The Courier

• We have the open book event on Tuesday 3 July and parents should arrive at the front entrance for this at 3.00pm.  Car parking will be available on the school playground.
  
  
• On the same day we have the Welcome Evening for parents whose children are attending Crescent next year. Again for this event, extra car parking will be available on the school playground from 6.45pm and parents can enter the hall via the Pathfinders outdoor play space. We will start at around 7.00pm and aim to be finished by 8.15pm or 8.30pm. This will of course be a very useful evening for both new and returning families to meet their new form tutors and I will also be giving a short address before you go off to your respective classes.
  
  
• Also next week, reports will be going out to everyone, other than Class V, on Wednesday. These are very important documents of course and I know the staff have worked hard to reflect accurately the work that the children have done through the year and also set achievable targets for their next class. I know you will read these carefully and support the messages from the school that are designed to layout the next steps for progress of each child.
  
  
• Later next week we have a summer concert on Thursday, starting at 2.15pm, in the school hall. This event will be followed by refreshments and will be a lovely way to finish the musical year.
  
  
• Finally, on Friday we welcome the Class VI parents to our leavers' assembly. Those parents will receive a separate email regarding arrangements for this.

I do hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend and we all summon up the energy for a final last action packed week in school.

Please click on the link below to view the weekly calendar.  This details all the co-curricular clubs running, fixtures and additional information.

There is no Drama Club after school on Thursday for the remainder of this term.

Weekly Calendar - 2 July 2018 

Crescent School

It is with great sadness that we inform you that we have heard that Chris Vickers (Headteacher 2000-2002) passed away last week. She had been ill for some time.

Chris had taught maths and science both in this country and in the USA. She was Head of Science at Westland’s High School before it became part of Bilton High, and Head of Physics at Newbold Grange High School, which later became Avon Valley School.

In the mid-1980s Chris took up a post teaching maths and science at Crescent School, and was involved in the move from Horton Crescent to our present site. Headmaster Ian Wren appointed her as Deputy Head and when he retired in 2000 she took on the role of acting Headteacher, staying on an extra year until Huw Marshall was appointed in 2002.

After retiring from Crescent she became Chair of Governors, and Chair of Performance and Standards Committee at Bilton Infant School, having lived opposite the school for nearly 40 years. She had a Master’s Degree in Education Management and also worked as a School Inspector. Chris’ daughter, Laura, also taught Art at the Crescent School for a few years. Chris will be remembered as an excellent teacher, Deputy and Head, who was firm but fair and kind too.

Sports Day was blisteringly hot, but the Crescent’s pupils are made of strong stuff and not even a dust devil, a strong whirlwind column of air, whipping across the field could put them of their stride.  Race after race, event after event our outstanding young athletes, leapt, threw and ran, surpassing many previous achievements to make this year’s Sports Day another super, smashing, record breaking success.

Our combined Prep and Pre-Prep Sports Day took place on Monday 25 June.  The school travelled the short distance to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Track in Rugby, to make use of their fantastic athletics facilities.

The Pre-Prep children enjoyed all the usual traditional sports day races including sprints, egg and spoon, skipping and the ever popular obstacle race. Then after a break to refuel, they finished their competition with the relay shuttle race.

The Prep children took part in sprints, a middle distance 800m race, the Long Jump and High Jump, a Throwing Challenge and the Relay Race.  All of the events were hotly contested and plenty of new school records were set. They included:

• Year 4 Long Jump - George Bell - 3.56m - Red House
• Year 4 Throw - Josh Gorbutt - 32.9m - Red House
• Year 5/6 High Jump - Matthew Browne - 1.24m - Red House
• Year 5/6 Long Jump - Oliver Bell - 4m - Red House
• Year 5/6 Throwing - Gabriel White - 41.6m - Yellow House

At the Crescent, Sports Day isn’t just about the competition, it is all about the participation. Every child ran in a sprint and every child took part in an individual event and, most importantly, every child had fun.  As is always the case the children’s behaviour was impeccable, they offered support and encouragement to each other and congratulated and commiserated with good heart.

At the end of the afternoon Mr Thackway announced the House results and presented the trophies.  

