Dear Parents and Friends of the School

I hope you have all enjoyed productive weeks at work and at home, as we have here at school. Our School Promise theme is ‘being kind to each other’, and we developed this idea further earlier in the week with an assembly about the Rugby Foodbank. Our collection for this is an important part of the run up to our harvest celebrations each year, and it is great to see the collection growing by the day already.

On a charitable theme, we are also looking forward to the Macmillan Coffee Morning next Friday, and there are more details for you to read about this further on in today’s Courier. 

Today was an important landmark for the Princethorpe Foundation and saw the official opening of the new Science Centre over at the College. It is certainly a most impressive addition to the facilities over there and has also created very valuable teaching spaces elsewhere in the school at the same time. Our Year 6 children are going over there for a bit of a taster experience next week, and over the years many of you will also see the benefits of this if or when your children move onto the College. It was a particular source of pride today to see one of our Crescent parents, Mrs Akinola-Amadi, delivering the opening speech in such fine style. 

I spent a bit of time this week talking to our Year 6 children about the need for resilience in education and felt I should give a special mention to the girls’ hockey teams who showed plenty of this in their rain-sodden fixtures on Wednesday afternoon. The heavens opened in spectacular style but the girls kept on going and did the school proud. They say these things are character building, and they probably have a point. 

Well done also to the Year 3 children who behaved themselves so beautifully on their trip over to the Leicester Museum for their work on Egyptians. This was our first educational visit of the year, and it was great to hear such positive reports from both children and staff.

Whatever you have planned for the weekend, I hope you have a good one. I am away at the annual IAPS conference in Liverpool for the first three days of next week but will be back in school on Thursday, hopefully fired up with lots of great new ideas to continue the school's development.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Dear Parents

We have seen some fabulous examples of kindness and gentle play across the school in these opening weeks of term. Occasionally we will witness a problem between children that we will always endeavour to sort fairly and proportionately.

Within this, please could we encourage parents not to contact other parents with a view to achieving this externally.  Often this can be overly emotive and not reflect the full picture of the incident. With thanks for your ongoing support and understanding of this.

I have found a useful link for Year 6 parents should they need some guidance. I hope this helps.

Applying for a Secondary School Place – Warwickshire County Council

Co-curricular trips and educational visits have always been a major part of life at Crescent School for the pupils in Years 3-6. These experiences enrich their lives, enhance their learning and develop their understanding and appreciation of the world around them. It has been great for us to be able to successfully run the Year 3 residential to Whitemoor Lakes; the Year 4 trip to Rock UK; the Year 5 trip to the Frank Chapman Centre and Year 6 trip to the Slapton Ley Field Centre in Devon. 

We would like to update you with the residentials planned for the next academic year, please take a look at the overview here.

Each trip will have a drop in session this term which we recommend you attend.

Thank you to all that joined us for the evening, we hope you found it helpful. For those of you who like to review the information at your leisure you will be able to watch the recording of it.  There was request for some further clarity on various platforms:

MySchoolPortal

Crescent School

Below is a link to view the Michaelmas Term Calendar.  You should have received a hard copy of this through the post in the summer holidays.

Crescent School has a Green Team who champion sustainability, and specifically about how we can improve energy savings and our recycling efforts.  In Assembly this morning we announced that the following children will be working in our Green Team for the rest of this school year:

• 2E  Niamh and Nishan 
• 2W Sarima and Sophie L 
• 3SS  Catherine and Flora
• 3LS  Joshua and Uma 
• 4C Aria and Isabella 
• 5F Akaal and Toni 
• 6W Maisie and Grace 

We look forward to seeing your work over the coming year.

Monday 25 September 2023 - 4.00pm

All Year 6 parents are invited to an information session about the residential trip to Slapton Ley Centre. This will be an opportunity for you to find out what happens there, note the key dates and ask any questions. 

This will be held in 6W form room. Please come to the front of school where you can enter after dismissal of children. Children are welcome (but it may be a squeeze).

Monday 25 September 2023 - 7.00pm

We are very much looking forward to sharing with you our approach to the teaching of Phonics and Early Reading at Crescent School and offering some hints and tips on how you can support your child at home. This is super useful for Reception and new parents but also for any existing parent in Pre-Prep who hasn't attended this previously.

