News

This Friday was the second Share and Praise worship via Zoom. Each class now has a video camera and microphone attached to their interactive whiteboard and at 9.20am all the classes log in to get together for virtual worship. 

This week the worship was held in Silver Birch classroom and next week Mrs Dart will venture further along the corridor to Oak classroom. 

Here are some comments from last week when worship was held in Willow classroom:

Flo - "It was nice even though we weren't together. I just wish I could hug all my friends in the other bubble. Nice to see them though."

Tristen - "It felt almost normal because it feels like proper worship but safe."

Mrs Perrott - "It's so good to see the other classes. It gives me a real warming feeling."

James - "It was nice seeing my brother."

Olivia and Abi - "Really good to see other people that we don't see any more and that we can't play with."

Today's worship had a few technical issues, but everyone agrees that it's good to get together, even if it's only on the big screen. It's great to see the children's excited faces, waving at the camera and their actions to the worship songs which are all out of time with one another. Brings a smile to everyone's faces.

Silver Birch Class Newsletter  18/9/20

Dear Parents,

The children seem to have settled well this week and are getting used to school routines again.

Homework

A spelling list is being sent home in homework books: from ‘accident’ to ‘believe’ this week.

Writing: this week pupils could create a poster for ‘Stig of the Dump’, our whole-class reading book this term.

English

We are now doing whole-class reading in lieu of guided reading. This will ensure pupils are reading exciting, high-quality texts every day (15-20mins).

Pupils might use www.spellingframe.co.uk to revise vocabulary and to challenge themselves.

Maths

This week we have been working on place value, the three times table and counting fifties.

I would recommend pupils practise their times (1, 2, 5, 10) tables at home, using the website www.timestables.co.uk. 

Other Subjects

In R.E. we continued with our topic of reconciliation, whilst in Music we started our ukulele lessons.

Housekeeping

Please could reading records and books be brought in to school every day.

Children should ensure they have P.E. kit in school for Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Best wishes,

Mr Harvey

What an amazing start to the year. All of our pupils have come back to school eager to learn and the new changes we have made to ensure the safety of our pupils, families and staff have not slowed down their learning.

Over the summer holidays, staff at Holy Cross worked hard to develop a Book Shack in our playground. Our aim is to encourage reading during play and lunch time. And what a hit it has been! The children have thoroughly enjoyed going into our Book Shack to read new and exciting stories.  

To make sure we could open our Book Shack in line with safety regulations, we have ensured our Book Shack is thoroughly cleaned after each use, we limit 2 pupils for each session and ensure pupils hand sanitize on entry and exit.  

At Holy Cross, reading is at the heart of everything we do! From our Whole Class Reading sessions every morning at 8:55 to our pacey and engaging phonics lessons, our Book Shack is just an extra addition to ensure pupils love reading! 

We are very fortunate to have so many wonderful reading volunteers who give up their time selflessly to come in and listen to our pupils read one to one on a weekly basis.  

On Thursday two of our reading volunteers, Karen Smith and Darren Butcher, came in to officially open our Book Shack by cutting the ribbon. The grand opening did have to be in line with COVID19 safety measures so there were no children or parents present. But we hope that, by sharing these photos, the grandeur of our opening can come across.

What a wonderful first week back we have had!

Year 5 and year 6 children came back to school eager to learn and reach their potential. Everyone has enjoyed being back with their friends, challenging themselves in Maths and English and starting their new school routine.

This week we have created detailed 'Going for Goals' plans on areas we would like to improve in our learning from handwriting to timestables. Our 'Going for Goals' display is in the corridor outside our classroom. Why not ask us how we are making progress towards our goals? 

We started our History learning about The Vikings and one pupil drew this incredibly detailed Viking picture as a front cover in our Humanities books. How super!

This term we have three amazing books we are reading:

1. Cosmic in Literacy

2. Wonder in Whole Class Reading

4. The Jamie Drake Equation as an end of day book

These books are brilliant. We have been laughing the whole way through The Jamie Drake Equation, feeling very somber and emotional whilst reading Wonder and feeling shocked and intruged when reading Cosmic. 

