The Courier

Schools across England are being asked to donate science goggles and other apparatus to the NHS due to a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. Despite a major effort by the Government to deliver extra supplies they are just not arriving quickly enough.

The Crescent School was contacted by our local Hospital of St Cross. Staff at the hospital were having to share PPE equipment and they asked if the school had any protective equipment to spare as school-quality PPE would be better than no PPE at all.

The Crescent was only too happy to help and donated 18 pairs of Science and DT goggles for the nurses at St Cross to use. Science teacher Jo Byrne explains, “The nurses have been sharing equipment so they really appreciated our donation, the lady who came and collected the googles was incredibly grateful and said they would make a huge difference.”

Supporting each other is what really matters, and Crescent was delighted to help the NHS at this difficult time.

We invited the children who will join us in Reception 2020 to share photos of what they had been learning this week.  We have loved hearing from them all and are delighted to welcome them to our Crerscent family.

• Flora has been joining in with Fred's work
• Finlay has been practising maths with his sisters
• Hermione and Elliott joined their sisters being pirates
• Evie has been creative at home
• Beau watched Assembly with Barnaby ... they were both mesmerised! 
• Feranmi took advantage of the sunshine to nurture his plants
• Uma loves arts and crafts and has been painting, colouring and making an Easter bonnet (albeit a little early).  She has also enjoying the beautiful sunshine in the garden with brother Shiv
• Max has been counting, painting rainbows and planting potatoes with his brother Edward
• Katie has been fully engaged in painting, role playing, baking (and eating) goodies and computer games
• Lucas has been enjoying PE with Joe and his brother

Please do keep us updated as we love seeing the photos.

As the children continue their learning, in a very different way, the school is keen to ensure we all stay in touch with our Crescent family.

Every week Mr Thackway will share his assembly providing the parents and children with a friendly face and news about what is happening in our virtual school.

The first video was sent out on Tuesday and appears to have been a great success. Here are some of the lovely comments we have received:

"We wanted to thank you for the virtual assembly this morning which is an inspired idea! We all watched it over breakfast and it really lifted us all and set us on the right track for the day. Please please do consider doing more of these to help us stay connected."

"We really enjoyed assembly and learning about spring."

"We enjoyed Mr Thackway’s assembly very much (made me emotional!)"

"Thank you for that lovely assembly. It is very reassuring to see you, hear your voice and see the familiar Crescent School Promise sign. I'm sure it has helped all the children, not to mention the staff, to find some sense of normality amongst all the extraordinary things that we are having to cope with."

"Crescent School is very lucky to have such a strong and kind leader and I am sure I am not the only one to be very glad you are our Headmaster."

Thank you for all the messages of support, we will continue to record and share these assemblies with you.

If you would like a copy of this week's Assembly please contact Mrs Tucker.

Crescent School

At the end of this term we say goodbye to Pat Lines, who is moving to Yorkshire to be nearer to her family.

Many of the children know Pat very well. Pat is a retired teacher with many years of experience and has supported the children with their reading here for a number of years. However Pat's support for our school community extends much further as Pat has also been a much respected and invaluable member of the governing body, both here at Crescent School and in the Princethorpe Foundation. Some of you may know that Pat's husband Nigel was in fact the Chair of Governors for number of years here at the Crescent during Huw Marshall's time in charge.

Throughout her 15 year association with the school, Pat has been a volunteer, she has never received any payment for all of the hard work and expertise she has shared so freely. Indeed, she has been an invaluable sounding board for me in my first three years in post and has played a key role in the staff recruitment we have carried out during that time.

Many, many thanks to Pat from everybody here, where she will be remembered very fondly. We wish her very well.

Best wishes

Joe Thackway

I hope everyone is enjoying this new website; I seem to have been challenged a lot this week! I would like to get leader boards started that we can then celebrate in the Courier. It seems that each class can have the speediest TT Rock Star and that gets you up the status board on the poster.

To get on this board you have to tackle the single player games - Garage, Studio & Soundcheck, the multi-player games do not count. These games also earn more coins than the multiplayer games too.

This week, speediest in each class are:

• 1E - No one on the board yet
• 2W - No one on the board yet
• 3S - Grace M - Wannabe!
• 4M- Aryan - Headliner!
• 5F- Hany - Rock Legend!
• 6W- Sienna - Rock Star!
• 6Y - Ariana - Rock Star!

I have also set up a 'Battle' Thursday to Thursday, 'Girls Vs Boys' for the whole school. Battles add up any points as you play!

I will let you know who wins in the next Courier. Stay Calm and Keep Rocking!

Assistant Head

Philosophy I hear you say? Surely this is really boring but no - if you chat to any of the children who come to my Philosophy club it is a great time to explore, question and often laugh, but the one thing you must do is listen to the ideas of others.

Each week I am  going to share a question or a story or a video that can prompt a discussion over your dinner table or whilst you are just sat chatting.

Let me know any of your thoughts to these questions.

sarahwebb@crescentschool.co.uk

Richard Harcourt has been appointed to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
Mr Harcourt lives locally in Stretton on Dunsmore and has three children who all attended Princethorpe College.

After leaving school at the age of 16, Mr Harcourt started an Engineering Apprenticeship at Dunlop Aerospace in Coventry. In a career spanning some 40 years he travelled the world, including a four-year stint based in Canada, before finally retiring in 2018 as the Director of Operations at Rolls Royce. He now splits his time between non-executive work and his hobbies of golf, gardening and travelling.

Mr Harcourt, comments, “My children all attended Princethorpe College and benefitted hugely from the terrific learning environment the Foundation offers. I am therefore thrilled to be asked to join the Board of Trustees and to support the Foundation as it continues to develop and thrive.”

Eddie Tolcher, Foundation Bursar and Clerk to the Trustees said, “Richard will bring a wealth of commercial experience to the Foundation’s Governing Body. His experience, insight and advice will be very much appreciated.”

To help families new to the school, and as a reminder for all, we thought we would share some tips for navigating The Courier on your phone.

Each weekly edition of The Courier will have a general overview message followed by an index list of the news and information, split into categories, as clickable title links.

Top Tip - Save the link below into your bookmarks so you can view the Courier in your browser whenever is convenient each week:

The Courier

Here are some more tips for navigating The Courier on your phone:

• Click the title link of the article or event you are interested in (this will open the newsletter in your browser with the article you have selected)
• From here you can scroll through all the articles in this category
• To get back to the top of a category quickly, use the green arrow in the bottom right of your browser. Click this and you will jump to the top of the page, the category index
• The category index will list all the articles in that category that week
• Select ‘Newsletter Index’, to return you to the main newsletter index listing all the categories and articles
• To move between different editions of The Courier use the green button with three white lines at the top of the newsletter. Click this and you can choose which weekly edition of The Courier you would like to browse.