Dear Parents and Friends of the School,

A glance at the school diary confirms that we are rapidly coming towards the end of the longest term in the school calendar. Since my last newsletter, we have marked off another two significant milestones, with the excellent Christmas Fayre last Friday evening and the Christmas Cracker performance from the Year 2 children earlier in the week.

This last event was a real triumph, with the children performing wholeheartedly and with such joy and confidence. There was one comment from a visiting parent which I thought struck the nail on the head when they said it was a showcase for the benefits of specialist teaching in the school. The preparations the children had done in drama and music lessons raised the standard to such an extent that we almost felt we were in a professional production. Really well done to the children but also to their talented teachers.

Next week we look forward to the Carol Service at Princethorpe College for children in the upper school, as well as the traditional end of the term events with Christmas jumper day, Christmas lunch, a festive concert and celebration assemblies. We will be putting out an abbreviated version of the Courier next Wednesday as well to mark the end of an exciting term in school.

On Monday please also look out for the online publication of school reports for the children where you will be able to read in detail about the achievements and progress of the children in the year to date. Children in Year 5 will receive their reports at the February half term and I will be back in touch with those families at the beginning of next term with a detailed timeline on how we will support and manage your child's progression towards the entrance exams that await them in the now not too distant future.

Please read some high-level Parent Survey Feedback here from the parental survey that we put out to families at the beginning of this half term. Your contributions were very much valued, and I hope you find the feedback helpful. There will be more to come in the new year when I will look in more detail at some measures that we can put in place, so do watch out for that in due course.

I really must get my Christmas shopping moving this weekend, and I am also tempted to get the Christmas tree up. Is it too early? It seems this comes earlier and earlier each year and, as they say, if you can't beat them, join them. 

Whatever you have planned, I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Co-curricular clubs have finished today, Friday 13 December, with the exception of the clubs below:

• Monday 16 December - Yoga Reception and Year 1
• Tuesday 17 December - All Stars Football

After this date, if you require After School care please make sure you book this in advance through My School Portal so we can ensure correct staff ratios.

Sign up for Lent Term Clubs closes on Sunday 15 December, please ensure you have signed up for clubs.

Mrs Webb
Assistant Head

Rugby Baptist Church sent though a lovely thank you to the Choir (see photo)

We had a wonderful morning singing festive carols.  Thank you to the parents who attended.

Mrs Barnes
Director of Music

Finally, after much deliberation, the results of the half term Cookie Off were announced in this week's assembly. It was a closely fought contest, with amazing entries from all three houses, showing great skill and creativity. All entries earned house points for their houses.

 The overall winner was Esme in 5F, who made a range of autumn themed cookies. The spider was particularly super! Well done to everyone who took part, and look out for the next house competition soon!

Mrs Symons

Weekly Calendar 

Swimming takes on Monday and Tuesday only this week.

Weekly Calendar 16 December 2024

After School

Provision can be booked through My School Portal selecting the sessions you require. If you require your child to have tea, please ensure bookings are made by 10.00am each day.  

MySchoolPortal

Crescent School

Please click below to view the lunch menu for next school week, children are able to have either the Main or Vegetarian option. 

Lunch Menu 16 December 2024

Crescent School

Please see below to view the music lesson timetable:

Music lessons - 16 December

The music lesson timetable will be published in the Courier every Friday. Please note the following:

• The timetable changes every week. Lessons are rotated as we try to avoid children missing the same lesson each week, though sometimes this is unavoidable if there are trips, matches and events to work around. If a teacher teaches on more than one day, your child's lesson could be on any of those days. Lessons in bold type are in fixed slots and therefore do not rotate, though, again, on occasions we may have to swap them around to avoid clashes with events.
• The music staff will always try to reschedule lessons missed because of a school event, however lessons missed because of illness or not having an instrument in school cannot be made up.
• If you know your child is not going to be in school for their lesson for any reason, please do let me know as early as possible and I will try to work around it, though this cannot be guaranteed.
• Lessons before school and during lunchtime are prioritised to Year 6 pupils in the Michaelmas term. After Christmas, Year 6 lessons will move to being during class time, and the out-of-class-time lessons will be allocated to Year 5 pupils.
• Half a term's (ie 5 lessons) notice is required to stop having lessons, or payment of half a term's fees in lieu of notice.