I wish you all a lovely weekend. 

Best wishes,

Miss Travers

On Wednesday 9th September the new Reception children visited Holy Cross for our annual Teddy Bears' Picnic. What a fun opportunity for parents, children and staff to meet! After playing on our school field we ventured into our wonderful Forest School to explore and play. 

I'm writing this during Day 3 of Holy Cross' full return to school. It is so great to see all the children back in school and they are so eager to catch up on lost learning as can be seen by the photos.

We had a lovely time saying farewell to our Year 6 leavers, with a presentation of leavers' hoodies and a Holy Cross bear to accompany our fantastic children as they embark on their next adventure. Our Governors gave commemorative bibles to mark the occasion. Families enjoyed a socially distanced picnic whilst the Year 6 children had a last chat and play on the field, signing school shirts and saying farewell to Holy Cross.

It has truly been a delight to share in these childrens' primary school journey, and we will miss each and every one of you.  We wish you all the very best in your new schools.  Come back and visit us!

We hope you will enjoy this new-format Newsletter: it is produced by our fresh new website, which we hope you will like as much as we do!  From September, the Newsletter will be sent out to you directly from our website https://holycrossps.schoolzineplus.co.uk/news.

Mrs Green and Mrs Everest have been busy delivering some exciting transition resources to our new Reception starters for September, and we’d like to take this opportunity to officially welcome our new families to the Holy Cross family!

At the other end of our school, we sadly say farewell to our fantastic Year 6 pupils: we wish you a wonderful future at secondary school and beyond, and thank you for being such a special part of our community.  We’re looking forward to our Year 6 Leavers’ Picnic on the last day of term!

It has been fantastic to welcome back so many of our pupils this half term – we have absolutely loved seeing your sunny smiles, and learning together again.  We miss those of you who have not yet been able to return, and we are so excited to welcome you all back in September.  Throughout lockdown and school closures, many of you have worked wonderfully hard on your learning from home, and those of you still shielding have continued to delight and impress your teachers with your fantastic responses to the daily home learning tasks we’ve set.

We loved seeing your pictures from our Home Sports Week, and it was great that we could still stretch ourselves physically and have our much missed Sports Day at home at least!  Well done to our medal winners, and thank you to Mrs Griffin for organising this event for us!

We hope you enjoy this newsletter – from exploring the Black Lives Matter movement through art, to a fantastic book review challenge for the holidays.

Have a fantastic summer, and we look forward to seeing you all on Monday 7^th September (11^th or 14^th September for Mars class).

Mrs Everest and Mrs Green are making lots of preparations for the new children who are starting at Holy Cross in September. As they haven't been able to meet the children and invite them into school before the summer holidays, they decided to do something special to help make the children feel part of the Holy Cross family.

They made each child a bag that had a postcard, notebook, pencils and lots of other little surprises! There is even a letter from one of the Year 5/6 buddies - they are really looking forward to meeting the children too!

Mrs Everest and Mrs Green then went around Uckfield delivering the bags to each child's home and said a little hello to all the new children. It was very exciting to see so many lovely smiley faces! They also set a task for the children for the summer. Once the bags have been emptied, the children are to collect items or pictures that tell their new teachers all about themselves and bring them with them when they start in September. Mrs Everest and Mrs Green can't wait to find out all about the children in the new Reception class. Don't worry if you have not yet received your bag... we still have a couple more to deliver!

Congratulations to our medal winners for Home Sports Week!

This week, we had a socially distanced awards ceremony, and the prize-giving even involved a home visit!  What strange times we are living in!

Well done to everyone who took part and joined our school community in this celebration of sport, fun and competition from home!

A reminder that Chartwells are increasing their charge for school lunches by 5p - to £2.10 - from September.  We use ParentPay for all school-related charges: if you do not already have an account, please contact the office and we will provide you with login details to activate your account.  We are a cash-free school, so even if your child is entitled to free school meals, it is worth registering for an account so that you can pay for any after-school clubs or trips your child may wish to take part in.

