The Courier

Dear Parents and Friends of the School

The non-stop rain has been replaced by freezing temperatures this week, but the children have all returned in very good spirits, despite some cold fingers and toes at break time and out on the games field. It has been lovely seeing them all coming in so positively and hearing their happy tales of the Christmas holidays. 
 
We started the year with an assembly about New Year’s resolutions, where the children shared their hopes and dreams for a better 2024. Mrs Stapleton put the best ideas onto paper and put them in our the special ‘golden resolutions box’. This box was then left in the corridor for the children to put in their own suggestions during the week.  
 
This has produced a wide range of answers, some of them I will share with you here. They range from the inspirational, such as ‘making sure everyone has a friend’ and ‘being kind at all times’ to the very practical, such as ‘wearing my earmuffs at break time’, ‘learning how to tie my shoelaces’, and ‘mastering the use of chopsticks’. Somebody also mentioned sticking to the Novak Djokovic diet. I might have to Google that one. 
 
I don’t know if you still set yourself resolutions or targets for the year, but if you do, best of luck with them, and hopefully you haven’t fallen foul already, which is very easily done. 
 
Another thing we talked about in our assembly was the new learner profile word of the month which is ‘collaborative’. Quite a few children put their hands up to say they had an idea what this meant and I hope to build on that starting point over the month as we continue to make progress building an understanding of what makes a good learner. 
 
It has been a relatively quiet start to the term from an events point of view, but well done to the girls who did so well in the netball matches at Bilton Grange earlier in the week. We have more fixtures next week as well as the LAMDA showcase for Year 5 and 6 on Monday to look forward to. 
 
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy a restful weekend, and let’s hope the reports of snow don’t materialise, at least not when we have to be back in school.  

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Following the departure of Ania Wrzesniacka (affectionately known to us all as Miss V) at the end of last term, we have put in place a new leadership team for our after school provision. 

We have recruited two well trusted and experienced current members of staff to take on the duties. Jenny Chang will take over as After School Manager and her deputy will be Steph Calder. Jenny has worked in After School for a significant period of time and Steph is a long serving and well trusted Teaching Assistant here in school. 

We wish both of them every success in their new roles.

• Team Sports (Tuesday) and Dodgeball (Friday).  Due to the darker evenings, Team Sports will finish at 4.30pm, please collect at this time.
  
  Mrs Kelsall will finish Dodgeball at 4.30pm and start to dismiss at 4.35pm if you are able to collect then. Children will be taken to After School at 4.45pm. We will communicate when we revert back to 4.45pm.

• There is no Y5 and Y6 Nights Dream Musical Theatre or Reading for Pleasure on Monday due to the LAMDA Showcase.

• Years 5 and 6 need shorts, t-shirt and carrier bag witht their swimming kit this week.

MySchoolPortal

Crescent School

Please find below a link to view this term’s Crescent School calendar. We hope that you will find it a useful aide memoir when planning school events and activities into your busy schedules. There is plenty to look forward to, including lots of fixtures, the Foundation orchestral performance, Spring Concert and LAMDA Showcase.

Where possible, we will try to avoid making alterations or additions to this published calendar but if we do find this is necessary due to unavoidable changes to arrangements, you will be informed of these by electronic communication or in the weekly Courier. 

You can also keep track of everything going on via My School Portal and the school website www.crescentschool.co.uk, where you can also add events and reminders to your own electronic calendars by clicking on the relevant links.

Crescent School Lent Term Calendar 24 

Our new Scholastic Book Club is up and running. To browse the latest books and order online, please click on the link below. For every £1 you spend on this month’s Book Club, our school will earn 20p in Scholastic Rewards.

Book Club

Please place your order online by 30 January 2024.  

The latest edition of Princethorpe’s annual review was published over the Christmas holidays. It tells the story of their school year, term by term, reflecting on the whole host of activities, achievements and successes that pupils from Year 7 through to Upper Sixth took part in. It gives a great insight into life at the Foundation’s senior school, Princethorpe College.

You can find a copy of it on their website here: https://www.princethorpe.co.uk/publications

Monday 15 January 2024 - 4.00pm to 5.00pm

I am delighted to invite you to the LAMDA showcase on Monday 15 January from 4.00pm to 5.00pm.  Children will be performing their pieces of prose and poetry they have been working on in lessons.

Tickets can be booked below, two per family. The link closes on Friday 12 January:

Year 5 and 6 LAMDA Showcase 

If your child is in this performance they will remain in school for the show. Parents are to enter via the front doors at 3.50pm for light refreshments before taking their seats. 

Parents can take their children home after the show which should be finished by 5.00pm. If you wish your child to go into afterschool then please book them in through the normal channel.

It feels like childhood in the UK has changed significantly over recent years, making parenting and teaching more complex and challenging than ever before.

Here at school, we have invested significant time and training with all of our staff to develop consistent language and adult-led behaviours, which supports and values all children.  Much of this has been based on the latest thinking in this important area, and in particular the work of author Paul Dix. Paul has now written similarly on the subject of parenting and so we thought there may be some value in pulling this all together with you as parents, to enable us to develop our shared thoughts and consistencies as educators and guardians, to the benefit of the children.

Therefore we are offering a presentation, for parents only, on the changing world of raising children on either Monday 22 January 2024 from 4.00pm to 4.45pm or Thursday 1 February from 5.00pm to 5.45pm. Both presentations are identical, so please only book one session should you wish to attend via the links below.

Monday 22 January 2024

Thursday 2 February 2024

These children have been awarded their full Junior da Vinci student status this week:

• Alice, Timi, Grace, Remi and Maisie in 6W earn theirs in Science & DT, as does Barnaby in 5F
• MingYi in 5F earns hers in English, along with Walter, Zoe and Joshua in 3LS
• Matthew in 5F has earned his in Computing
• Iris in 2W has hers in Geography

Congratulations to you all on your hard work!

