Dear Parents and Friends of the School

Welcome to another edition of the Courier and it's always a nice time of the week when we know we have got through to another Friday and hopefully have got a relaxing weekend to look forward to. It has been an unusual week in that we have had a leap year day to celebrate in school. The one thing I always think of when it's a leap year is that it must be an Olympic year as well, which is always something I really look forward to.  
 
It has certainly been a busy week with trips to Oxford University and workshops at Mary Arden’s Farm being two of the highlights. I particularly enjoyed watching the girls play netball on Tuesday in a home fixture against King Henry's. The endeavour of the girls and the goodwill of the spectators gave me a really good inner feeling and reminded me of what school sports should be all about. The games were close battles and everyone involved from both schools played in exactly the right spirit. 
 
Sadly, the weather has taken its toll on one or two of the sporting events this week but there has still been plenty to celebrate. 
 
It was also nice to have Saint David's day fall on a school day this year as well, and lots of the children in the Yellow House recognised this with their little flashes of yellow in their clothing today. There is an old tradition in Wales that St David’s lesson for us all was that ‘the little things in life matter’. Taking the time to say and do those small acts kindness and thoughtfulness make such a difference to other people's lives. This was a very apt and timely message to share with the children in assembly this morning. 
 
I was also able to share with them the Barnaby Bear that a local business lady has made as a mascot for next week's funeral. She stepped into the breach voluntarily and at very short notice to gift us a beautifully handmade memory-teddy that will be cherished for years to come by the family, I am sure. I showed it to the children in Year 5 earlier in the week and one child very sensibly said ‘We must find a way to thank her’. Indeed, we must. 
 
Finally, thank you to everyone who responded to our form regarding next week's events and Barnaby’s funeral. This has given us a really clear idea of who is coming into school and has enabled me to put together a strong plan to make sure those in school are well cared for during the day. Next Wednesday will be a difficult day for us all I am sure but it is so important that we mark it in the right way and share with the family all of the love and happy memories that everyone here at Crescent School has for our good friend Barnaby. 
 
Have a good weekend everyone. 

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

We are delighted to announce that Becky Witcomb will be joining us on Monday 18 March as our new School Registrar and Marketing Secretary. She will be taking over the reins from Helen Morley who is retiring from the Crescent School later that week, after more than 25 years of dedicated service.

Becky, who lives locally, and holds a degree in Business Administration, has a strong background in customer facing roles. She joins us from Rugby School, where for the last five years she has worked as an Admissions Officer.

Becky came out top of a strong field of candidates, and her knowledge and experience and warm and friendly manner will ensure that new pupils have a seamless and smooth start to life at Crescent School.

Comments Becky, “I am really looking forward to starting at Crescent School and to supporting prospective Crescent School parents and pupils through the admissions process.”

As part of the handover, Becky and Helen will both be at our next Open Morning that takes place on Saturday 16 March, for more information visit: https://www.crescentschool.co.uk/visit-crescent

Now that all the school places have been offered to Year 6 please can you ensure that you accept or decline the places for all schools that you have applied to. This can make a difference to other children on their waiting list.

Parents are discouraged from taking pupils out of school during term-time because of the impact it has on their learning. Should this be unavoidable, permission should always be sought in advance from the headteacher. I am only able to pre-authorise absences on certain grounds such as religious observances and special family occasions.

Please ensure you submit any absence requests in good time, through My School Portaland select Requesting Planned Absence.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Please note there is no swimming for 3SS and 4C on Wednesday 6 March.  

All other swimming will go ahead this week.

MySchoolPortal

Crescent School

Pupils from Princethorpe visited Crescent School on Friday 1 March to complete a biodiversity survey with our Green Team. The visit was part of a project to collect biodiversity data at all three of the Foundation school sites to support our commitment to improve sustainability.

The visitors included members of the Princethorpe Planet team as well as Sixth Form Biology students. They worked with Green Team pupils using square frame quadrats to record species. They surveyed a number of different areas within the school grounds and recorded the data. The plan is for the survey to be repeated at regular intervals to allow the schools to understand and track biodiversity.

It was particularly lovely to be able to welcome back some former Crescent pupils!

