The Courier

For a two or three week period this year we will be focusing on one of the sayings in the School Promise. We will talk about this in assembly and in form period. It would be great if you could discuss this with your children at home and support the messages we are emphasising in school.

This week’s promise is an excellent one to start the year with and is in the category of Good Friends:

‘We are kind to each other’ 

During the school summer holidays, Crescent received the results of the summer Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examinations. Director of Music, Julie Barnes was delighted that the children achieved a 100% pass rate. She said, “It was a big achievement for the children just to be able to take their exams, after the disruption and upheaval to normal lessons. The pupils were amazing and adapted well to a new way of learning. Their success in their music examinations was a testament to their hard work.”

21 children sat the exams, from Grade 1 up to Grade 5, on the Flute, Piano, Trombone, Cello, Recorder, Cornet, Horn and in Singing. Three children were awarded a Distinction and 10 received a Merit.

Mrs Barnes continued, “Thank you for all the support parents gave at home allowing children to have lessons online and in keeping them practising.”

A huge well done to all the children involved!

Congratulations to Sophia in Class 2W who came third in the ISA Handprint National Competition for her P is for Peacock entry.

We are very proud of you Sophia, her winning entry is this week's cover photo.

We received a lovely email this week from Mrs Capper regarding a good deed that Annalise, Roisin & Finn did this summer:

"They decided to make up children’s activity packs for children less fortunate than them. We contacted the local foodbank in Rugby who loved the idea and said that they would distribute to families on their list with young children.

We set up a Just Giving page and set a target of £150 (the amount needed to ensure all families on the Rugby Foodbank list would receive a pack). We smashed the target within a few hours of going live, so we contacted the Coventry foodbank to see if they wanted to be included in the initiative, which they did.

We researched different toys / activities to include in the packs and Annalise worked out the costs. Overall we raised over £500 and the children prepared over 100 packs for distribution. Thank you to everyone that supported our initiative. For those children that have spent months at home with little or nothing to play with, this meant a lot!"

What a wonderful story! The children have done such a good deed in lots of their own time, which shows real commitment.

Many of you may have noticed that there are T-Targets in your child's exercise books and on 'How to support your child'.

These were developed with the children and all the staff so all knew what was expected in their school work and not just in English. This will be used in our marking at age appropriate levels from 1S upwards. These targets also fit in well with one of our whole school targets:

• To embed pupil self-regulation to achieve high performance 

As parents it would be great if you could support us with these in their homework.

Our new Scholastic Book Club is up and running! Go to http://schools.scholastic.co.uk/the-crescent to browse the latest books and order online. For every £1 you spend on this month’s Book Club, our school will earn 20p in Scholastic Rewards.

Please place your order online by 2 October 2020.

Thank you for your support with this.

I know that you will be keen to start Accelerated Reading, we are also keen to keep making good progress and build a love of reading. As soon as we can, there will be an assessment to get children started on Accelerated Reading and then they will be guided to specific levels of books, in the meantime they can read a book of their choice and their enjoyment level.

All quizzing is to now be done at home as there will be no Accelerated Reading quiz time before school due to us not being able to mix year groups. This will be available between 7.00am and 7.00pm everyday even on weekends, the children can then feedback in their English lessons to their teacher and be rewarded as before.

All reading will be monitored closely by Mrs Dowling and Mrs Yates.  We know that reading is a foundation to so much learning, children's reading will be listened to in school safely but no volunteer readers will be able to support reading, for the time being. Please support your child's reading at home too, listening to them read regularly.

Please use this link when the children have been taught how to quiz and save it:

Accelerated Reading Year 3

Children will receive their login details which will be given to them in the first few weeks of term and a letter to guide you will be sent out when children are ready to quiz at home. They can read books from our library and classroom but they will be put into quarantine for 3 days before being returned to the shelf for other children to borrow safely. 

You are all invited to an information session about our online platforms on Tuesday 15 September, details will be sent out shortly, this will enable you to understand and help your child in their learning.

Thank you for your support with reading.

I know how keen you will all be to get back to Accelerated Reading. We really want to re-establish good routines and continue progress with our reading provision. We also want to make sure this is all done safely for all involved.

All quizzing is to now be done at home as there will be no Accelerated Reading quiz time before school, due to not being able to mix year groups. This will be available 7:00am to 7.00pm everyday even on weekends, children can then feedback in their English lessons to their teacher and be rewarded as before.

All reading will be monitored closely as before by TAs and teachers.  We know that reading is a foundation to so much learning, children's reading will be listened to in school safely but no volunteer readers will be able to support reading, for the time being. Please support your child's reading at home too, listening to them read regularly, even the Year 6 children appreciate it.

Please use this link and save it:

Accelerated Reading Years 4-6

Children will receive their login details which will be given to them in the first few days of term. They can continue to read books from our library but they will be put into quarantine for 3 days before being returned to the shelf. 

Any questions please get in touch with your form tutor.

Thank you for your support with reading.

We are all keen to establish good reading routines as we return to school, as we value reading highly at Crescent. We are also aware of keeping everyone safe, so we wanted to share some protocols we are putting in place:

• Children will be given a book to read and a reading record in their folder during the first week of term. As you know, parents and staff work together listening to children read at home everyday and in school everyday, communicating through the reading record - this communication is really valuable.

• All reading at school will be done at a safe distance, we will use gloves to handle books and write in their reading record book. When a book is returned, completed to school, we will quarantine it for 3 days before we return it to the shelf or share with another child.

• They will have access to Reading Bugs (an online platform) to supplement their reading, details about this will be shared by form teachers and there is an information session for parents about learning platforms that children have access to on Monday 14 September.  Details of this will be sent out shortly.

Thank you for your support with reading.

Warwickshire County Council have advised the following update regarding the Crossing Patrol:

I wanted to update you on the current situation regarding the School Crossing Patrol that many of your pupils use.

​As you will appreciate there are a number of factors we need to consider in terms of site health and safety and how this is impacted by Covid19 guidance. We are ​therefore currently undergoing a reinstatement ​ and risk assessment process to support the School Crossing Patrols returning to their duties. ​Due to the unique circumstances each site will be assessed individually. Until we have fully evaluated the impact​s and put in place any required mitigation the Patrol will not be able to return to duties.  

We are collaborating with Public Health and Health and Safety in conjunction with the latest government guidance. A pilot site will be use​d to assess the above and design guidance to use and reinstate Patrols as soon as possible.  

​We will, of course, keep updated as this work progresses.

If you have any questions then please contact:

Warwickshire County Council

The School Shop will not open to parents at the end of the school day for the time being. If you need to contact the School shop please email in the first instance to uniform@princethorpe.co.uk.

When ordered items are ready for collection, they will be sent to Crescent School.

Eddie Tolcher
Foundation Bursar