What’s On – Friday 3rd March

Message from Mrs. Castell

Dear Parents

Thank you to Mrs Scott-Simons for organising a fantastic World Book Day on Thursday! What wonderful headwear, we saw such creativity and inventiveness! Each class learned a different dance in their workshop with Rachel Squier, based on a Julia Donaldson book. They all then performed to each other at the end of the day. Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for Family Learning Time. This morning we had a special assembly from Mrs Herring, a former teacher at our school who is now a published author. She read her book The Busy Bugs to the children. You can buy it on Amazon

On Wednesday I took the School Council to the Parish Council office, together with the Head Boy and Head Girl from the Junior school. The children gave the parish councillors their advice on local matters including traffic and parking. We look forward to working alongside the council with a poster competition later in the term.

Esther Burton, our joint chair of Governors, will be on the playground at drop off on Thursdays and Fridays. The joint chairs can be contacted at chair@writtleinfantschool.com.

We are still seeking donations for our Special Someone Stall. If you have any unwanted gifts to donate, please bring them to the school office before Thursday 16th March. WISPA will run the stall along the same lines as the Elfridges stall before Christmas. 

Reading Monday is this coming Monday the 6th March, please come into the classroom with your child from 8.45am. Dolphins' parents joined us for lunch this week. The final lunch with parents is on Wednesday 8th March for Sharks class. A reminder that Year 2 children will go to the Infant Music Festival on Wednesday 15th March. The following day is the WISPA Someone Special Stall and at 9am there is a meeting for Year 2 parents in our hall.  Friday 17th March is a dress down day for Red Nose Day. We invite children to wear bright colours and bring a suggested donation of £1.

The children have a new playground pal! Percy the Pigeon has become a break-time celebrity with an avid fan base. The children have learned all about pigeon habitats and how they behave in the wild. They've been so enthralled that they have formed a Pigeon Club to look after Percy and his pals. All year groups have joined the club of nature detectives, looking for pigeons in the trees, feathers on the ground and discussing the birds they have seen at home. Thank you to Mrs Glennie and Mrs Barber for inspiring this initiative!

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

Attendance this week was 96.7%, above our school target of 96%. Thank you for supporting us with this, we are very pleased to see the improvement.

Finally, calling any tree surgeons out there - would you be willing to give advice and quote for the removal of some trees on the school boundary? If so please contact the school office. 

Best wishes
Helen Castell

Safeguarding

NSPCC's Talk PANTS intiative helps children understand that their body belongs to them, and they should tell someone they trust if anything makes them feel upset or worried. There is more information on their website here:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/

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 fabulous and fun week! Obvious highlights were Dolphins lunch and World Book Day. It was so lovely to see so many parents at Family Learning Time. The children enjoyed sharing their learning with you (even if a few find it difficult when you need to go!). They quickly regained the composure by participating in a range of Julia Donaldson themed activities, creating riddles, enjoying quizzes, comparing and contrasting ‘The Highway Rat’ and ‘Room on the Broom’ and even joining in with a dance workshop linked to the books too. 

We completed our multiplication and division unit by solving word problems using different strategies.

This half term we are exploring the world. The children have learnt a song to remember the 7 continents and 5  - oceans. Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE - continents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BE4VcYngQ - oceans

We will be moving onto finding out about each of the continents in turn over the upcoming weeks. Our very busy week ended in a lovely Yoga session with Mrs Easteal.

Please click here for this week's home learning.

Year 1 News

It was lovely to see those that could attend Family Learning Time this week and to see such fantastic Julia Donaldson themed hats/headbands! If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry! This week we have made predictions of what we think ‘How to find gold’ is about and designed our own front covers using our predictions. We have introduced numbers within 50 and explored and represented them in different ways. We looked at adding the suffix ‘ing’ to words too. We have made some fantastic maps of the school too. Mrs Gowers helped us to improve our basketball skills by bending our knees and shooting at the hoop! We also performed our fantastic class dance that was taught on world book day, maybe the children could perform it for you at home?!
Please click here for this week's home learning.

EYFS News

This week we have been looking at 'The Gruffalo' . We really enjoyed 'Family Learning Time' and showing you our dance moves! We have played lots of Gruffalo themed games and have been developing our vocabulary with all the wonderful words in the book. We made up a 'Secret Story' about the Gruffalo and looked at all the rhyming words in the book. We wrote about the story too and used our phonics to help us write the words. This week in phonics we have learnt the word 'you' and the phonemes ow, oi and ear. In maths we have been looking at the number 7 and have found all the different ways seven can be made.

Please make sure you keep reading at home as much as you can. Don't forget the words and sounds too. Please record your reads on the 'Lucky Listener' cards.
Have a lovely weekend.

Forest School News

Dolphins - Tuesday 28th February

We have been doing activities based on World book day celebrating Julia Donaldson. The children found the real Stickman and Superworm and were super busy with lots of other creative activities, some are on display at the front of the school. We talked about the Northern lights and how lucky some children were to see this happen.

Parrots - Wednesday 1st March

We were still busy with World Book day preparations. Today was scarecrow building day. This was fun and very messy. As we will be sowing pumpkin seeds soon we have been preparing a new area where the pumpkins will be going, the Pumpkin Patch will prove to be very popular as time goes on.
As well as activities set out daily ( with links to their topics in class) the children always have access to the ninja line, swings, slack line, balance beams, digging and gardening as well as calming activities of their choice, colouring in the quiet polytunnel, reading in the play house or cooking in the mud kitchen or bug hunting.