Cranbrook Education Campus News

Dear CEC Primary Families,

On Wednesday, we celebrated our amazing staff—Teaching Assistants, Teachers, Business Support, the Site Team, Kitchen Staff, Cleaners, and everyone in between. Their dedication fosters the positive culture we cherish at CEC. A special thanks to our PTA for treating us to a delicious breakfast, complete with bacon butties (and vegan/gluten-free options)! 🌱 What a fantastic way to start the day!

A huge thank you to the 231 families who have already completed our Trust-wide survey via Edurio! If you haven’t yet participated, we encourage you to share your thoughts by Monday. Your feedback is crucial in helping us move from ‘Good to Great.’

Survey Link: edurio.com/poll/OCGh8M

As we step into Autumn, we kindly remind you to ensure your child is dressed warmly. Pupils should come into school with coats for playtime. Next week, the forecast is due to dip to as low as 6 degrees. For these colder days, we advise hats, gloves, scarves etc.. Should we require wet playtimes, pupils will be able to enjoy social time in their classrooms, with an animation movie at the front of the room and drawing or games at the back of the classroom.

We are collecting coats hats and gloves again for our community and we are also collecting old phones to support as translation devices for our EAL and FSA learning. Please drop donations to the main reception

The deadline for secondary school applications is quickly approaching! All applications must be submitted by 31st October 2024. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible to secure your child’s place at their preferred school—hopefully with us at CEC!

There is still time to view the Secondary Campus before making your application. Tours are at 9am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please visit cranbrook.education/openevening to book your space on a morning tour.

Please remember that even if you currently have a place in CEC Primary, you must submit an application to join CEC Secondary.

For more information or to apply, visit Devon Council or call 0345 155 1019 for assistance.

On Thursday, 10th October, we’re excited to join the World Mental Health Day initiative to support young people’s mental health. We invite all pupils (Nursery to Year 11) to wear something yellow—whether it’s a sock, hairband, or even a t-shirt—to promote important conversations about mental health.
It’s not a competition but a way to show solidarity and remind young people they’re not alone. We suggest a £1.00 donation per family, which can be made via MCAS or directly to YoungMinds, the charity supporting youth mental health. Donate Here: JustGiving Let’s come together and make the day a little brighter! 🌟

We extend our sincere gratitude to the many families who offered their support during a challenging week on social media. We are incredibly proud of our inclusive community and remain committed to supporting all our pupils, families, and staff by upholding our PERKS values: Proud, Engaged, Ready, KIND, and Safe. Together, we are #Crantastic!

On Tuesday 8th October and Thursday 10th October we will be running our first Campus Pupil Progress and Wellbeing Evenings for Nursery up to year 11. This will provide an opportunity to discuss not only the academic development of your children but for the conversations to be open to learning, emotional and mental health, wellbeing, friendships, clubs or any other questions or encouragement you have. We are really looking forward to these moments of connection and opportunities for discussion.

Both sessions will be Face to Face and based on Campus. To sign up for a Face to Face session with your child's Tutor/Teacher on the MCAS App please select parents evening and select the time slot that works best for you. If you are unable to attend Face to Face, please email reception@cranbrook.education to arrange a telephone call instead.

We are excited to share that we will also be working with Dolce, our school lunch provider, to offer sample food tasting of items on our school menu during both evenings. This will give families a opportunity to get a flavour for the food on offer to our pupils each week.

As per our Key Dates (linked here) we wanted to highlight the below events/tours. There is no need to book onto these events, please come to main reception on the day.

Tour with Miss Gandhi 14th October 8:45am - 9:15am- Reception Families

Ava, Summer, Ayda and Hallie from Year 4 and Tori from Year 5 have joined Cranbrook United under 10s girls team. They are all playing so well and enjoying their training and weekly games. We are really proud of them all, go girls!

Huge Thank you to Caroline from the PTA who captured some fantastic moments from this year’s House Games! From thrilling races to team spirit, these snapshots perfectly capture the energy and excitement of the day.

