15 October 2021
The last six weeks have gone incredibly quickly, during which all our pupils have impressively engaged in school life, some wonderful teaching and learning, some exciting and competitive sport and an incredible range of extra-curricular activities.
Our Music department have been exceptionally busy, encouraging a life-long love of music from our youngest pupils upwards! Reception children have made a great start to their musical careers and have enjoyed exploring a variety of instruments in their lessons, including having a go on a quarter sized violin. In particular, they have loved joining in with Key Stage 1 Choir who gave a brilliant performance of 'Big Red Combine Harvester' in our Harvest Assembly.
Year 1 pupils have been looking at how music can convey emotion and using their knowledge of major and minor keys to compose music and our Year 2 pupils have enjoyed exploring 'Sea' Music, creating soundscapes of waves and the sea using a range of percussion instruments. Meanwhile, I have been greatly envious of our Year 4 pupils who have been learning about Prokofiev’s highly popular ‘Peter and the Wolf’. They have relished exploring the Russian folk tale and excelled in understanding how the distinct sounds produced by various different instruments have been used to represent the animals. They have even begun work on their own versions creating two characters and composing melodic motifs!
Extra-curricular music has also had a great start to the academic year, with so many pupils showing a great deal of enthusiasm and energy for Key Stage Choirs Choir, Chamber Choir, Orchestra, Recorder Clubs and Music Theory Club.
In Nursery this week, the children have had a different focus book every day. They have been incredibly animated, theatrically re-telling some of the stories they have heard. Earlier this week, they welcomed Miss Culver for a music session, where they explored different musical instruments and decided which ones would be a good accompaniment to different parts of the stories they have heard.
Reception have enjoyed working together to act out the story of The Little Red Hen, and have been busy learning number bonds in Mathematics, using speech bubbles in Literacy, exploring autumn colours in their creative work, and having lots of opportunity to put their learning into practise around the classroom and garden!
The Sports Department have been buzzing this half term, following a return to fixtures and the start of the new season for football and hockey! As well as fixtures against a selection of local schools, there have been fierce battles in our interhouse competitions! It has been great to see our playing fields becoming a hive of activity throughout the day and to welcome back spectators, and we have had plenty of success to celebrate!
Our Junior hockey players enjoyed meeting Bronze Medal winning Olympian Ellie Rayer as they took part in the ISA Festival of hockey at South Berkshire Hockey Club. This was a wonderful day of hockey, culminating in a Cranford pupil being awarded a Player of the Day Prize. Our U11 Football Team were triumphant in their IAPS tournament, winning the plate competition!
Our Senior School pupils have also had a successful first half of term. The girls teams have been consistently successful on the hockey pitch and have enjoyed being able to use the Wallingford Sports Park pitch during lessons and for home fixtures. We look forward to seeing teams representing Cranford House School at a national level and congratulations go out to the players who have been selected for County Squads this season. We are also performing well in South Oxfordshire Leagues and are hopeful for a strong end to the competition as we approach the finals.
With many lessons, fixtures, and clubs to go until the end of the hockey and football seasons, the PE department are looking forward to even more success and progress to celebrate as the pupils continue to excel. We are proud of the sporting efforts and achievements of you all!
With best wishes
James Raymond
Headmaster