The Courier

Dear Parents and Friends of the School

We come to the end of another action-packed week here at School, and the end of the term has just about come into view, with just a short three-day week to come. It is a long term this one, but so much happens, both in the children’s learning and in their social development, it is one to embrace and cherish.

The LAMDA exams went ahead as planned on Monday and Friday, with some lovely verbal feedback from the examiner which promises well for the results when we receive them. Well done to all the children and Mrs Bowdige for their hard work and endeavours on this. The Carol Service on Thursday was a splendid occasion, as was the Christmas Cracker performance on Tuesday by the Year 2s.

It was great to see so many parents attending both of these events and clearly taking so much pleasure from watching their children perform. I hope you have all got fully in the Christmas season by now and I know that watching your children in these traditional settings can bring a really lovely warm feeling.

My personal plan to get the Christmas tree up last weekend failed due to more persistent torrential rain. I will try again this weekend, particularly now as all of my family are back in the house. Do you get a real tree or a fake one? Which is more environmentally friendly? All good questions, but I think I’ll go one more year at least with the real thing.

Have a great final weekend of term.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

We have welcomed four new members of staff into the school over recent weeks. 

Firstly, working in Reception as a Learning Support Assistant, we have been delighted to welcome Liz Newbold. Liz comes with a strong history of working in the support area and has the added benefit of being a fully qualified teacher.

We have also recruited Kate MaGee as a Lunchtime Supervisor. Kate has worked in a similar role in local schools for a number of years and her experience, knowledge and nurturing approach impressed us when she came for her interview.

Starting in January, following the departure of Ania Wrzesniacka, will be our new Year 6 Teaching Assistant, Wendy Drewes. Wendy has impressive qualifications for her new role, again, she is a fully qualified teacher, as well as having a good deal of experience working in local schools.

Finally, we have also recently appointed Jo Lowers as an occasional supply Teacher. Jo has outstanding credentials for the role, having spent 18 years teaching at Cawston Grange, and serving for nine of those as Deputy Head.  

We wish all these new members of staff well in their roles as we welcome them into our school community.

Swimming has finished for the term. Children will need to bring in their PE kit when they usually have a swimming lesson next week.

Co-curricular clubs end today, Friday 15 December.  Please ensure you have booked your child into Afterschool next week if you require care.

Please remember to make your Co-Curricular choices for next term on SOCS by Sunday 17 December.

MySchoolPortal

Crescent School

Crescent School’s young brass players performed alongside former Crescent pupils at the Bilton Silver Evolution Band’s Christmas Classics concert last Friday 8 December. The performance took place at St Peter’s and St John’s in Rugby and was a fabulously festive affair. Both Brass Group and Mini Brass performed, delighting all with their renditions with Mr and Mrs Thackway in attendance.

Playing at the evening event were Year 5 pupils Alex B and Edward M who have both just been selected for the National Children’s Brass Band of Great Britain. Alex and Edward are following in the footsteps of Old Crescentians, Alyssa Barnett, Charlotte Corbin and Henry Corbin who all successfully auditioned for the National Children’s Band when they were pupils at our school.

We couldn’t resist taking a photo of these five talented brass players together with the amazing Di Fisher who has inspired so many of our young pupils to pick up and play a brass instrument.

Special congratulations to Princethorpe College pupil Henry who has just auditioned for and been accepted into the prestigious National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain. A really impressive achievement!

Year 2 shone brightly on the stage on Tuesday 12 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 Mini Brass who are getting to grips with their instruments very well, before the classes then gustily sang two songs Countdown To Christmas and Holly And Mistletoe. The performance then featured a series of poems delivered by the children, some individually, some in groups, but all on the theme of the environment, a topic the children have been studying across their lessons in school this term. More jolly songs and poetry performances followed before a fantastic finale with everyone excitedly joining in the actions as they sang We’re Going Shopping!

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

The children in Year 6 have been working hard in their Geography lessons, preparing for a debate on sustainable energy. Working in six groups, pupils considered all the main forms of renewables sources, including geothermal, biofuels, wind and solar.

Pupils delivered their presentations to Year 5, who then voted for their winning team. The 'Hydro Power' team were the narrow winners, but all the children performed really well and showed a growing awareness of these key environmental challenges.

At the start of the Year, I was gifted a very attractive but incredibly challenging puzzle star cube. Everyone who visits my room likes to play with the cube and I set the challenge of 10 housepoints to the first person who could successfully manipulate it into a cube. Many have attempted it but last week saw the first completion! Hattie in Year 6 was victorious and did nothing more than show me lots of other shapes that could be made, only to return it to a cube again - what an amazing puzzle solver!!