We are reviewing the photos taken to make sure that they only include children with consent and look forward to sharing how these can be purchased for just £1 to raise funds for the PTA in the next few days.

Thank you for your continued support. The funds raised will help the PTA continue to contribute to exciting events and resources for our school community.

We would like to remind you of the importance of ensuring that your child has their necessary medication, such as inhalers, antihistamines, or EpiPens, available at school if they have a medical condition that requires it. It is vital that we have a set of medication handed to the main office and, ideally for inhalers, another set for the classroom.

If your child has been prescribed any medication, please ensure it is brought into school as soon as possible to help ensure their safety and well-being throughout the school day.

Thank you for your cooperation and collaboration as we work together to keep our pupils safe.

We have a number of staff and students who have a severe allergic reaction to nuts and peanuts and it is important that we keep them safe. In this regard, we ask that students, staff and visitors do not bring products containing nuts and peanuts into school.

Products that should not be brought into school include:

· Peanuts and nuts and products containing peanuts or nuts

· Peanut butter and peanut based chocolate snacks (snickers / reece’s pieces, Nutella etc)

· Items where peanuts or nuts are listed as main ingredients

· Nut or peanut based oils or products

Products that are allowed:

· Items that “may contain nuts” and “may contain traces of nuts” or “made in factories that use nuts”. These present a low risk and are not direct ingredients in the products

· All other non nut-based snacks and food stuff.

If you wish to check your child’s eligibility for Free School Meals, please use the Devon Citizens Portal This is the quickest and easiest way to apply and will result in you getting an instant decision.

Alternatively, call the Education Helpline on 0345 155 1019 who will check eligibility, answer questions and help with your application.

We work closely with our catering provider Dolce to ensure students are provided with healthy and nutritious meals. If you have any comments or feedback you wish to share about the food, we welcome you contacting us by emailing reception@cranbrook.education

We know that getting PE Kit ready on the right day is key to organising school bags for the week. Please note, PE Days may change throughout the year based on coaches availability, activities on offer and location of classes. Autumn Term PE Days will be as follows:

Carle - Thursday

Do you work for a business who is invested in future careers? Do you enjoy speaking with young people and igniting a spark? Is the thought of copious amounts of tea and biscuits a deal breaker? Well look no further! We are really excited to announce that we are hosting our annual careers fair on Wednesday 13th November and this year we want to be bigger than ever. Please share this flyer with any business contacts you may have and email careers@cranbrook.education if you are able to be a part of finding your future workforce.

A polite reminder to families that cycle or scoot to school that these should not be ridden anywhere on site. We ask please for you to dismount from your bike / scooter at the school gates and use the shelters provided. It is essential that bikes and scooters left on site are secured using bike locks!

We have a small car park at the campus that is intended for use by blue badge visitors and staff who live outside of Cranbrook only. Please walk to the campus where possible and if you do need to drive to the campus, there is plenty of on road parking available. Please remember to park sensibly and safely for our neighbours.

Thank you

This week in pre-school, we have been immersing ourselves in the Three Billy Goats Gruff story. We have loved exploring the characters in the story and have created our very own troll playdough creations and terrifying toilet roll trolls. The children have particularly enjoyed acting out the story. We have been pretending to be goats and trolls and have been crossing the bridges we have built whilst using the repeated refrains from the story: “Who’s that trip trapping on my bridge?”. The children have loved exploring our troll slime this week too, using adjectives to describe how it feels.

We have also started creating our wonderful Christmas card designs, so watch out for some exciting prototypes that will be making their way to you soon. Wishing you a wonderful weekend, we look forward to seeing you all again next week.

Year 2 have had a wonderful week this week.

In History we have been learning about Florence Nightingale, who she was and what she did in the Victorian Times. We even made our own fact file about her.

In PSHE, we learnt about the importance of sleep and how to make sure that we have a routine in place to help us do this. The children came up with some great ideas of how to improve their own sleep routines.