• Years 1 and 2 Overall - Blue House
• Years 3 and 4 Overall - Yellow House
• Years 5 and 6 Overall - Red House

A big thank you to all of the staff involved, and also to the Princethorpe Prefects who came over to help out.

It was a fabulous, fun-filled, super, sporty, sunny afternoon!

On Tuesday 26 June, Crescent Reception children joined together with their Pathfinder friends for our EYFS Sports Day.

On an extremely hot day, parents were treated to children all involved, all active and all enjoying a series of events. These included javelin throwing, sprints, obstacle races and relays.

This all took place in a competitive but supportive environment with the winners being congratulated by all the children and the nurturing of a hopefully lifelong love of sport.

I am bowing to popular demand and offering a one-off World Cup Sticker swap club in Class VI at morning break on Tuesday 3 July. Anyone with swaps of their Panini stickers or Match Attacks is welcome to come along to trade them.

The real reason for this is that it gives me a chance to get rid of some swaps of my own and boost my son’s collection!

Best wishes

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

29 September 2018

As many of you know, 2018 is a big year for Crescent School. Not only will we celebrate our 70th birthday and mark the 30th anniversary since we moved to our Bawnmore Road home, it is also the year that we have launched our past pupils’ association - Old Crescentians!

To mark our Platinum Anniversary and celebrate our rich history, Crescent School is holding a series of events over the Michaelmas Term. These events will provide the opportunity for Old Crescentians (pupils, parents, staff and governors) to meet with each other, members of our current community including our new Headmaster, Joe Thackway, and to see the school today.

Our first event will be an Open House on Saturday 29 September, where we will open our doors from 2.00pm to 4.00pm and welcome the Crescent community past and present back into school to celebrate our double anniversary.

Following the afternoon’s festivities, we are holding a wonderful Dinner Dance at Princethorpe College. The perfect chance to reminisce over a delicious 3-course meal, with live music and dancing. The dress code for the evening will be black tie and equivalent for ladies.

Tickets will cost £40 per head and each person can apply for two tickets. We are keen to ensure that all members of the Crescent community have an equal chance of attending so tickets will be allocated on a lottery basis.

We would be delighted to receive your application for tickets via an online form between 10.00am Saturday 30 June and 6.00pm on Saturday 14 July. Please visit: http://bit.ly/CS_DDTickets18 to enter the lottery for tickets.

A ticket lottery will then be drawn and applicants will be notified wc Monday 16 July 2018 as to whether they have been successful or not. Notification will be made by email.

If successful, you will be requested to make full payment for the tickets by Friday 3 August 2018, this can be done by cheque or BACS payment and details will be provided. In the event of over subscription we will operate a waiting list.

Do put the date in your diary and encourage any Old Crescentians you know to get back in touch with the school and to come and join in the celebrations!

Other events we have lined up for the Michaelmas term include:

OCs Inaugural Pub Meet – The Merchants Inn – Friday 23 November from 6.30pm

A pub famed for its collection of real-ale and love of rugby, The Merchants Inn is nestled on Little Church Street in the heart of Rugby town centre. A great chance to get together in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere – all are welcome including partners/friends.

Crescent Platinum Anniversary Carol Service – The Temple Speech Rooms, Rugby School – Monday 17 December, 6.30pm

Going back to our roots, we are delighted to be holding a special Platinum Anniversary Carol Service at Rugby School in the Temple Speech Rooms close to our original Horton Crescent home. The perfect way to round off the Michaelmas term, join us for a mince pie or two and some wonderful performances by current Crescent pupils.

More information will follow about these events in the coming months.

We have created a Facebook Group, Old Crescentians, which can be found here: www.facebook.com/groups/oldcrescentians to help connect past pupils. If there are any past pupils who do not have Facebook, they can email pastpupils@crescentschool.co.uk or contact the main office on 01788 521595.

We hope you will join us for what will be a wonderful celebration of 70 years.

Next term we are celebrating the Platinum Anniversary of the opening of the Crescent School. To mark the occasion we have a number of events planned.

It is important that the children are aware of the history of our school and are a part of our celebrations. So we are planning an 'off timetable' day in the second week of term where we will look at and experience social history over the past 70 years. On this day we are asking all children and staff to dress in the fashion associated with any of the decades from 1940 to the modern day. Hopefully by informing you now, you can have fun over the school holidays creating your child's outfit.