Please send all enquiries about music lessons to me juliebarnes@crescentschool.co.uk rather than the individual music teachers.

Mrs Barnes
Director of Music

Year 2 shone brightly on stage on Tuesday 10 December in front of a school hall full of parents and families who had gathered excitedly to enjoy a celebration of songs, music and poetry. A Christmas Cracker showcased the skills and talents of some of our youngest pupils providing a really valuable experience for them all.

The performance opened with the class singing Countdown to Christmas gustily and then Mini Brass showed us just how well they are getting to grips with their instruments. Poetry, songs and even a quiz followed on, entertaining us all.  

Our enormous thanks and congratulations go to all the accomplished performers who took to the stage in front of their proud parents, and, of course, to Mrs Emery, Mrs Woolfenden and Mrs Barnes and all the staff who helped them achieve so much.

All of the children had great fun during Christmas Art Week decorating their house Christmas trees. Since then, the trees have brightened up the corridors around the school and made us all feel that little bit more Christmassy. Well done to everybody who took part and I know that lots and lots of children were involved as well as the house staff.

I had the difficult job of judging the overall winner. This is always a tricky task but I finally went for the Yellow House tree. This year our theme for Christmas Art Day was ‘Santa goes Green’, and I was particularly impressed with the way the Yellow House had used recycled materials to make all of their decorations. Congratulations to them.

Mr Thackway
Headmaster

Thank you to our wonderful Librarians and Mrs Calder for keeping the Library tidy and all the books in order.

Mrs Robinson was assisting with the club today and, as you can see from the photos, lots of fun was had.

Crescent School

Monday 16 December 2024 - 6.30pm to 7.45pm

We are looking forward to seeing all involved in the Carol Service next week. You are welcome in the Chapel from 6.15pm for a 6.30pm start. Please do not arrive before as the College wish all their children and co-curricular to be dismissed before we arrive and our staff need time to arrive too.

Thank you to all those who have signed up, tickets are confirmed and bookings are now closed.

Mrs Webb
Assistant Head

Wednesday 18 December 2024

Our Christmas Jumper Day this year will be held on Wednesday 18 December 2024. On that day, children should wear normal school uniform, but instead of their green jumper, they can wear a Christmas jumper, if they wish.

We invite you to make a voluntary contribution of £1 to wear a festive jumper, which is in aid of this term's Charity  the OurJay Foundation.

Mr Webb
Assistant Head

This week, Charlotte, Hannah and Jed in 3SS have been awarded their full Junior da Vinci badge in English. 

Thomas and Tomisin in 5F have achieved theirs in PE & Games. 

Ava in 5F gains her in RE, Gloria in 5F in Music and MingYi in 6W is awarded hers in Maths, Evelyn in 5F becomes a double student in RE.

Great work everyone.

Mrs Symons 
JDV Lead

Its been a super busy reading week, congratulations to:

500K Words – Juliette 3SS

Word Millionaire – Aria and Lilah 5F

Keep up the excellent reading.

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant

Word Wizards

The pupils achieving the highest word count from successfully quizzing this week, are:

• 3LS Emily
• 3SS Juliette
• 4C  Elin
• 4W Rachael
• 5F  Lilah
• 6W Alex W

Top Quizzers 

The pupils who have quizzed on the most books successfully or made a noticeable improvement in quizzing scores this week are:

• 3LS Elijah
• 3SS Hannah
• 4C Max G-H
• 4W Walter
• 5F Aria
• 6W Nora

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant

100K Word Superstars this week are:

• Sophie L and Siara in 3LS

Well done.