We have continued to develop and deepen our understanding of addition and subtraction in Maths, adding 10s and 1s to 2 digit numbers.

In English, we have been innovating our class text 'No-Bot, The Robot With No Bottom' ready to write our own version of the story next week.

We have also started learning about Tag Rugby in PE, the children started this week with learning how to put on a tag belt and then playing some mini games.

We hope you have a lovely weekend!

Year 3 have had a busy week planning and writing an exciting dragon story. We have been independently writing a story including a beastly dragon and a helpful hero using a wide range of interesting vocabulary and sentence starters. In maths, we have been focusing on adding and subtracting a 3 digit number and tens or ones. Remember to boost your maths learning with SPARX at home. We have also continued to explore Prehistoric Britain this week and have learned about what life was like in a Stone Age settlement. It’s been amazing looking at photographs of settlement ruins in Dartmoor! Please continue to bring in homework related to our history learning, we are really enjoying sharing it in class. We look forward to next week where we will be making some natural paint to create our own cave paintings.

Years 4 and 5 have been working incredibly hard this week to focus on presentation, home learning and identifying features of a newspaper article. They have been PROUD to share some fantastic creations of Viking longboats whist also sharing the stories of how their adults have helped them and the fun had along the way. In Maths Y4 have been looking at rounding a negative numbers whilst identifying this on a scale or number line. In Year 5 we held a press conference to understand how journalists obtain information when reporting. We had the lovely Freya sharing her love for armature dramatics really bringing this to life in Murphy class!

We have had a crantastic week in year 6. Children joined an online meeting where they had the opportunity to hear the experiences of a Humanist. Both classes asked relevant and respectful questions to deepen their understanding which is linked to this term’s RE unit. Maths has seen us working on long division for the first time and children should be proud of their perseverance. This is a skill that we will continue to practise throughout the year. Well done to all who completed their 20 minutes of LBQ homework. This will be reset today. As we continue to study the artist L S Lowry in art, children created their own characters in his unique style. Stivin in 6 Yousafzai has shown off his artistic detail in this picture.

Sidmouth Science Festival begins in October and there is a great programme of events planned alongside talks designed to spark curiosity about the world of science. Check out the website or click below to view the programme

Please see attached offer from Premier Education for the Half Term clubs available at the campus

We’re excited to share our Key Dates document with you which outlines all the important events and deadlines for the upcoming academic year.

This includes the exciting news of a Winter Showcase on 19th December with Primary Dance and Choir clubs. More information to follow soon.

This will help you stay informed and ensure you’re up-to-date with all the key activities such as Trips and PTA Events. Please take a moment to review the Key Dates and mark your calendars accordingly. If you have any questions or need further details please email reception@cranbrook.education

Dates for the rest of this academic year can be found above. Highlighted dates for October are

Pupil Progress and Wellbeing meetings - 8th and 10th October

Hello Yellow (World Mental Health Day) – Thursday, 10th October.

Tour with Miss Gandhi 14th October 8:45am - 9:15am- Reception Families

Tour with Miss Gandhi 15th October 8:45am - 9:15am- Year 1 Families

Tour with Miss Gandhi 16th October 8:45am - 9:15am- Year 2 Families

Tour with Miss Gandhi 17th October 8:45am- 9:15am- Year 3 Families

School Photos (During the School Day with Tempest)- 17th October

Just one Tree Day Non Uniform Day (wear green) – 18th October

Tour with Miss Gandhi 21st October 8:45am - 9:15am- Year 4 Families

Tour with Miss Gandhi 22nd October 8:45am - 9:15am - Year 5 Families

Tour with Miss Gandhi 23rd October 8:45am- 9:15am- Year 6 Families

Year 1 Trip to Dinosaur World Torquay - 24th October

PTA Halloween Bake Sale 25th October

End of Term - 27th October

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I’m looking forward to another week of high attendance, engagement in learning, and joyful opportunities for our pupils.