This will be run as a Teams meeting on Monday 25 September at 7.00pm. The link will be sent through to you prior to the event. Any questions can be written through the session chat and we will endeavour to deal with them then or they can be sent to your child's Form Tutor.

If you are unable to make the time of the meeting, we will be recording it and will send it along with any resources to all parents in Pre-Prep.

Thursday 28 September 2023 – 11.00am to 1.00pm

With the opening of Princethorpe’s fantastic new Science Centre this term, the College is delighted to host the whole of Year 6 to a special Science Themed Taster Morning on Thursday 28 September 2023.

The group will travel over to the College by bus and together with their teachers they will have a tour of the new state-of-the-art building and experience two hands-on Science lessons, along with their peers from fellow Foundation prep school, Crackley Hall.

They will return back to Crescent School in time for a slightly later lunch.

A reminder to Year 6 parents that the deadline for registering for the Princethorpe Entrance Exams on Saturday 11 November is fast approaching on Friday 29 September. It is now possible to register online, click here for information.

If you have any queries, please feel free to contact the College’s friendly Admissions Team, Catherine Rogers and Marie Holt on 01926 634201/297 respectively or email admissions@princethorpe.co.uk.

We will once again be running our successful Learning Mentors initiative that supports our emphasis on building self-regulation for the children.

On Friday 29 September, or thereafter, children will have a 10 minute meeting with their mentors where they will agree targets for the year that they are fullly responsibile for.

Tuesday 3 October 2023 - 7.00pm to 8.00pm

Friday 6 October 2023 - 3.45pm to 4.15pm

We would very much like to welcome you to look around the school corridors on Friday 6 October.

Year 5 and 6 will be dismissed through the pupil door, all other classes are to be dismissed through their usual door(s).

Please collect your child(ren) then come round to the front door where you will be welcomed in from 3.45pm to look at all the great work in school. Entry and exit is via the main school entrance only and last entry is at 3.55pm.

If your child is in a co-curricular club they will be expected to attend their club as normal unless you arrange otherwise.

Please be aware that this is not a time to talk to the teachers concerning your child, please email them separately if you have concerns.

Tuesday 17 October 2023 3.00pm to 5.00pm

My understanding is that the scores from the 11+ should be arriving on or about this day. Any Year 6 parents who wish to discuss their child's 11+ results and implications are welcome to see Mr Thackway and me between 3.00pm and 5.00pm on Tuesday 17 October - please just drop in via the main school entrance. 

Even if you do not feel that you wish to have a discussion, please inform us of the position and scores of your child. The local authority does not inform us and we need the results for our records.

Our first Accelerated Reading award goes to Aria in 4C who has read 500,000 words.

Well done Aria.

Congratulations to all our fabulous readers, a super start to our new school year!

Top Quizzers are:

• 3LS Feranmi
• 3SS Lily
• 4C Theo Mc
• 5F Patrick
• 6W Leela

Word Wizards are:

• 3LS Walter
• 3SS Henry F 
• 4C Lilah
• 5F Sophie
• 6W Hattie

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant          

Reading certificates have, this week, been awarded to:

• Charlotte
• Emma
• James
• Niamh
• Sophie D
• Thato

Well done to you all.

Garage and Gigs are the most important games to show your progress.

Pupils who have reached landmark % on automatic training mode in the Garage and Gigs and therefore are awarded JDVs for Maths Practice this week:

• David 3LS completed 48% of the course.

Results for Battle 14-21 September 2023: 2W, 2E , 3LS and 3SS against each other- average score per class member.

• 1st 3LS 113
• 2nd 2E 70
• 3rd 3SS 40

Most valuable players in the whole competition:

• 1st Daniel 2E
• 2nd David 3LS
• 3rd Elliott 3LS

Well done, 3LS! 🏆

Most improved speedsters in the studio are:

Please note only the children should play on their account or it influences the level appropriate to them.

Stay Calm and Rock on!!

A new Wellbeing Team has been appointed for this school year to help Mrs Stapleton, Head of Wellbeing with promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing within our school community.

The class Wellbeing Champions were voted in by their classes as role models who look out for their friends and get alongside them when they need advice or support. In Assembly this morning the children received their Wellbeing Badges:

Wellbeing Team 

• 2E - Thato
• 2W - Isla
• 3SS - Beau
• 3LS - Anaya
• 4C - Amber
• 5F - Aryaan
• 6W - Roisin

Head Pupils, Timi and Shayla will support the Wellbeing Team when required.

