The Courier

Dear Parents

As we near the end of term, preparations in school have been going on for the final week or so and the special events that we have lined up. Following my letter on this last Friday, I have received a number of messages of support for our approach, but I am aware that we will not be able to please everybody. Striking the balance between parental involvement and protecting against Covid transmission is a hard one to get right but hopefully parents that it is an honest attempt to do just that.  All of the support you have given the School throughout the last 18 months has been genuinely appreciated.

One welcome new initiative this week was the Clothes for Cash drop off organised by the Friends of Crescent. We have a very capable and committed new committee in place at the FoC and this was something brought in to help raise funds whilst supporting important local charities. It fits in very nicely with the Good Citizens message that we promote for the children. Many of you contributed and I hope also got some therapeutic pleasure from clearing out overstocked clothes cupboards at home at the same time. All in all, this is a very positive initiative that we may well see more of in the future.

We have been dodging the showers a little bit in the last few days, but we managed to get some cricket played over at Princethorpe on Wednesday and as I write, we are looking closely at the weather forecast for Pre-Prep sports day on Friday. Fortunately, we have taken the precaution of putting in reserve dates for our sports day events this year and one way or another we should be able to make sure the children benefit from the experience of friendly competition.

Next week is a busy one with lots of events planned, including our very first Year 6 film premiere event on Tuesday (hopefully avoiding the potential clash with a penalty shoot-out for England in the Euros) and Welcome Evening for parents on Thursday 1 July. As you know, this will now be a live Teams event and I encourage you to attend if you can, although copies of the PowerPoints will be available to those who can’t make it. Move-up morning will be on Wednesday 30 June, which is an important session for children to get to know their teacher for next year. Please note that children should be dropped off at the normal place and time on that day. 

I have included here a full and up to date staff list for 2021-22 for your information and I will talk in more detail about this at the Welcome Evening next week.

Best wishes

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

The weekly calendar can be viewed by clicking on the link below.  It details all the clubs, events, fixtures and additional information for the week. 

Weekly Calendar - 28 June 2021 

All clubs finish this week, you can log into SOCS here to view your child(ren)'s activities:

SOCS

After School provision can be booked through My School Portal and will be available on Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 July 2021.

MySchoolPortal 

Crescent School

Princethorpe has received its first ever review by the prestigious Good Schools Guide. The Guide, which selects schools to be included on merit alone, is famous for its unbiased and candid reviews of state and private schools, and is trusted by families worldwide. Princethorpe is now one of just 1,300 schools currently reviewed by the Guide, out of over 30,000+ schools in the UK.

An editor from the Guide visited the College in May, interviewed Ed Hester, the Headmaster, toured the campus, observed lessons and spoke with pupils and parents.

The 2,500-word review, which now appears on the Good Schools Guide’s website and will be included in the next hard copy edition, includes a pen portrait of the Headmaster, plus insights into exam results, teaching and learning, co-curricular life, discipline and the College’s ethos and heritage.

Commenting on the College's approach to pastoral care, the Guide says:

“There are two rules at the school: be kind and do your best. The whole school runs on this ethos and it appears to be all that is needed as pupils and staff adhere to it. The school is renowned for its pastoral care and kindness. Every parent we spoke to mentioned it and for virtually all of them it was the reason they chose the school. ‘It really is like a family and we are included too.’ These two old fashioned values shape the school. It’s open minded and all are very welcome but the Catholic teaching permeates throughout. Every child is treated as an individual ‘and they really are,’ said parents. The overall feeling that this is a kind school, we would concur.”

The very comprehensive and positive review concludes with a Last Word, which sums up the Guide’s findings:

We have the impression that Princethorpe College just gets on with things, modestly feeling no need to blow its own trumpet. But during the long-term tenure of this head it has gained in confidence, reputation and status and parents have sat up and taken notice. They know that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to educating their children and have found the school that agrees with them; a good outcome for all.

To read in full what the Good Schools Guide says click here.

Comments Ed Hester, Headmaster, “It was a pleasure to welcome the Good Schools Guide to Princethorpe. We are delighted that they have recognised our ‘spirit of family’ and found us to be a ‘kind school’ and that every parent they spoke to was ‘hugely impressed by the diligence and commitment of our staff’. They have successfully managed to get under our skin and paint what we feel is an accurate picture of life at the school.

He continued, "As lockdown restrictions ease, we are looking forward to welcoming more prospective families to the school, so they can find out for themselves what a Princethorpe education could do for their child.”

To find out more visit www.princethorpe.co.uk/visit or email admissions@princethorpe.co.uk.

We are very pleased to announce our House Captains for the next academic year, these children will take up their positions in September.