Mrs Symons
JdV Lead

A new term sees our first reading awards go to:

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

• 3LS  Kiki
• 3SS  Alice
• 4C    Esme
• 5F    Patrick
• 6W   Alex T

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

• 3LS  Jahnavi
• 3SS  Charlie
• 4C   Evelyn
• 5F    Roisin
• 6W   Maisie

A special mention this week goes to Alice in 3SS who has handed in a beautifully written and very informative and helpful review of the book she read over the Christmas holidays. If children would like to know what she thinks about the book White Boots please take a look at the Accelerated Reading Board.

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.

The following children have shown pride in their presentation of all of their learning tasks and have been awarded a Pen Licence and their first handwriting pen.

Jahnavi, Kiki, Joshua and David, in 3LS. 

Well done!

This week's Artists of the week are:

• Leela 6W - Excellent use of chalks to show contrast and movement

•  Maggie 6W - Lovely mark making to give the illusion of movement

•  Sam B 6W - Expressive use of paint and wax to capture movement

•  Zac 5F - Creative use of one colour range to create a warm effect

•  Max T 5F - Lovely range of purples to create this painting

•  Hannah 2E - A fun and expressive painting of The Big Bad Wolf

•  Zachary 2W - Excellent colour mixing and expressive use of oil pastels

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 this week.

• Nora 5F has completed 48% of the training course
• Aryaan 5F has completed 100% of the training course

Most improved speedsters in the studio are:

2W 

• Sarima - Support Act!

3LS

• Feranmi - Breakthrough Artist!
• Nimeeta - Busker!

Battle between all classes from 11- 18 January 2023. Only the first 15 minutes of play counts - so a little three or for times a week is always the most effective and recommended way of learning.

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 class battles.

Stay Calm and Rock on!!

'Celebrating Differences' has been our focus in our PSHE lessons and 3SS were able to say how they were similar and how they were different to their friends. At the end of term, they wrote compliments to each other and loved receiving these positive affirmations from their friends.

This week 3LS have been working hard to locate where three digit numbers may fit on a number line. The children generated 3 digit numbers using dice and then transferred them onto number lines, using milestone numbers to help. The children proved to be very accurate and worked well together.

The Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry is the inspiration for 4C’s fictional writing this half term. We will be using this model text to write our own fictional stories with a ‘save the rainforest’ message.

We used drama to become the creatures that live in the Kapok tree, coming down to the ground to persuade the sleeping man not to chop down the tree when he wakes up. This helped us develop ideas in preparation for writing.  

Just a few pictures from our last afternoon together before Christmas.

Year 5 have been investigating mixtures and solutions. They had fun working out how to separate substances from dry mixtures and predicting which substance would dissolve in water to make a solution.

After they completed some non-verbal reasoning practice questions, 5F took on the ‘Cycling Squares’ challenge in Thinking Skills with Ms Clark this week. In the circle of numbers, each adjoining pair must add to make a square number.

Our learner profile word for January is collaborative. Year 6 are reading Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief and enjoyed working together through some discussion points and developing their collaborative skills.

A great start to the netball season with the U10 and U11 teams travelling to Bilton Grange for their first matches. Both teams put on wonderful performances, transferring the skills practised in lessons to the competitive game really effectively, making some fantastic linking passes, driving towards the ball and close defense. 

Well done all.

• U11B V BG U11B - 2-1 Win - Player of the Match - Alice
• U11A V BG U11A - 10-2 Loss - Player of the Match - Maisie
• U10B vs BG U10B - 8-3 Win - Player of the Match - Roisin
• U10A vs BG U10A - 12-5 Loss - Coach's Player - Sophia

This term the focus during our swimming lessons will be on water safety. We will be following the Swim England Water Safety and Water Skills awards and the Rookie Lifeguard award. Water safety skills are vital life and survival skills, especially if you live near or holiday by water such as canals, ponds, rivers, quarries, lakes and harbours.  All Swim England Water Safety badges can only be awarded to swimmers when performed without nose clips and goggles. 
 
There are three Water Safety Awards teaching water danger awareness, self-rescue techniques and vital survival skills in clothes, without swimming goggles or nose clips. The Water Safety Awards have been developed in partnership with Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and Royal Lifesaving Society UK (RLSS UK). 

Year 5 and 6 swimmers should bring shorts, t-shirt and a plastic bag to next week's lesson.

Friday 19 January 2024 - 3.30pm to 4.45pm

First event this term is the Year 4 Bake Sale on Friday 19 January. As always this will start from 3.30pm and will have a range of yummy cakes and snacks selling at £1 each.

All profits will go to Year 4 to spend on entertainment for Privilege Time.

On the last day of the Michaelmas Term the children had a surprise visit from a very important man. Father Christmas took time out from all his preparations to pop in to school with his helper to deliver gifts to all the children. Everyone was delighted to receive a lovely selection box treat.

As you can see the children were all extremely excited.

Many thanks to the FOC for organising and funding this treat.

Please order Uniform via the link below:

Uniform Order Form

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

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:

Crescent School

• School Registrar and Marketing Secretary

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.

Please click on the link below which provides information regarding areas of the curriculum where you may be able to help your child at home.

• 1Q Lent Term 2024
  
  
• 2E Lent Term 2024

• 2W Lent Term 2024

• 3LS Lent Term 2024

• 3SS Lent Term 2024

• 4C Lent Term 2024

• 5F Lent Term 2024

• 6W Lent Term 2024