What’s On – Friday 26th May

Message from Mrs. Castell

Dear Parents

I cannot believe another half term is over! My thanks as ever go to our staff for their unwavering commitment to the children and to you, our families, for working so well in partnership with us. As we come into the last half term of the school year, there are several dates coming up so please take a look at our website to make a note for your diary.

We welcomed Reverend Tony to lead an assembly this week and we are delighted to say that he has agreed to join our school Governing Body from September.

As you are aware, we welcomed Ofsted to the school this week. We found it a rewarding experience and we look forward to sharing with you some of the lovely things said about our staff and our children. My thanks go to all our staff for their incredible effort and dedication, not just during the inspection but every day! Three days of very late nights and very early mornings does not phase them!

Prem Aware

We are delighted to be awarded Prem Aware status as a school. The Smallest Things charity are running a workshop for parents, details of which can be found in "How To Support Your Premature Child At School" - please do take a look.

Word Aware

This week's wonderful word is chosen by Foxes class, which is "entomologist". We would be grateful if you would talk about this word and try to use it with your children.

Attendance

Attendance this week was 91.5% compared to our school target of 96%.

Have a lovely half term. A reminder that Monday 5th June is a non pupil day and children return on Tuesday 6th June. The staff will be working off site, so please do not come to the school.

Enjoy your weekend.

Helen Castell

Safeguarding

Hanni and the Magic Window - ChildNet
Helping young children in difficult situations to seek support has always been hard. ChildNet has released a downloadable story over on their site, aimed at children aged three and up. Their objective is to make them aware of how to seek help. By following the link below you can also find simplified resources around the story, as well as the story itself.
https://www.childnet.com/resources/hanni-and-the-magic-window/

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.

Message from WISPA

Date for your diary: On Friday 16th June WISPA, WJSPA & Mothers CAN Chelmsford are running a Children's Clothes Swap. They are a great way to get rid of your unwanted items as well as get some preloved/new to you items at an extremely low cost whilst being kind to the planet. It is £4 to swap 10 items.

To book and find to out more information, please visit the Eventbrite page https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/642880742607

We are in need of some clothes rails, a table & children's hangers. If you are able to loan any to us, please email wispacharity@gmail.com so we can arrange to collect from you.

Year 2 News

May has whizzed by and we are approaching the children's final half term with us! They have been wonderful this week as we had a special visitor to our school. We had a Titanic theme to the week, which included a History lesson and learning how to draw the famous ship. We also secured our practice for telling the time including at 5 minute intervals and solving time problems.

We have seen the children grow so much this half term in confidence and enthusiasm and this has really been reflected in their academic work. We are incredibly proud of them all and it is lovely to see how proud they are of their achievements.

We hope you all have a restful half term after such a busy few weeks. The last part of the academic year is going to be filled with lots of fun activities, starting with the Mini Games on the day we return, Tuesday 6th June. Please make sure you have your PE kits including trainers in school and that they all fit!! Dolphins will also need their Forest School clothes.

Click here for this week's home learning and important reminders.

Year 1 News

What a lovely half term this has been! This week we have retold the story of ‘Marvellous Moon Map’ and used time conjunctions such as first, then, finally. We also looked at imperative verbs and used them to follow instructions. We made moon rock cakes and followed instructions, listening to the words mix and add. In maths, we have moved on to position and direction. We used the vocabulary forwards, backwards, left and right to move around the class. We linked this to our History as we learnt about who Tim Peake is and how he is a famous astronaut. We used a small figure of Tim Peake and moved him using the vocabulary we learnt in maths. Have a lovely half term! Thank you all for your support as always.

Please click here for this week's home learning.

EYFS News

We have had a great week, enjoying the sunshine and learning all about monkeys. Our poem was called 'Monkey Babies' and is all about keeping the babies safe. We learnt the words primate and troop, and discovered that we are primates too! In phonics we have been revising the tricky words, 'give', 'live', 'all', and 'was', and continuing to revise phase 3 sounds.
In maths we have begun looking at teen numbers and at estimating - we estimated how many bananas the baby monkey had in his bowl!
We have also been thinking about when we were little babies and how we have changed. We thought about the phrases, 'in the past', and 'in the present' to describe this.
The children enjoyed meeting our special visitor this week and were all very polite and welcoming!
We hope you have a lovely half term break.

Forest School

Tuesday
A great end to the forest school sessions for Sharks. We have told the sharks that we will have a Forest School party at some point before they go to juniors as we will miss them so much.

Wednesday
We had a busy day with the Foxes. They were very calm today and tried hapazome where they use a hammer to make some lovely prints on to fabric from some leaves and flowers. We found French lavender the best, so fragrant and had the best colour.
There was also a worm competition- the longest being 15cm.

Have a lovely half term from the Forest School team and enjoy National Children’s Gardening Week!