It will be lovely to see the children coming to school dressed from any of these distinctive decades.

Tuesday 3 July 7.00pm

The Welcome Evening is for parents whose children are attending the Crescent School next year. This is a very useful evening for both new and returning families, you will have the opportunity to meet your child's new form tutor and Mr Thackway will give a short address.

The School Playground will be open to park on from 6.45pm.  Please enter the School Hall via the Pathfinders outdoor play space.

Thursday 5 July 2.15pm

All the musicians in the school - and there are many of them - have been working hard preparing for our Summer Concert next week.

Starting at 2.15pm on Thursday 5 July, Choir, Orchestra, Brass Group, Mini Brass, Class VI recorders, Wacky Music, Classes III, IV(M) and (Y) and various soloists will perform for your delectation and delight. Do come and support all the hard work that has been going on this term

Well done to the follwoing children for achieving their first Junior da Vinci student status:

• Matthew Thomas in Maths
• Thomas Brinklow in Art and Design 

This week the following children have achieved an additional Junior da Vinci student status:

• George Crowfoot in Art and Design
• Maya Patel in English
• Rania Akbik in Science
• Sienna Moran in R.E.

These are all fantastic achievements.

• Leela Matharu
• Samuel Oldham

It has been a great year for reading and the children are still enjoying books.

Please can all school reading books for Classes III - VI be back in school by Wednesday 4 July.  Over the summer we like to do an audit, checking that we have a good range across the year groups.  Please check under beds, on shelves and in bags and send them into your form tutor.

Thank you for all your continued support with reading out of school, keep it up over the summer, it can be a good time to visit your local library and bookshops.

On Wednesday 13 June Crescent fielded their first all girls cricket team in a tournament hosted by Rugby School and their Director of Cricket, ex Warwickshire player, Michael Powell. The tournament was held on the prestigious Close where we took on four other schools, Milton Keynes Prep School, Spratton, Winchester House and St. Anselm’s.

The day started with a short Masterclass from Mr Powell before going into four hours of games play against the other schools, playing Barrington Rules 10 pairs cricket, requiring all girls to bowl and bat. It was a fabulous experience, with all the girls making marked improvements in their bowling, batting and fielding skills throughout the day. The girls showed great team spirit and wonderful support for each other encouraging everyone at all times.

Well done girls a fabulous day, making us proud yet again.

U9 and U11 Rounder’s teams travelled to Stafford Prep school on Thursday 21 June to take part in the ISA Rounders tournament. The tournament had received a record number of entries this year with 16 schools involved in the U11 and 9 schools in the U9.

The tournament was organised into two pools and then the final round based upon the pool results.  This enabled all students to have lots opportunity to play lots of different schools.

The U11 team peaked at just the right time, having had a warm-up game against Kingsley the night before to iron out and improve development areas.  It seems to have paid dividends!

They took on Birchfield, Old Vicarage and St Joseph’s in their pool and played fantastically, winning their first game against St Josephs 9-4 and then beating Birchfield 6-4 with some amazing batting from Georgia Dowling, Olivia Sarkies, Amelie Edge and some fantastic running from Olivia Monk, Rebecca Montieth and Mia Webb who watched the ball well and took advantage of misfielded balls to hit and score full rounders.

The winner of the pool all rested on the final game against The Old Vicarage.  It was a strong and close game which unfortunately finished with Old Vicarage winning 4-3.

This put us in the second pool for round 2, looking to secure 5th-8th place. In this round we took on Malvern St James, St Winifred’s and Highfield Knoll. Again fabulous consistent bowling from Clara Woolf put us in contention for all games with solid fielding from all players, with Lucy Hardy and Mia Webb moving in and out of field to support balls coming in to bases from the Olivia Sarkies, Sophie Causer and Cara Ridd who were out in the deep field.

Results were:
Malvern St James 10.5 Crescent 9
St Winifred’s 11 Crescent 2
Highfield Knoll 8 Crescent 8
Fabulous team play from all students involved.