A reminder that the embroidered items of our school uniform (cardigan or jumper) are available from our supplier, PMG: https://pmgschoolwear.co.uk/school/holycrosscofeprimaryschool.  We would ask that your child wears a jumper or cardigan with the school badge on it, but any other items of uniform may be purchased from any retailer, providing it is in the school colours.

We use Studybugs as our main source of contact with parents: it is vital that you ensure you download the Studybugs app to your phone and register so that you do not miss out on key information.

The Year 4 bubble have started studying four different female black artitsts. The artwork has given us a starting point for discussions around racism and the children have been participating in discussions about the Black Lives Matter movement. 

We started the week looking at Alama Thomas' expressionist artwork, and moved onto looking at Kara Walker's shillouettes.  Next week we will focus on Bisa Butler and Lorna Simpson. 

At Holy Cross we promote a love of reading through our class reading areas, wonderful school library and interesting texts for Whole Class Reading.

I want to challenge my future class (currently Year 4 and Year 5) that will be Saturn Class next year.

Your challenge is to find the most interesting and unusal place you can read your favourite book in. It might be up in the tree you climbed, or reading a book whilst doing gymnastics... the options are endless (but make sure you are safe)!

Send in your photos to c.travers@holycross.e-sussex.sch.uk and I will display all the wacky places you love to read in our new classroom!

We know reading regularly with your child can make a massive difference to their progress. But it isn’t always easy to fit it in day-to-day.

Here are some easy ways you can make reading a part of every day:

1. Don’t worry about how long you read for. Every minute spent reading makes a bigger difference than you realise!

2. Don’t worry about what your kids are reading: recipes, cereal packets, Argos catalogues… it’s all useful! Keep books and other reading materials close by.

3. Reading to kids of all ages is helpful. If your little one isn’t reading by themselves yet, read with them.

4. Ask lots of questions: Who, what, where, when and why and ask them to summarise when you’ve finished.

We wanted to share a tool with you to help your child think and talk about the world around them. The TRUST approach can be used when you are talking about reading with your child.

T-take turns to talk about what you are going to read. Say things like: “I feel like reading a book with animals in it today. What do you feel like reading?”

R-recap what’s happened in the book as you are reading. Say things like: “Why do you think that happened?”

U-use lots of encouragement. Say things like: “You’re doing brilliantly today!", "What great ideas…", "Let’s keep reading to see what happens!”

S-share what you know to help your child. Say things like: “Have you learnt about…at school?”

T-tune-in and be interested. Say things like: “I didn’t know you knew so much about…!”

Win 10 books for you and 50 books for our school library!

Read a book this summer and send Schoolreaders your book review for a chance to win bundles of books!

DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE BOOK?

Tell Schoolreaders all about it, or read a new book and rate it! You can use one of these templates below:

KS1 Book Review Template

KS2 Book Review Template

WHAT SHOULD YOU INCLUDE IN YOUR REVIEW?

Paint a quick picture – explain what the book is about, but no spoilers please!

Opinion – why do you like it? Why didn’t you like it?

Who else would like this book?

Would you recommend it to others, or not?

WHAT COULD YOU WIN?

Two winners will get the chance along with their class to take part in a virtual video chat with M. G. Leonard.  These two winners will also win 50 books each for their school libraries, and 10 books each for themselves. 

Four runners up will win 5 books each.

The winners’ book reviews will be featured on the Schoolreaders website.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This is a competition for pupils of primary school age.

The child's name and age and an adult's contact details must be included with each entry. Please also include the name and town of the entrant’s primary school so Schoolreaders can contact them.

Send entries by e-mail to competition@schoolreaders.org or post them to:

Schoolreaders, Bedford Heights, Brickhill Drive, Bedford, MK41 7PH.

It would be brilliant if every child at Holy Cross entered the competition. Do let us know when you post your book review.

Good Luck!