Well done Hattie - keep trying to teach me how to solve it too!

Class 6W have been busy sorting the Christmas cards that have been posted in our Christmas Postbox. These cards will be delivered to each form and to the staff next week.

Thank you to everyone for supporting our school postbox.

Our traditional school carol service took place on Thursday 14 December, in the glorious setting of Our Lady of the Angels Chapel at Princethorpe College.

Parents were warmly welcomed to a wonderful evening of carols, readings and the re-telling of the Christmas story.

The traditional festive service did not disappoint, the orchestra played superbly and the voices of the choir sang out with much loved music that brought our community together to celebrate the beginning of the Christmas period.

It was a lovely celebration as we come towards the end of the Michaelmas term.

Thank you to parents for their generosity in our retiring collection we raised £270.57 for the Children's Air Ambulance.

Thank you all for your generous contributions to this year's Poppy Appeal. Crescent School raised an amazing £298.86! 

Crescent School

Wednesday 20 December 2023

Our Christmas Jumper Day this year will be on Wednesday 20 December 2023. On that day, children should wear normal school uniform, but instead of their green pullover/cardigan, they can wear a Christmas jumper, if they wish.

We invite you to make a voluntary contribution of a minimum £1 to wear a festive jumper, which is in aid of Children's Air Ambulance.

Ms Clark

Congratulations to the following Year 6 children who have been appointed as Sports Captains:

• Rugby - Albert and Edward G-H
• Netball - Alice

Well done to all the Captains.  

Patrick in 5F has earned his full student award in History this week.

Isabel, Hannah and Jonelle in 2E all earn theirs in English as do Alex G and Shayla in 6W.

Aria in 4C along with Samuel, Aryaan, Akaal and Max T in 5F all earn theirs in Science and DT.

Well done to you all.

Mrs Symons
JdV Lead

Congratulations to our Word Millionaires; Alice in 3SS, Esme and Lilah in 4C and Matthew in 5F.

Aria is our first Double Millionaire this term.

Fantastic reading by all.

Word Wizards, achieving the highest word count from successfully quizzing this week are:

• 3LS  Uma
• 3SS  Felicity
• 4C    Seren
• 5F    Toni 
• 6W   Maisie

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

• 3LS  Florence
• 3SS  Evie 
• 4C   Gloria 
• 5F    Nora
• 6W   James

Keep up the excellent reading!

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant

Congratulations to the following pupils for passing their music exams:

• Felicity (3SS)
• Feranmi (3LS)
• Alfie (4C)
• Aria (4C)
• Kian (4C)
• Alex B (5F)
• Edward M (5F)
• MingYi (5F)
• Nora (5F)
• Patrick (5F)
• Shaylan (5F)
• Zachary (5F)
• Maisie (6W)
• Timi (6W)
• Alex T (6W)

Mrs Barnes
Director of Music

This half term's tournament resulted in checkmate. Matthew was victorious in a brutal final against Maxi, both in 5F.  He becomes the recipient of the trophy for this half term.

Well done boys!

This half term's Top Quizzing Class, quizzing successfully on 169 books, are 3LS.

This half term's class Word Wizards, reading over 3.3 million words, are 4C.

Keep on reading!

Mrs Nelson
Teaching Assistant

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.

Flora has shown pride in her presentation of all of her learning tasks and have been awarded a Pen Licence and her first handwriting pen.

Well done!

This week's Artists of the week are:

• Locan 2E - A wonderful expressive painting

• Nishaan 2E - A beautiful painting of the Big Bad Wolf

• Felicity 3SS - Excellent added detail to her block print

• Evie 3SS - Carefully added detail to her block print pattern

• Kiran and Isabella 4C - Excellent choice of materials to recreate the textures

• Lilah and Mithun 4C - Carefully observed detail and super use of the different materials to recreate the different textures

Mrs Thackway
Head of Art 

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:

• Leela 6W completed 48% of the course
• Aryaan 5F completed 72% of the course
• Toni 5F completed 72% of the course
• Herbie 5F completed 48% of the course
• Edward M 5F completed 48% of the course
• Zac 5F completed 48% of the course
• Lilah 4C completed 24% of the course
• Finn 3SS completed 24% of the course

Results for Battle 7-14 Dec 2022. Y3, 4, 5 and 6 against each other - average score per class member.