Our Year 3s visited Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Tuesday 27 February to take part in a Rock Stars Geology Workshop. The children discovered the difference between rocks and minerals and how essential they are in our everyday lives. They took a hands-on journey through the rock cycle to explore the three types of rock that make up our planet and became geologists as they sorted and identified rocks. After their interactive workshop, they also had time for a tour of the museum. Fabulous enrichment for their learning in school.

Crescent's newly appointed School Council members met for the first time on Monday to find out more about their roles and responsibilities. We talked about 'pupil voice' and the different ways they can collect and share ideas and feedback from their classmates to share in School Council meetings.

The first job on our agenda was naming our Children's Air Ambulance paramedic bear - Ted! 

The photo is of the outgoing and new School Councils.

Take a look at our new traverse wall that children will be able to hone their climbing skills on here at Crescent School. It’s been installed adjacent to the playing fields on the outside wall of Mrs Stapleton’s classroom and caters for mixed abilities providing different coloured horizontal routes.

Funded generously by our amazing Friends of Crescent and sourced from The School Playground Company, the traverse wall allows pupils to develop their agility, co-ordination and strength, and all while having great fun too. The wall will feature in the school’s Outdoor Learning programme that takes place in the Trinity Term.

It proved very popular with Ria, Oliver, Klara, Amber and Alfie who happily tried it out when they posed for a photo with Headmaster, Joe Thackway and FoC Secretary Laura O’Connell this afternoon.

Year 5 took part in a ‘Best Will in the World Workshop’ at Mary Arden’s Farm on Tuesday 27 February, the birthplace of William Shakespeare providing an atmospheric setting against which to bring his glorious texts alive.

In the workshop, pupils explored the major themes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a fun and interactive way. It was wonderful for the children to be immersed in the social and historical context of the play. During the day, pupils even found time to look round the farm and to see some of the rare breeds that were common in Shakespeare’s time.

Their visit was a fantastic experience for them all, helping to bring Shakespeare’s language to life. The story telling really aiding pupils’ understanding. The children came away enthused and excited and having learned lots about both the Tudor times and William Shakespeare!

It was St David's Day today and Yellow House marked the name day of their House Saint by wearing something yellow. It certainly helped to brighten up what started as a bit of a dreary grey day.

It's always lovely to see the pride the children have in their School House.

Year 2 are really enjoying studying 'The Titanic' in History. There is an exhibition on at the NEC that we can't run as a school trip as it's not in term time but I thought I'd let you know in case it's something you would like to do yourself with your children over the Summer Holidays. It is at the NEC from 27 July to 25 August. Link below.

Titanic Exhibition

Some of the days are already sold out so you might want to book early if you are interested.

Kind Regards

So many of you are interested in reading, so this may be a great way to share how much you enjoy it. 

National Book Tokens are running a competition to design a Book Token.  The following link provides further information and the template you can dowload:

Design a Book Token

All entries to be handed into Mrs Calder by Friday 19 March who will submit the entries.

Mrs Webb and Mrs Calder

Monday 4 March - 4.00pm to 6.30pm
Thursday 5 March - 6.00pm to 8.00pm

We all value the importance of these meetings to share and discuss your child's academic progress.  

Year 5 also have the opportunity to book appointments with specialist teachers. I won’t be available for Year 5 appointments as I am a specialist teacher for Year 6 and will be seeing those families on that evening. However, Year 5 will receive their full midyear report at half term and there will be an extended consultation in the Trinity Term with me and Mrs Webb.  

We look forward to meeting with you.

Ms Forth
Deputy Head - Academic

Monday 11 March - 4.00pm to 6.30pm
Thursday 21 March - 6.00pm to 8.30pm

We all value the importance of these meetings to share and discuss your child's academic progress.  

The booking system is now live for you to book your Year 3 and 4 Parent Consultation Evening appointments with form tutors and specialist teachers. Please book your appointments below by Sunday 3 March 2024:

https://princethorpe.schoolcloud.co.uk/

We look forward to meeting with you.

Ms Forth
Deputy Head - Academic

Tuesday 12 March 2024 - 4.00pm

Crescent School is hosting its annual Orchestra Workshop in conjunction with Crackley Hall on Tuesday 12 March. There will be a concert for the parents of those playing at 4.00pm on that day.

