leaving more doors and windows open to ventilate the school. Please help us by taking a lateral flow test on the day, arriving 5 minutes before your appointment time and leaving promptly, to avoid too many people congregating in school. You may wish to wear a face covering indoors. Please do not bring children to your Parents' Evening appointment.

We are hugely proud of Miss Wakeling, who won 2 out of 3 games with her GB Women's Ice Hockey team-mates at the Olympic qualifiers in Nottingham over the weekend. Sadly Korea pipped them to the post for qualification by just one goal, but with record-breaking crowds and brilliant performances by the players, they left with their heads held high. Well done Miss Wakeling, we know you'll be back representing us again very soon!

Finally, can I thank one of our parents, Mr. Dent-Jones, for nominating our school to receive 10 refurbished laptops, courtesy of Network Rail and Laptops for Schools. We are hugely grateful for the donation, they will be put to very good use in class!

Best wishes
Helen Castell

Notices

  • We encourage healthy lunches for all children. Please support us by not including sweets or chocolate in your child's packed lunch and reserving those treats for home.
  • A reminder that 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 ensure that you are aware of the symptoms of headlice and threadworms and treat your child promptly if necessary. You can follow the links to NHS advice. Both conditions are very common and easily spread, so it pays to be vigilant! Thank you for your support.
  • 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

Well done to the following children who have received HIPIP awards this week!

Leo Cha, Stanley P, Hettie, Frankie C, Mae, Myla, Piper and Georgia

Year 2 News

Dolphins class logoSharks class logo

This week we have been exploring a new text called ‘Can I Build Another Me?’ by Shinsuke Yoshitake. The text looks at different personal characteristics eg: likes and dislikes. The children have started to make their own ‘Can I Build Another Me?’ book using a similar format. This will be completed next week.

In Maths, we have investigated the links between addition and subtraction, written fact families, checked calculations using the inverse operations, adding and subtracting one more, one less and ten more and ten less. We had an active maths lesson using the 100 square on the playground to demonstrate.

Your children became artists this week creating abstract portraits using the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcIViEsmFQ4. They have also been using the iPads this week to practice their phonics and maths skills.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

Year 1 News

Parrots class logoTurtles class logoThis week we have started our new guided reading book ‘Adventure Through the Ages’. This has allowed the children to learn a little bit of History too! We have moved onto Phase 5 phonics, and have started to write more during our sessions. In Maths, we have continued to explore addition using number bonds. In the afternoon we have continued to learn about parts of the body, in particular our senses.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

EYFS News

Squirrels class logo

Foxes class logo

This week we have really enjoyed our poem 'Breezy Weather' although there hasn't been that much windy weather! We have talked about different types of weather and listened to stories about the weather. In Maths we have been making repeating patterns, thank you to those of you who did the 'Tapestry Challenge'. We watched them all in class and they helped reinforce our learning! We have been practising initial sounds this week. One of the games we played was I spy with our friends. "I spy with my little eye someone whose name begins with p" etc. That also helped us to learn everyone's names. Have a look at the Tapestry Challenge this week, this will help children to be able to say the initial sound of a word. Next week our poem is called 'Little Pumpkins'.