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant

Amazing stats for this term:

• Michaelmas Term Word Wizard – having read over 2.6 million words is Nora
• Michaelmas Term Top Quizzer – having quizzed on 43 books is Tara
• Michaelmas Term Class Word Wizards – reading over 7.1 million words is Class 6W
• Michaelmas Term Top Quizzing Class – quizzing on 371 books is Class 3SS

Congratulations and well done to all!!

Mrs Nelson

Teaching Assistant

A really important part of life in Pre-Prep is building a love of reading. We are developing the children's phonics skills, reading fluency, expression, style and comprehension. Each week we select two readers from each class who have stood out to us as demonstrating one or more of these skills or who have made really great progress over the previous few weeks. It's a lovely way for the children to know that we recognise and celebrate their success.

This week's reading superstars are:

• Reception - Aurelia and Frank
• Year 1 - Nova and Zara
• Year 2 - Austin and Mikael

Mrs Emery
Head of KS1 and Class 2E Form Teacher

It is always an exciting time for the children when they gain their pen licence, enabling them to make the move from writing in pencil to pen. For this rite of passage, the children have to show that they can write neatly and consistently in cursive, joined handwriting in all of their work, not just handwriting tasks.

This week the following children have earnt their pen licences. Well done on always using neat and consistently-sized, cursive writing in everything you do!

• Iris
• Marcie
• Charlotte D
• Summer
• Hannah
• Ashleen
• Jed 

Mrs Symons
Class 3LS Form Tutor

Year 1 - Year 6 'Battle' results 4-11 December 2024, average score per class member:

• 1st 3SS 121
• 2nd 1Q 59
• 3rd 6W 49

Most valuable players in the whole competition:

• 1st Daniel 3SS
• 2nd Eve 1Q
• 3rd Isabel 3SS

Well done, 3SS! 🏆

Most improved speedsters in the studio are:

1Q

• Eve - Breakthrough Artist!

4W

• Sophia - Breakthrough Artist!

5F

• Everly - Rock Star!
• Aria - Rock Star!

No Battle over Christmas, but keep working on speed in the studio and JDV for Garage and gigs.

TT Rock stars will block 2x, 5x, 10x and 11x on jamming if you are efficient at them, so you cannot pick easy ones just to score more points in the competition! 

Art Frizzmeister 
Deputy Head

Felicity, Charlotte, Alice, Klara, Jonny and Flora from 4C have created these amazing journey paintings personal to them. They have experimented beautifully with colour, shape and texture to produce these eye-catching pictures.

Mrs Thackway
Head of Art

This half term's chess final was between Daniel in 3SS and Alexander in 6W. 

Daniel took several early pieces that surprised Alexander who looked like he was in trouble. Alexander then fought back and there was plenty of strategic play back and forth. 

Eventually Alexander claimed victory when Daniel surrendered when only left with his King. An excellent game where Daniel was our youngest finalist so far and Alexander wins possession of the trophy and one of our coveted champion badges.

Ms Forth 
Deputy Head

Phonics:

Our ‘black-cat’ high frequency words since the last ‘Reception Round Up’ have been: with, then, them, this and that. Our more complex ‘monster themed’ high frequency words have been:

Tricky Witch – said, her, are (tricky letters)

Cool Blue –  too (long oo sound)

Our ‘black cat’ letter sounds have been: ch, sh, th (voiced), th (unvoiced), ng and oo. The children have continued to enjoy independent writing opportunities whereby they have needed to apply their phonics knowledge to date in order to ‘segment and spell’ a variety of CVC words and high frequency words to create a short sentence, including consideration of capital letters and full-stops. The children are making very good progress with their Rainbow Reading Bookmarks which is great to see.

Handwriting:

We have looked at the following cursive letter formations: i and n (these are the first two letters of Rupert the Sheep’s short and straight letter family). We have also learnt the number formation for 8, using the following rhyme to help us:

“Make an ‘s’ and then close the gates. That’s the way to make an 8.”