Their role is to work with their House and House Teacher; to sort rotas for the responsibilities each House has each term and be ready to problem solve if someone is unable to do their duty. It's an exccellent opportunity for them to develop their leadership skills.

Congratulations to:

• St George: Kai and Charlotte 
• St David: Sachin and Grace 
• St Andrew: Rosina and James 

Work continues apace on the Horton Centre with the children keeping an eye on all the changes through the windows in the corridors!  This week we had the foundations being laid - it is so exciting to see it all start to take shape.

We wiil be keeping you abreast of progress by sharing photos in the Courier each week.

Crescent School

Sophie in Year 5 entertained us this morning in assembly with a lovely piece on the clarinet called Getting To The Front Of The Queue.

Beautifully played Sophie.

Class 4M have chosen to fix the rotten rooves of three classrooms of a junior school in Bwengu at a cost of £385. Any further money raised for this charity close to our hearts will go towards the orphan feeding programme which cost £100 per month.

If you would like to get involved, there are plenty of ways you can. Charlie, Poppy and Ava in 4M have created competition sheets to guess the answers on - return the sheet with £1 to enter. Esme has a bear that needs a name, again put your name and what you would call the bear on a slip of paper and return it to your form tutor with £1.

Finally, we will have two whole school events to play. On Thursday 1 July 'Search for Sunshine' will see clues being left around the playground for pupils to solve - £1 for a game card. On the very last day of term Tuesday 6 July, we will run virtual Bingo! £1 buys 3 game cards. 4M are also tackling a Sponsored Silence on Wednesday 30 June - wish them luck!  Of course, fabulous prizes are available for all competitions.

This is our 14th year supporting this charity. In Monday's assembly, I showed all the projects we have funded so far and how we really have made a difference to people's lives.

Thank you in anticipation

Crescent School pupils will have a great selection of co-curricular activities to choose from next term. These will be shared with you in August, so that you can sign up.

There will be options for before school, lunchtime and afterschool, a wide range of sports, martial arts, creative options and musical moments. There will be a limit to some clubs, some are chargeable, but all will be fun.

The final day for quizzing is Friday 2 July. This is so that I can gather the data required before the end of term and set up next year. Well done to you all for all the reading you have done. Next year we will return to quizzing only in school. 

Please use the summer to keep enjoying books, visit a library and reading as much as you can, I can't think of anything better than relaxing with my book.

Monday 28 June 2021 - Friday 2 July 2021

Class 6W will soon be leaving us and we know it is important for the children to make memories and learn about the community we live in.

During the week starting Monday 28 June, we will be visiting Draycote Water where we will litter pick and appreciate the nature around us; learn to work as a team and some bushcraft from Mr Stapleton; have a webinar with Parliament and even gain vital skills about First Aid online.

It will be a great week.

Tuesday 29 June

Class 6W will soon receive invitations to see the Premiere of their own film Talk About A Murder written and directed by our own drama impresario Miss Thompson. The premiere will be taking place on Tuesday 29 June. We are sure they will all enjoy the opportunity to walk along the red carpet in their glad rags.

The evening will start at 1930 with a drinks reception for parents and children on the field, followed by the first viewing of the film to the children in the school hall.

Thursday 1 July 2021 - 7.00pm

This year’s Welcome Evening will take place on two consecutive Teams meetings.

The first will be a general meeting for all parents at 7.00pm. This is an opportunity to hear from Mr Thackway about the highlights of the year gone by and some plans for 2021-22.

This will be followed by a second meeting with your form teacher, who will run through with you a series of key points and information to prepare you for the start of the Michaelmas term.

Parents will receive an email on Thursday morning with links to join both of the meetings.

Crescent School

Summer concerts are a lovely time for the children to share the work they are doing in their lessons. We are aware of Covid restrictions so once again performances will be recorded and shared with the Crescent School Community. That way everyone feels part of what we do and can see the great work the children have been doing. These will be shared with you during the week of Monday 5 July 2021. 

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Tuesday 6 July 2021 - 2.45pm

The Leavers’ Service will take place on the school field, weather permitting with parents present.  This location will allow for appropriate social distancing.

In the event of wet weather, the service will move indoors and filmed as parents will not be able to attend inside.

Crescent School

Class 4M have been doing well this week and have two triple awards - quite an achievement!

For English:

• Esme  
• Mya  (double)
• Tegan (double)
• Yash 
• Zahra (triple)

For maths:

• Charlie (triple)
• Ellie 
• Harry 
• Mya (double)
• Tegan 
• Zahra (double)

Mrs Webb
Assistant Head

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.

Sam B and Oliver have shown pride in the presentation of all of their learning tasks and have been awarded a Pen Licence and their first handwriting pen.