In Maths, we will be looking for and creating our own repeating patterns and matching written numerals to amounts. We will also continue to practise number formation.

In phonics we have practised sounds;

s     a     t     p    i    n

m    d    g    o

• Practise single letters and their sounds. Play games that encourage the children to identify the initial sounds of objects e.g. eye-spy

• Share stories, encourage the children to identify sounds in print

• Encourage mark making/writing and practise holding a pencil correctly and comfortably

• Practise counting to 20

• Match numerals to amounts (to 10)

• Encourage the children to dress/undress independently

• Timetables have been sent home – please ask if you have any queries

• Please remember to sign the Reading Record books each evening

• Please ensure your child's name is labelled in all of their uniform

• Handwriting - Please return books each Monday and complete in pencil. Further information about cursive writing has been sent home this week

• Each Friday afternoon we will have a ‘Show & Tell’ session. The children are welcome to bring in something small/inexpensive to talk about

Reception have been studying introductions and greetings in French. They have been practising their speaking skills by asking each other how they are feeling. They have also been learning numbers 1-5 and competing against each other in an interactive game on Language Angels.

This half term in Humanities, we are learning about houses. We have studied different types of houses and established which type of house each of us lives in. We then incorporated the story 'The Three Little Pigs' into our learning by questioning which type of material would best suit when building a house. We then identified similarities and differences between the houses in 'The Three Little Pigs' story and our own houses. We are looking forward to exploring more on this topic.

We have been working hard on our fluency skills in maths – number bonds, doubles and halves and times tables. Children enjoyed a lesson using the ipads to play a range of games to build their quick recall maths skills. Much fun was had and a fair bit of learning too!

In RE we have introduced Judaism and after learning about the history of the Star of David symbol, we looked at the role and importance of the Mezzuzah in Jewish families. The children enjoyed writing their own prayers or messages of kindness onto their scrolls then made their own Mezzuzah to insert them into.

Children in 2W have been cementing and reinforcing their number bonds to 10, 20 and beyond. Short, sharp partner games where the mental response is rapid and the mathematical language is rich supports this well. Here children are being strategic in alternately colouring pairs of numbers which make 20 in order to have four coloured in a row to win!

Pupils in Year 2 have been testing different fabrics to see which would be the most hardwearing. The children enjoyed rubbing the fabrics, counting and recording their results. Great excitement ensued when their counting reached over 200 rubs and there were still no holes in the denim fabric!

Depending on the age of your child and their online habits, you may already be very familiar with the game ‘Roblox’. For those of you who aren’t, it is an online gaming platform that offers the user the chance to create and play a whole range of different games, many of which are designed by other such users. It can be an incredibly fun game, a super introduction to designing computer games and also a nice way for children to dip their toes into the world of online gaming… but it does need some careful setting up and monitoring to keep it safe and secure!

Roblox is a game with a bit of a bad reputation for various reasons, although the makers have done a lot recently to try to put this right. The main problem is that a lot of it can involve chatting online to other players, which obviously instantly starts alarm bells ringing. It does however have some pretty decent privacy and parental controls settings that help to alleviate this fear. Despite being completely free to play it can also be a little pushy with additional online purchases and without the correct filters does have some questionable content in some of the games.

I would recommend firstly making sure that the age restrictions are set to below 12 years of age, as this automatically filters a lot of the chat. At first I would also recommend enabling Account Restrictions, as this stops all chat functions (or limits to friends only if you choose that option) and limits the in-games they can play to ones that have been carefully approved by the creators.

You can then use a Parent-PIN to lock the account so your child can’t make any changes without permission. There are then a number of ways of checking exactly what they have been on by essentially looking at their history, which cannot be deleted. Sorry if that all sounds a little complicated, it does take a little while to get the settings the way you want them, but it is all explained best on their website here:

Roblox Help

There is also a very handy concise guide attached just here. If you have any questions about Roblox, or any other E-Safety concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

In some wet and windy conditions Crescent girls have put on some fantastic displays of hockey and sporting behaviour. 

Year 5 and 6 took on Crackley Hall at Rugby College Astro on Wednesday 20 September.