Mrs McCollin

The U9 team started their first pool game against Birchfield School in a positive fashion and fielded well. They then backed this up with some confident running whilst batting. With only 20 balls to score from the girls had to make the most of their opportunities and they did this well finishing with a 8-7 win. The next pool game was equally close against a strong Dodderhill side. There were some close run outs and some more great batting, but this time Crescent lost by just half a rounder, 7-7½. This left us second in the pool and fighting for 4th-6th place.

Our next opponents were the host school Stafford Grammar and the girls really upped their game for this match. Positive running and batting gave us a really good score to defend and much better decisions in the field resulted in run outs coming thick and fast at 2nd post, preventing Stafford from scoring. Added to this was an outstanding bowling display from Amelie Frere and Crescent secured a comfortable win 10-3.

Our final match was against Crackley Hall and the winner of this would take 4th place. Crescent batted first and found Crackley to be a very slick fielding side and despite our best efforts restricted our scoring. Crescent would now need an outstanding fielding performance to win. I was so proud to see the girls' confidence and learning from the days' play in evidence from the off and without a doubt they produced their best fielding display of the day. Unfortunately it was not quite enough and we lost the final game by a nail biting 2 rounders - 3 rounders.

I would like to congratulate the girls for their fantastic attitude and behaviour throughout the day, they were a pleasure to take and it made me very proud to have so much positive feedback about them from other school staff. It really was a day where you could see the improvement from match to match and I hope that they all enjoyed their day as much as I did, they should be very proud of themselves.

Mrs Dowling

In total this year's Summer Fete raised over £2,100 and after we remove the costs of the donkeys, inflatables, prizes etc. we have raised £1,500 for the school. This is a tremendous amount of money and a massive thank you goes to all my wonderful FoC Parents and Grandparents who tirelessly help to put on all our events. 

In total this academic year we have:

• Put on a Draycote water sponsored walk in aid of the Guide Dogs
• 7 market days raising over £1,000 in cake alone
• 2 movie nights
• Parents' Quiz night
• Christmas Bazaar
• Parents Christmas party
• Mother's Day and Father's Day craft activity
• Christmas cards, mugs and coasters
• Show Us Your Talent Show
• Children's Disco
• and the Summer Fete

Wow what a year! In total this has raised over £6,000 and in addition we've raised £1,685 for the Guide Dog Association. 

I've been asked what we will be looking to spend this money on going forward. Over £2,000 has already gone back into school buying games, toys, crafts etc for privilege time, plus we have purchased equipment for Happy Playtimes. We are also looking into an initiative to purchase benches for the playground too and I'll update on this when we have further information.

A massive thank you to all my wonderful FoC parents and Grandparents who tirelessly help to put on all our events and especially the Summer Fete and Christmas Bazaar. You really are an amazing group of people.

We are saying goodbye to Karen Louch, Nicola Bentley and to Claire Pinks from the committee as their children leave the school. I really appreciate how you have all thrown yourself into the committee. You are going to all be sorely missed.

Looking forward to September we have the following dates already in the calendar:

• FoC meeting - Monday 10 September
• Class VI market day - Friday 21 September
• Class V market day - Friday 12 October
• Parents Quiz night - Friday 12 October
• FoC meeting - Monday 12 November
• Movie night - Friday 16 November
• Christmas Bazaar - Friday 7 December
• Parents Christmas Party - Friday 14 December
• Class IV market day - Friday 14 December

Zara Corbin
FoC Chair

Please click on the link below to view the upcoming lunch menu: 

Crescent Menu Week Commencing 2 July 2018

Crescent School Office

Please see attachements below for information on out of school holiday clubs that are running over the Summer holidays.  The clubs are provided by external providers and not the Crescent School.

British Athletics Star Track

Encore Music Workshop

Fun Summer Camp

JKM Swim School

KA Kits Academy

Musicmania Summer

Princethorpe Netball

Rugby Cricket Coaching Company Summer Cricket Course

Rugby Cricket Club Camp 22 - 24 August

Rugby Cricket Club Camp 28 - 30 August

Wasps Netball Camp

Willoughby Cricket Club Camp

Please click on the link below to read all about what the Reception Class have been learning over the last fortnight.

Reception Round Up