When we do independent writing in class, the children are encouraged to write the cursive formation of all the letters we have covered so far which are: l, t, h, b, k, f, o, a, d, g, q, c, s, i, n. It would be great to continue to support these cursive formations when your child chooses to write at home (we have lots of keen writers in the class!), including consolidating the correct number formations 1-10.

Maths:

As a class we have continued to practise counting from 10-20 and to strengthen our number recognition within this range. Last week, we looked at positional language and recognising similarities in certain terminology such as next to/beside, in/ inside, on/ on top of, below/ under, behind, between, in front of . The children particularly enjoyed being able to apply their newly learnt skills during a class game of ‘Hide the Teddy’. We have also enjoyed group discussions about key activities in the day, sorting them into day and night and then organising each group into the correct order. We have then linked these key events to o’clock times, developing both our sequencing and analogue clock reading skills. The class enjoyed connecting their learning about time with the shared class reading of ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ by Debi Gliori. Next week, we will be exploring and comparing length in terms of ‘longest’ and ‘shortest’ (long, short, longer, shorter).

Expressive Arts:

The children have been busy making Christmas cards, using templates and sponge painting. We have combined the maths skills of counting amounts and repeating patterns to make some beautiful beaded snowflake decorations. Also, in the ‘creative area’ this week, the children have had the opportunity to make an elf door handle decoration and a range of paper chains to strengthen our cutting and sticking skills.

How to help your child at home:

• Use the black cat letter sounds and high frequency words we have looked at to date to practise ‘segmenting to spell’ by dictating a short phrase/ sentence for your child to have a go at writing. For example, ‘a cat in a hat’, ‘a run in the sun’, ‘a pup in the mud’, ‘pack a pen in a bag’, ‘a duck got into the cot’. Explore Christmas themed words to write using phase 2 letter sounds such as red, hat, sock, bell, log, sack.
• Continue to develop fluency of number by counting forwards or backwards from any given number 1-10.
• Continue to build on number recognition with a game of Christmas bingo!
• Begin to explore capacity in terms of full, half-full and empty.

Wednesday 18 December will be a very busy day so we will not be able to do our usual individual reading so please leave reading folders at home. Please take the Christmas break as an opportunity to explore Reading Eggs if you have not already and to also have a look through your child’s reading folder to sort through any paperwork/ resources that are no longer needed.

Reminder:

The only after school club running next week is Yoga on Monday 16 December. The children have PE on Monday so all PE bags will go home that evening to be washed over the holidays.

The children have done so well to have very nearly completed their first term of school. They should all be very proud of their achievements and enjoy a well-deserved rest over the Christmas holidays. Well done Reception!

Mrs Collie
Reception Class Teacher

In 1Q Maths this week, we have been looking at geometry whereby we continued to compare and measure lengths with uniform units. We used our estimation skills to estimate the length of the hall before measuring it with metre sticks. We also had lots of fun measuring items in our classroom using cubes. 

In Phonics this week, we have been looking at the ‘er’ grapheme. There are 2 types of er sound: stressed and unstressed, depending on where er is in the word.

Stressed er examples: her, term, verb, person

Unstressed er examples: better, under, summer, winter, sister

In PSHE this week, we had a discussion about bullying and how we can be kind. The children had fun roleplaying different scenarios to the class in groups and we had a discussion around each scenario about how to act if we get involved in a similar situation.

Miss Quirke
Year 1 Teacher

Can you take on the Dyson Engineers' Challenge and design and make a chair from cardboard? That was the challenge set for Year 2 and they rose to the challenge beautifully. They researched, designed and built their chairs out of cardboard, learning how to weave paper to create a strong and attractive chair base. Once made, they had to test their chair to see if it was fit for purpose. We will evaluate the process in a later lesson. 

Mrs Emery 
Year 2 Teacher

Year 2 have been learning the vocabulary for animals in their French lessons. Here they are reinforcing their knowledge and spelling using pegs with letters. The children have also been recording their speaking work and I have been very impressed with their pronunciation.