Refreshments will be served in the Library from 3.45 pm. Unfortunately, we cannot open the playground for parking as there is an extra-curricular sports club using it, so please park considerately in the roads nearby or at St Mark's Church Car Park. The concert will be finished by 4.30pm, at which point you will be able to take your child home.

Parents of children in Orchestra can book tickets here:

Orchestral Performance to Parents

Please note that the Year 4 and 5 Destination meeting for parents will now take place on Wednesday 13 March 2024 at 7pm. This replaces the published date of Thursday 12, to avoid a clash with parent consultation meetings on that day. Apologies for this change of date and I hope it doesn't cause too much inconvenience. 

There will be an opportunity to ask questions as well through the live chat function. If you are unable to watch it live, then there will be a recording for you to watch at your leisure.

A link to join the meeting will be sent out on the day of the event.

Thursday 14 March - 6.00pm to 8.30pm
Monday 18 March - 4.00pm to 6.30pm

We all value the importance of these meetings to share and discuss your child's academic progress.  

The booking system is now live for you to book your Pre-Prep Parent Consultation Evening appointments. Please book your appointments below by Sunday 3 March 2024:

https://princethorpe.schoolcloud.co.uk/

We look forward to meeting with you.

Ms Forth
Deputy Head - Academic

Saturday 16 March - 10.00am to 12.00pm

We are holding an Open Morning on Saturday 16 March for prospective families. Come and find out why Crescent School has been judged 'Excellent' in all areas by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. It's a great opportunity for prospective families considering Crescent School to come and have a look around and get a feel for the school. There will be opportunities to speak to pupils, key members of staff and to meet Mr Thackway, Headmaster.

To find out more and to book your visit to Crescent School visit our website here.

Applications for places in the current Reception to Year 6 are treated on an individual basis. We are currently operating waiting lists in most year groups. Please get in touch with our Registrar, Mrs Helen Morley, regarding our availability for September 2024. 

We are now taking registrations for September 2025 entry to Reception and Year 3.

Please do share this information with interested family and friends. 

Friday 22 March 2024 – 9.15am  -10.15am

The Easter Service will be a celebration of spring and include the telling of 'The Mayans and the History of Chocolate' by Class 5F and Choir Group. We do hope you will join us for the most important festival in the Christian year.

Two tickets per family will be available for parents of children in Choir and Class 5F. Please book below:

Easter Service

Full Junior da Vinci awards have been achieved by:

• Mikael and Evie in 1Q, who are now full students in English, as is Patrick in 5F
• Joshua in 3LS becomes a double student in English and Zoe from the same class becomes a triple student
• Hattie in 6W achieves hers in Geography

Amazing work everyone!

Mrs Symons
JdV Lead

Seren has read an amazing 500k words and received her badge.

Well done Seren. 

This week's Word Wizards and Top Quizzers are:

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

• 3LS  Uma
• 3SS  Catherine
• 4C    Seren
• 5F    Sophie
• 6W   Remi

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

• 3LS  Jahnavi
• 3SS  Flora
• 4C   Theo M
• 5F    Maya
• 6W   Alice

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.

Orlaith 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!

Reading certificates have, this week, been awarded to:

• Ava
• Edward
• Erica
• Florence
• Sophie D
• Olivia-Rose
• Tilly
• Lottie

Well done to you all.

This week's Artist of the Week are:

• Felicity, Evie, Elin, and Penelope 3SS - Wonderful clay portrait sculptures

• Tomisin 4C - Creative use of colour to exaggerate emotion

• Everly 4C - Creative choice of colour and mark making to emphasise an emotion

• Henry 5F - Excellent understanding of one-point perspective

• Matthew 5F - Carefully drawn sketch of a room using one-point perspective

• Isabella 3LS - Expressive portrait painting

• Joshua 3LS - Excellent range of colour and lovely painting technique

• Locan 2E has completed 24% of the course
• Zac has completed 72% of the course

Results For Battle 22-29 February between Y2 - Y6 are (average score per class member):

• 1st 5F 411
• 2nd 2E 197
• 3rd 4C  155

• 1st Roisin 5F
• 2nd Kian 4C
• 3rd Shiv 6W

Well done, 5F! 🏆

5F

• Harry - Headliner!
• Maya - Rock Star!
• Nora - Headliner!
• Edward W - Support Act!
• Max T- Headliner!
• Sophia - Rock Legend!