Their pens and licences were presented to them in Mr Thackway's assembly this morning.

Well done!

Pre-Prep reader certificates have this week been awarded to:

• Amber
• Aryaan
• Barnaby
• Dudley
• Feranmi
• Flora
• Henry
• Maximillion
• Theo Mc

Well done to you all.

This week's Good Friend Playground Conduct certificate have been awarded to David, Evelyn and Harry.

Lunchtime Supervisors

Winners of the class battle:

Well done Class 4M!

• 1st place - Class 4M with 3,993 points
• 2nd place - Class 3Y with 3,456 points
• 3rd place - Class 5F with 728 points

The players contributing the most points to their class were:

• 1st - Bryson (4M)
• 2nd - Matthew (2W)
• 3rd - Hany (6W)

As part of our PSHE Jigsaw curriculum and now as a statutory requirement of all primary schools, each class have been completing sessions on how our bodies change as we grow up. Pre-Prep have been learning and recognising the differences between the male and female body parts and ensuring they know the right names without feeling embarrassed or anxious.

The Upper School have been concentrating on how the bodies change through puberty and into adulthood and some of the physical processes and emotional changes that take place. This open discussion and accessible learning is down to our experienced form tutors who make these tricky and sometimes awkward sessions informative and normal!

Here are Year 1 sorting body parts into a Venn diagram of whether they are gender specific or whether we all have them. 

Class 3Y had a lovely time putting all their best efforts into producing fabulous Father's Day cards for their loved ones which included heartfelt messages. 

We hope that they were enjoyed.

Year 3 pupil Grace has an absolutely amazing collection of royal letters that she brought into school last week to share with her class. Grace has been writing to the Royal family since she was very little, wishing them Happy Birthday, congratulating them on their good news and most recently sending her condolences to Her Majesty the Queen on the loss of her husband, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. Each of her letters has received a Royal reply and Grace keeps them all together in a large folder of souvenirs.

It is a marvellous treasure for a little girl who is clearly a right royal fan! Thank you for sharing it with us Grace!

Crescent School

Year 6 have been very busy this week filming their end of year production – Talk About A Murder. Written, produced and filmed by our very own Drama Teacher, Miss Thompson, the school hall was transformed into a film set for the cast and crew to record the different scenes. Our eager young actors have been in and out of their costumes and make-up as the filming progressed and the school has been a hive of activity with shouts of ‘Action’ echoing around the walls.

Here are a few 'sneaky' pictures from the filming - just click view gallery. We can’t wait to see the finished film!

What a wonderful time we had in the forest this week! The resident fairy left us a gift, in the form of tiny boxes of raisins or Smarties. They tasted delicious and we all said thank you. To show how grateful we were, we used the empty boxes of treats as fairy treasure chests. We filled them with special items for the fairy. We used helicopter seeds for boomerangs and Alice hairbands, leaves for blankets and throws, feathers for pillows and sticks for magic wands amongst other things. 

Maisie and Roisin have been raising money for the Children’s Air Ambulance to work towards their Brownie’s Charity Badge. 

They set up a stall outside Roisin’s house on a freezing cold Sunday morning with toys and games they had sorted out to sell.  They invited people via local residents groups to pop down and 'pay what you like' and managed to raise £50. 

Both girls have joined the Children’s Air Ambulance Club and received their certificates last week. 

More fundraising is planned but this is a lovely start and the girls were so happy.

Well done to Maisie and Roisin.

Crescent School

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.

From now until the end of term we will be looking at a very important idea from the Good Citizens section of the Promise:

"We keep our school tidy and take pride in our clothes and our uniform."

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Despite the forecast for rain we managed to hold our Reception and Pre-Prep Sports Day this morning, Friday 25 June. The children enjoyed a super sporty session out on the school field sprinting, jumping and throwing their way through all the fun.

Their challenges included running races, egg and spoon, jumping and throwing and of course the relay race. Each event enabled them to compete to earn points for their house and everyone tried their hardest to do their very best.

Everyone looked smart in their sports kit and with happy smiles they enthusiastically launched themselves into each activity. You could see they clearly all had a super time.

We were pleased to welcome parents to watch, with one family member per child, sitting social distanced outside on the field to watch.

A huge well done to everyone who took part and thank you to all the Reception, KS1 and Sports staff, who organised the event for everyone.

More photos will be shared with parents next week.

Crescent travelled to Princethorpe on Wednesday 23 June against Crackley Hall. We started batting and were off to a good start. We scored a great score for our batting. After that we went onto fielding and again started great with an amazing catch for Kai closely followed by Charlotte's amazing bowling getting someone out.

Everyone played well. It was a very close match but in the end we lost by 20 runs. After the game we talked as a team and decided we could improve by attacking the ball more on our batting and are looking forward to our next game.