Mrs Day
Year 2 MFL Teacher

This half term Year 2 have been exploring dance in their PE lessons. They were given the topic of ‘space’ and have created some ‘out of this world’ sequences. 

They have used their creativity to represent going into and around space, visiting various planets and aliens on the way. They have created dynamic shapes, explored different ways to travel, changing speeds from rocket launching to moon walking. The children have really captured an insight of what it would be like to be an astronaut.

Mr Webb
Year 2 PE Teacher

Year 2 have been investigating a magic substance. The pupils observed that the substance can change by adding water. They were very excited about the  snow they made!

Mrs Johnson
Year 2 Science Teacher

Several weeks ago, the children in Years 3 to 6 took part in the fantastic Bebras Computing Challenge, a global competition with close to half a million children in the UK taking part, along with thousands of others from over 50 different countries. The challenge gives learners a taste of the key principles behind computational thinking and logic by engaging them in fun problem-solving activities and puzzles. 

This week, we received the results back, and I am delighted to share with you just how well our pupils did! Over 80% of our pupils scored above the national average (and international!) score, with more than ever of them finishing in the top 25% of the country, a superb achievement I’m sure you will agree. In the Year 4/5 category only 299 out of over 26,000 pupils scored top marks this year, and I am very proud to say that three of them go to Crescent, making them not only 'best in school' but also joint 1st place in the entire country! Once again Crescent pupils proving that we are a little school with some very big ambitions.

Everyone who competed receives a certificate, some a Merit (top 50%) or Distinction (top 25%) 

Huge congratulations to everyone who took part, particularly to our top performers in each category:

Kits (Year 2 & 3) - over 10,000 competitors

• 1st place – Oore (top 4% in country)
• 2nd place - Jed (top 6%)
• 3rd place - Charlotte D (top 9%)

Distinctions (top 25%) - Jonelle, Summer, Hannah, Ashleen, Olivia-Rose, Ire, Siara, Charlotte S, Isabel

Castors (Year 4 & 5) – over 26,000 competitors

• 1st place - Aria, Theo Ma, Alice (joint 1^st in the whole country with only 298 other pupils!)
• 4th place - Kiran (top 4%)
• 5th place - Oliver (top 5%)

High Distinctions (top 10%) - Elin, Esme, Evelyn, Ava L, Theo McB, Penelope, Seren, Taran, Albert

Distinctions (top 25%) - Max G-H, Alfie, Amber 

Juniors (Year 6 & 7) – over 133,000 competitors

• 1st place - Patrick B, Alex W (top 3%)
• 3rd place - Nora (top 7%)
• 4th place - Matthew (top 11%)

Distinctions (top 15%) - Roisin C, Zac J

Mr Adkins
Head of Digital Learning

Thank you to all the volunteers, parents and teachers alike, and to parents for your continued support and generous donations to the FoC. 

It’s been a busy term, lots of cakes! Watch this space for lots more fun (and obviously cake!) in the new year. 

Wishing you and your families a Merry and peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Louisa and the FoC

Uniform can be ordered here:

Uniform Order Form

Please note the following items are stocked in the School Office and can be added to your account. Do pop in to collect any items.

• Winter hats
• Scarves
• Gloves
• Ties
• Swimming hats
• Sports socks
• Hair bands
• Hair scrunchies
• Hair clips
• Sun hats
• Music group badges - Choir, Orchestra, String and Brass 

School Uniform Shop 
Tel: 01926 634272
Email: uniform@princethorpe.co.uk

Click here to view the term dates for 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Crescent School

Please see below for useful school contact information:

We regularly recruit for a variety of roles, please do share news of the vacancies with interested friends and family. Current vacancies include:

Princethorpe College

• Apprentice Groundsman

Full details and information on how to apply are available on the Foundation website here:

www.princethorpe.co.uk/join-us

Should you know anyone who might be interested in these posts, please do share this information with them.