• Seren - Support Act!

• Penelope - Rock Star!

• Dare - Wannabe!

• Isabel - Wannabe!

Battle between Y1- Y3 29 Feb - 7 March 2024. 

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! 

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

This week Reception class had a fantastic time practising and developing their mouse skills by playing some very fun games in the ICT Suite! Focusing on how to hold and control the mouse properly, they demonstrated how they could point and click, as well as drag objects to complete a range of fun activities! The teachers were blown away with just much they could do independently!

In PSHE, we are thinking about ways to stay healthy. We have sorted a variety of food and talked about ways we can keep our teeth healthy with regular brushing, a healthy diet and trips to the dentist.

In phonics we have been introduced to blends...

gl   pl   cl   sl   sp   st   tw   sm

We will be comparing and ordering numbers to 20. We will start to explore place value of teen numbers as a ten and some ones.

How to help your child at home...

• Encourage children to read simple instructions and recipes. Talk about the features of this style of writing
• Write a shopping list encouraging the children to write the sounds they hear
• Practise recall of number bonds to 5 and 10
• Visit ‘Bug Club’ to supplement daily reading – if you need a reminder of log on details please let us know

Classes 2E and 2W have been learning how to prepare and cook soup and bread rolls. They have been very busy dough making, peeling and chopping and they will take home their 2E 'Extra-delicious soup' and 2W 'Wonderful soup' on Friday.

Class 1Q have been learning the months of the year in their French lessons. They have been practising with the Alain le Lait song and with various picture symbols. Their next target will be to say the date of their birthday in French.

Class 2E and 2W have worked hard to create these wonderful clay sculptures. After carefully modelling their animals out of clay, they then painted them in the correct colours.

Class 2E have been studying place value and marking the passage of the school year on their classroom chart. Understanding ones and tens and applying this knowledge to different calculations takes plenty of practise but the children have all worked very hard. So on Friday 23 February, 100 days since the start of the school year, it was time to celebrate with a special 100 day party.

The children enjoyed preparing, making party hats and decorations and getting the classroom ready. Then in the afternoon the children got on with the serious business of having fun. There were traditional party games including pass the parcel and musical chairs. I couldn’t resist including the odd mathematical challenge in between layers of pass the parcel but with their ever growing skills, the children answered the questions with ease. After all the games were finished it was time to sit down and share some party food before finally having a dance and enjoying some fun with balloons.

In maths this week we have been extending our learning about fractions to understand mixed numbers and how to count in halves. We created a human number line and placed whole and half numbers on to it. We then got the play dough out to make our own whole fruits and then practised cutting them into halves to make mixed numbers. 

Children in 2W recognise that physical activity benefits their body. This week we have played the 'beans' warm up game: getting our hearts beating faster and our breathing deeper. We then developed our control and accuracy by hitting a ball through the air directly to our partner.

One of the next projects for the Green Team is to design and build a large raised bed so that we can plant and grow flowers to be used by pollinators from Spring 2024.

We are looking to build the bed from recycled materials and from the time and resources of volunteers from our school community. Can you help? 

Please do let the Green Team know if you can offer any materials, expertise in design and planting or your time to build the raised bed via email to jacquijohnson@crescentschool.co.uk 

We have a huge weekend of sport ahead with five pupils competing in national cross country competitions.

Year 4 pupils, Amber, Kian and Thomas are taking part in the National ISA Cross Country Final at Worksop College on Saturday.

Year 5 pupils, Roisin C and Maxi E are competing in the National Primary Schools Cross Country at Prestwold Hall in Loughborough on Sunday. 

Super huge good luck to them all - be courageous and fleet of foot - we are very proud of you all.

Friday 15 March 2024 - 3.30pm to 4.45pm

Class 2W Bake Sale is on Friday 15 March. 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 Class 2W to spend on entertainment for Privilege Time.

Just a reminder that the Disco date has changed on Classlist and Facebook from 8 March to 26 April. This was due to a number of children being away for the ISA Football Finals in addition to their parents - many of whom are key FOC helpers and we wouldn't be able to run the event without them!

Hopefully the new date is convenient for all.

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

• Digital Transformation Leader
• Payroll Officer
• Minibus Driver

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.