The FoC are excited to be able to share with you that we have arranged a little last day surprise for the children. On Tuesday 6 July we have an ice cream van attending school. All children will given an ice cream or an ice lolly for children who cannot have ice cream.

The FoC would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support across this challenging academic year and wish you a super summer. 

Friends of Crescent is hugely excited to announce the launch of Crescent Adventure - a new ‘trim trail’ that will create an exploratory, fun and engaging physical play area within the school grounds.

Crescent Adventure will provide a safe outdoor play area with a wide range of outdoor equipment designed to engage and challenge children physically. It will help to develop children’s confidence in movement and support better peer relationships while developing a lifelong passion for physical activity.

Within school the project is being led by Ms Forth (who outlines the plans in the attached video). Our aim is to install Crescent Adventure in 2022. To make this happen we are looking to raise £17,000 through a range of special fundraising activities. These will run alongside our usual events such as bake sales, movie nights, second-hand uniform and the Christmas Bazaar.

In the meantime if you would like to donate there are two great ways to do so:

1. Making donations through the usual FoC Bank account with the reference CresAdv (Account Name: Friends of Crescent - Sort Code: 30-97-17 - Account Number:  01174774)

2. Doing your online shopping through the Easyfundraising App! The App is a great and easy way to raise money for the school with minimum effort. It includes a huge range of well-known brands including Amazon, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis – all of which are handy for uniform shopping! Find out more at: https://bit.ly/3wgMk7E

3. By donating pre-loved school uniform

We look forward to sharing more about our plans for Crescent Adventure in the coming months and thank you for your support!

Crescent Adventure 

Friends of Crescent 

www.facebook.com/groups/friendsofcrescent
www.instragram.com/friendsofcrescent
e: chair@friendsofcrescent.co.uk

Although opportunity has been limited this year, we have raised the following:

• £300 in pre-loved uniform sales,
• over £275 from the Easyfundraising App
• over £230 on Easter Bonnets
• over £120 from Wrong Uniform 
• over £2,100 from Active October
• over £160 from Charity donations 

We also took over £760 on Tea Towel and Tote Bag sales.

Many thanks to everyone for your support.

Friends of Crescent

We'd love to introduce you to the new Friends of Crescent team. Supporting the Committee members we have:

We’d love you to follow the FoC Facebook page where we publish all news and information about our events.

Friends of Crescent Facebook Group

Nick Brosnan
Friends Of Crescent - Chair  

www.facebook.com/groups/friendsofcrescent
www.instragram.com/friendsofcrescent
e: chair@friendsofcrescent.co.uk

In the forthcoming academic year, we are aiming to deliver some of the following events:

• Charity clothes collection
• Macmillan coffee morning
• Joules sale
• Market days
• Active October
• Christmas Fair
• Book fair
• Disco
• Film night
• Mother’s day event
• Wrong uniform day
• Father’s day
• Summer fete

Below are the details of the FoC Year Group Representatives. These reps will communicate with you on all our events via email, whatsapp or facebook. 

Please click below to view the lunch menu: 

Crescent Menu - 28 June 2021 

Please note children are able to choose either of the two main lunch options.  

Olive Catering

Please find below term dates for 2020/21 and 2021/22:

The Foundation has the following vacancies:

• Graduate Sports Coach - Princethorpe College
• Summer Estates Assistant - Princethorpe College
• Estates Assistant - Lates - Princethorpe College

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.

Warwickshire County Council is continuting to ask parents and carers to continue to play their part and do the right thing for Warwickshire by wearing face-coverings at the school gates and when entering education settings and by social distancing, wherever it is possible to do so.

Please remember there is plenty of space around school to socially distance.

Many thanks for you for your co-operation.

Children or adults with symptoms must not enter school. Parents must check for symptoms each day before bringing their child into school.

The main symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are:

• a high temperature – please, if you have not already done so, source a thermometer to check temperatures at home
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or three or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you've noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

Any children or adult who develops symptoms will need to leave the building as soon as possible and be tested for Covid-19.  

Details on testing can be obtained at www gov uk/get-coronavirus-test or call the Test and Trace Helpdesk on 119.

Hand held thermometers will be used to check the temperature of any individual feeling unwell. Children who develop symptoms during the school day will be taken to the Meeting Room and their parents called to come and collect the child, as well as any siblings of the child.

Other members of the household should self-isolate for 10 days from when the symptomatic person first had symptoms, or until a negative test result is returned.

In the event of a positive test result the full protocols of test and trace will be followed www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-test-and-trace-how-it-works#

Children returning from restricted areas outside UK must self-isolate as advised by the government guidance before returning to school.