Day at the Museum for Birch
We had lots of fun on our trip to the Great North Museum! We tried on the armour that was super heavy and practiced our warrior pose!
Wellbeing newsletter
Evening Everyone
Please find attached a monthly newsletter that we will be sending out every month to support our pupils and parents with their mental health. We have also issued a monthly newsletter to our staff as well. If you require any more information use the contact details which can be found on the newsletter.
Evening Everyone
Information update
Afternoon Everyone
Please find below a letter regarding Halloween film Friday, Parent’s Evening and Ofsted update.
Dear Parents and Carers
I am just writing to you to inform you of some upcoming events over the next few weeks. Firstly, as I’m sure you are aware we have recently had our Ofsted inspection on Monday and Tuesday this week so thank you very much to all parents and carers who completed the online comments via the Ofsted website. As soon as we have the official results we will publish them on the website and they will be on the official Ofsted website which we will provide a link to.
In other news the PTA have organised a Halloween film afternoon on the last day of term next week and will be providing a range of tasty treats while the pupils are watching the movie. Huge thanks to all of those parents involved for organising this. If PRIMARY only pupils want to wear Halloween costumes that would be fine but can we please request that pupils do not wear masks or face make-up as lots of our pupils can be very sensitive to this. Please send in the costume in a bag to be worn on the afternoon.
We will also be collecting goods, tinned and packet items only please, for Harvest Festival and all donations that we receive will be given to the Stanley Food Bank (PACT house). If anyone wants to drop these goods off or send them in with their children we would really appreciate this. This needs to be done by Tuesday 2nd November. We will be having a virtual Primary harvest celebration on the Wednesday and will post the video via class DOJO.
Thank you for all of the suggestions regarding the After School clubs and we hope to have these up and running as soon as possible after half term.
Parents Evening will be the 1st November and I’m delighted to say we will be having parents back into school. Primary parents will be able to visit their child’s class teacher and staff and Secondary pupils will be able to discuss progress with their child’s subject teacher in the school hall. Parents evening will begin at 3:20 and finish at 4:40 so please come along to discuss your child’s progress and raise any issues or concerns that you may have.
As ever, if you have any concerns or issues please get in touch via the usual channels.
Yours Sincerely
Lee Davis
Head of School
Friday Afternoon Enrichment
Fun in the mud! Football enrichment was a great success this afternoon, despite the muddy field. All students had a really fun time and got to work on their skills, followed by a match. Well done Football Stars!
Hazel English
Our class text at the moment is ‘The smartest giant in town’ by Julia Donaldson.
Hazel class have completed lots of different activities around the text.
We are currently working on different ways to retell the story and have created cave painting (linked to our topic of the stone age) showing the different parts of the story and this week we made the story into a play.
Each pupil played a different character and Miss Robson read the story.
Next week we are working on pupils having their own lines and more costumes.
Hazel class Attention Autism
In Hazel class we love using ‘Attention Autism’ as a way of engaging pupils, supporting shared attention and encouraging communication.
This week we used ‘Attention Autism’ in phonics, to introduce our new letter sounds.
There are four stage and Hazel class have been working on the first three.
The Bucket
This helps us to focus our attention and can be used to introduce a new concept or vocabulary.
The Attention Builder
Miss Robson then shared a story using props to continue to build attention and engagement.
The Interactive Game
Pupils took turns sorting objects into groups based on their initial letter sound.
Pupils then transferred their knowledge of the new letter sounds to their own individual or group activities.
Some of the pupils went on to play pop up pirate where they used PECS to request a colour and in order to put the sword into the barrel they were encouraged to sound out the letter sound.
Pupils also went on the practice additional speed sounds and handwriting.
Learning about Autumn in Maple
Maple class have been learning about the season Autumn. We have incorporated the season Autumn within our classroom. Looking at lots of different leaves and the textures of them. We have also got super creative and messy creating our very own Autumn leaves.
Look at all of the amazing Autumn colours we used. We used the potatoes that were croft in croft to create the different prints on our leaves. Maple also have been discussing the different types of animals that we can see at this time of year. Our children have noticed and seen a lot more hedgehogs. We used tissue paper to create our very own spikey hedgehogs.
Maple decided that it would be a great idea to create an Autumn reef to take home. This reef included the flowers Poppy’s, as we spoke about remembrance day, pumpkins as Halloween is coming up, and acorns as in Autumn we notice lots of acorns on the ground.
These were cut out and then stuck onto our paper reefs. 
Look how amazing these turned out!
This has been allowing our children to practise mark making, whilst doing a group activity it allows everyone to create and build friendships.
Ofsted Inspection 12th & 13th October
Please see below. Ofsted will be visiting Croft over the next 2 days. Please log on to Parent View as soon as possible if you wish to share your views of our school. The letter below explains how.
Wishing all our wonderful staff and pupils a really good outcome!