The Courier

Over the last year, the kind-hearted children at Crescent School, have gone the extra mile for Birmingham Children’s Hospital, a charity they hold close to their hearts.

Pupils began fundraising for the charity back in May 2022, running a host of different events to say thank you to the hospital for the support and care they are providing to families within the school.

Amongst their many different fundraising activities the children took part in ‘Move It’ Day, where the whole school ran 90 laps of the school’s fields on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the summer, to represent the 90,000 poorly children helped by the hospital each year. To raise further funds there have been whole school non-uniform days, with the children wearing red (the charity’s colour), football kit and even Christmas Jumpers. Individual pupils have also undertaken fundraising activities, most notably in December when five-year-old Alexandria and Niamh, both in Year 1, completed a sponsored 25 lap run of the playground raising over £600.

The School Council has also organised lots of fundraising games and competitions for the children to take part in, including the unusual but popular ‘Distance potato throwing’ and ‘Guess the name of the pig?’, as well as collections at the school gates and after concerts and events. Donations were even given for the school’s internal Christmas card postal service.

The school's Parents Association, Friends of Crescent, has supported the children’s fundraising too with a grand prize raffle at their Christmas Bazaar.

After all that fundraising was totalled up the children were delighted to find out that they had raised £3,783.37 and this week, on Tuesday 7 February, the children warmly welcomed Birmingham Children’s Hospital representative, Will Graves, into school to receive a cheque.

Joe Thackway, Headmaster at Crescent School, said: “No fundraising stone was left unturned for this worthy cause. Every single pupil at our school was keen to get involved with supporting Birmingham Children’s Hospital, wanting to do something to show how much they care. We’re so proud of them, and the wider school community, who have come together to do their bit to support the important work that Birmingham Children’s Hospital does.”

After three years of feeding Crescent’s hungry hordes, our much-loved Chef Stephen Moore is moving on. Stephen is taking on a new challenge as the Executive Chef of the Queens Arms in Leire and The Social in Lutterworth. We are all sorry that he is dessert-ing us but are delighted that his new role will allow him to take his daughter to school. Next week is his last week here at Crescent.

Olive Catering have appointed a new Chef Manager for Crescent School and we are all looking forward to meeting Dawn who will start in early March but who will be here next week for a few days as part of the handover process. One of Olive Catering’s Support Managers will cover temporarily until Dawn is in place.

During his time with us Stephen has championed foods grown in the UK, and cooked food that parents want their children to eat and that the children want to eat too. His themed days have always gone down well, and we will never forget Jedi Master Mr Moore and his team of storm troopers cooking up our very special Star Wars themed lunch.

We are sure you will all join us in wishing Stephen the very best.

Crescent’s fingers have been flying across the keyboards over the last week as the children have battled it out in the Foundation’s inaugural Typing Challenge.

The competition involved the children in Years 3 to 6 from Crescent School and Crackley Hall School going head to head in a speed challenge during their Computing lesson. They carried out several ‘5-Minute Typing Challenges’ designed to measure just how much they were able to type in five minutes. The challenge tested their typing speed in WPM (words per minute) and also their typing accuracy.

Crescent School was delighted to be crowned champions in the overall competition, winning hands down with an amazing average pupil score of 10 words per minute faster than their Crackley counterparts, all that pre-competition practice standing them in very good stead.

St David’s House took the in school House competition, a long way ahead of St George’s and St Andrew’s.

In the unofficial staff competition there was only ever going to be one winner, as anyone who has seen her typing can attest to, Mrs Clarke has fingers so fleet they are almost a blur. Her score of 79 words per minute was applauded by all.

The school’s speediest typists were heartily congratulated, a huge well done to Year 5 Grace who scored 48 wpm, and was the Foundation’s overall winner, Year 6 Zahra who finished second with a score of 46 wpm and Year 6 Zara who was third with 43 wpm.

Typing is an essential life skill today as we interact with the online world and speed competitions have seen a resurgence in popularity. The world record is currently 216 wpm so our youngsters need to keep practising as they have a little way to go yet!

Wanted; pre-loved Puddle Suits for our Forest School.  If you have any that you no longer need, please drop into the school office.

Crescent School