• 1st 5F 366
• 2nd 6W 137
• 3rd 3SS 62

Most valuable players in the whole competition:

• 1st Matthew 5F
• 2nd Roisin 5F
• 3rd Shiv 6W 

Well done, 5F!

Last week most improved speedsters in the studio are:

3LS

• Kiki - Headliner!

4C

• Seren - Unsigned Act!
• Lilah - Support Act!

5F 

• Roisin - Rock Star!

6W

• Harry - Headliner!

No battle over Christmas, back again soon! Get gigging and garaging to achieve those JDVs!

Stay Calm and Rock on!!

As part of a Staff Wellbeing event this week, super Mrs Dowling showed us all how to make Gonks!  As you can see we had a variety of themes!

Thank you Mrs Dowling.

Crescent School

oi       ear       air        ure        er

• Encourage children to write… anything! (cards, lists, letters etc.)

• Practise counting to 20 and beyond – thinking about the value of two-digit numbers

• Share Christmas stories – identify familiar words in the text and ask children to read along where possible

• Keep a simple holiday diary to share in class when we return

What’s coming up/ notices/ information...

On Wednesday, our final day of term, we will be having a class Christmas party. We will enjoy party food, games and dancing!!

Please see email about Gloves for Forest School.

Thank you from the Reception team for your continued support this term. We wish you and your families a safe and happy Christmas and look forward to seeing you all in January.

In Forest School this last fortnight we have been reminding ourselves of the importance of trees and all that they do for us. They are celebrated in many different cultures and as it was Tree Dressing day we made decorations to dress our special school trees. We used our fine motor skills to thread popcorn and leaves using a needle, made ivy wreaths and wrapped sticks in colourful wool. The children showed fabulous focus and produced some beautiful decorations that have also had the benefit of providing some winter nourishment for our school wildlife. They also contributed some great thoughts to our discussion on what trees provide for us and how we use them.

Recently, we have used our class elf 'Ercan' to help us with our writing. We have worked on capital letters for names, using descriptive adjectives and extending our sentences with simple conjunctions. We even created our own unique elf which got up to all sorts of mischief. 

Class 2E have been using their colour mixing skills to paint their wonderful characters from The Three Little Pigs.

Children in 2W spent time exploring google maps in pairs and individually. They also consolidated reading and maths skills through our abacus platform – up to date and available for children to use, as they wish, over upcoming holidays.

This week Year 2 had a go at playing Mr Adkins' all time favourite game, Shuffle Ball! The key rules include that to move around you must shuffle on your bottoms, you can’t move with the ball, and the rule they struggled the most with… you are not allowed to talk! The game encourages moving in space, teamwork, passing skills, quick passing, the ability to be quiet, and on top of that is a whole lot of fun!

In Science, Year 2 have been learning about the different human life stages and how we grow and change. The pupils carried out an investigation to find out if arms, heads and feet grow as we get older. Using their superb measurement skills, they had fun collecting data from pupils throughout the school. 

Year 2 have been studying the topic of clothes. They have been describing the outfits of a variety of famous people and also singing along to the karaoke song on Language Angels. Here they are piecing together letters on pieces of card in order to spell clothes vocabulary correctly.

Congratulations to Juliette’s group who were the first to finish in 2E and Sarima's group in 2W.

Last Friday was a super day for FoC. In the morning we handed over all the toys and gifts you had generously donated to Major Catherine Rand of the Salvation Army, then after school it was a delight to host the annual Christmas Bazaar. There was the usual happy chaos as the children enjoyed everything from throwing puddings at the skittles to making a heart keyring full of sand! 

None of this could have happened without the generosity of the Crescent Community - whether giving up time to help set-up and run the events or supporting the initiatives with donations of gifts and prizes. Overall we raised £1869.04 during the Bazaar with £622 of this going to the Children's Air Ambulance. We are looking forward to revealing the fruits of everyone's labours in the New Year with the installation of the traversing wall that Mr Thackway gave a teaser mention about. 

Thanks again for all your support and we hope everyone has a lovely festive break. 

Inez and FoC

Please see below for useful school contact information:

Click here to view the term dates for 2023/24 and 2024/25.

Crescent School

The Foundation has the following vacancies:

Princethorpe College

• Estates Assistant 
• Estates Weekend Cleaner
• Digital Transformation Leader
• IT Engineer
• Casual Security Officer
• Casual Estates Assistant

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.