U11/U10 Mixed  played 2 matches against Crackley U10 and Crackley U10/11 mixed. 

• Match 1 - 1-1 draw with a goal from Maisie who was also awarded the Player of the Game 
• Match 2 -  2-2 draw with goals from Roisin C who was also awarded Player of the Game

Some superb hockey on show from all involved with a special mention to Hattie, who played her first game in goal, doing a fantastic job. 

U9 and U8's travelled to Bilton Grange for a festival on Thursday 22 September.

The other matches may not have resulted in a goal but there was some lovey play and plenty of positives to take away. The girls did well to keep BG's attacks out of the goal with fabulous defence from Ava, Esme and Ella.  Results are

• Crescent A v BG B = 1-1 
• Crescent A v BG A =  1-0 loss 
• Crescent B v BG A  = 4-0 loss 
• Crescent B v BG B = 1-0 Loss 

U8's 

Some very impressive play from all of the Crescent girls, getting fully involved, driving the ball up the line hard and lots of fast and furious attacks on goal with some solid defending from Kiki, Penelope, Racheal and Isabella.  Goals scored by Nellie, Beau, Kiki and Felicity. 

• U8 Team 1 - V BG 4-0 Win 
• U8 Team 1 V U8 - Team 2 - 1-0 Win to Team 1 
• U8 Team 2 V BG = 0-0 draw 

A very impressive start to the season from all teams this week. 

Mrs McCollin, Mrs Calder, Mrs Kelsall and Mrs Chang

Year 5 and 6 travelled to BG on Wednesday for what proved to be very pleasing and promising start to the season. 

U9 took on Crackley Hall at Rugby College on Thursday 14 September.

U8's had a training session with Mrs Kelsall followed by a mini festival with three Crescent teams and two Crackley Hall teams, a great learning experience and some very promising skills on display. 

Well done to all involved. 

Mrs McCollin, Mrs Robinson, Mrs Kelsall, Mrs Chang and Mrs Dowling

Bag2School is back on 27 and 28 September. It's a great opportunity to get rid of all of those outgrown clothes!

Bag2School is a fundraising scheme which collects unwanted textiles and sells them to importers and textile manufacturers in many countries of Eastern and Western Europe. They have been collecting items for over 15 years and have so far paid out over £42 million to PTA groups while in turn supporting the circular economy. Find out how it works by visiting:

Bags2School

Please bring in your donated items on the afternoon of the 27 September (parking on the playground is available from 3.30pm for drop off) or before school on 28 September. Items can also be dropped off during the Harvest Festival Services: 

Bag2school accepts the following ‘good quality’ items for re-use:

• Men’s, Ladies’ and Children’s clothing 
• Paired shoes (tied together or elastic band) 
• Handbags/Hats/Bags/Scarves and ties/Jewellery 
• Lingerie 
• Socks 
• Belts 
• Soft toys 
• Household linen 
• Household curtains 
• Household towels 
• Household bedding (bed sheets, pillow cases and duvet covers) 

They DO NOT accept: 

• Duvets and blankets 
• Pillows and cushions 
• Carpets, rugs and mats (including bath, shower and toilet mats) 
• Soiled, painted, ripped or wet clothing 
• School uniforms with and without logo 
• Corporate clothing and workwear 
• Textile off cuts, yarns or threaded material

Friends of Crescent

Friday 29 September 2023 - 8.15am to 9.30am

FoC is delighted to be supporting this wonderful charity. We will be holding a coffee morning from 8.15am - 9.30am on the field (weather depending). Everyone is welcome to come, please feel free to bring younger siblings along and join us for coffee and cake.

We will also be selling cakes to all the children at break time for £1 so any donations will be gratefully appreciated. We require smaller individual cakes, gluten free options that the children can purchase as well as bigger Victoria sponges, chocolate cakes that the parents and teachers can enjoy. 

Please could all nut-free cakes be brought into school from Thursday 28 September 2023.

Friends of Crescent

We are still looking for one more parent rep in Reception and Year 1 so if you can help please get in touch. It doesn't take up too much time I promise and is a great way to meet some truly lovely people.

Please see below for useful school contact information:

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 2023/24 and 2024/25.

Crescent School

The Foundation has the following vacancies:

Princethorpe College

• Examinations Invigilator

Crescent School

• Learning Support Assistant
• Supply Teacher

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.