Cranbrook Education Campus News

23rd February 2024

Cranbrook Education Campus News 23rd February 2024

Primary Update - 25th April 2025

Dear CEC Families



Weekly Update 25th April

Summer Uniform

It’s been lovely to see pupils in their summer uniforms this week! As the weather gets warmer, we’d like to remind families of our uniform expectations:

✅ School Uniform: Grey school jumper, white polo top, black trousers/shorts/skirt, and black shoes (no trainers). For the summer months, this also includes green check summer dresses or playsuits.

✅ PE Kit: Green PE jumper, house-colour PE top, shorts or sports trousers, and trainers (no football kits, please).

📌 A quick reminder that long hair should be tied back on all school days.

If you have any questions or need more information, please don’t hesitate to contact the school office or check our website for full uniform details. We want all students to feel comfortable and confident while staying cool during the summer term.

Thank you for your continued support!

EX5 Alive: Help Shape Cranbrook’s Community Future

We need your voice! As part of a National Lottery-funded development project, EX5 Alive Community Hub is exploring how to structure a new Community Entity for Cranbrook — and we want residents at the heart of the decision.

Have your say by voting here:
👉 Click to vote

Curious about what this means and why it matters?
🔍 Find out more


Let’s shape something meaningful, together.

Celebrating Success Across Our Trust

Please find attached a letter from Moira Marder, CEO of Ted Wragg Trust which highlights that we are thrilled to share that our Trust has been shortlisted for two national education awards and that our Year 6 pupils' performance places us in the top 11% of schools nationally—an incredible achievement driven by our dedicated pupils, staff and families. A warm welcome also goes to Exmouth Community College, our newest school, and congratulations to Honiton students for raising £2,699 for the Samaritans!

Cheerleaders!

Alice in Year 6 and her sister Nel (in Year 8) who recently achieved 1st place in South West Cheerleading Championships 2025 and also 2nd place in BCA Cheer & Dance Cymru Clash 2025.

They also have won an entry for European Summit 2026 in Portugal - Well done girls! We look forward to hearing about your future successes!


Many of our year 3 girls have also been working hard outside of school with their Cheerleading! A huge achievement to come 4th despite having practiced for just 10 weeks together. We cannot wait to celebrate their successes as the year goes on. Well done girls, we are super proud of you!

Spare swimming kit wanted

We kindly ask for donations of spare swimming kits for children ages 9-11. If you have anything your children have outgrown we would love to make use of these during planned swim sessions for our pupils. Any towels or overhead towels would also be appreciated.
Please could any donations be left in reception for attention of Miss Green. Thanks in advance 😊

Year Group Updates

Preschool Update

Welcome back everyone! It’s Summer term and the UV level is creeping up as the warmer weather sets in. Please apply suncream to your child before they arrive at school even if it is raining as the strength of the UV can still cause sunburn. If your child is not wearing suncream the team will provide you with some to apply. We also ask that your child comes in with a named sunhat and water bottle every day. Thank you for helping us to keep your child sun safe!

This week the children have been learning all about people who help us starting with the Fairy Godmother helping a very sad Cinderella. We have been making our own magic wands and thinking what wishes we could grant to help others feel happy. We have also been focusing this week on the role of a police officer within our community. We have been learning about how an officer can help us if we are lost and also protect us from burglars taking our things without asking! The children have loved using the fingerprinting set, making their own police hats and creating wanted posters of burglars who have taken their toys! We were also lucky enough to have a visit from the police with their patrol vehicle on Friday. The children were able to explore the vehicle and also see some of the officer’s equipment such as the walkie-talkie and the handcuffs. During maths we have begun to explore 3D shapes by creating castles for Prince Charming using wooden blocks. Can you spot any 3D shapes around your home? Have a wonderful weekend!

Reception Update

What a lovely first week back in Reception! Bryon Class welcomed back Miss Hazel Shaw, who will be with us until the end of June. She will primarily teach in Bryon Class but will also support Daywalt Class during independent learning time.

Our new topic for this term is Transport and Superheroes. This week, we have focused on transport: the children have created junk-model vehicles, made Numicon cars and explored their new role-play areas (a garage and a bakery). In Drawing Club, the children listened carefully to the story Mr Gumpy’s Motor Car. They drew pictures of Mr Gumpy, the countryside and their own car washes to clean off their muddy cars.

Year One Update

It’s been a wonderful first week back after the Easter break, and so lovely to see everyone refreshed and ready to learn. In English, we’ve launched our new topic on Traditional Tales and have had great fun creating story maps for Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and The Elves and the Shoemaker. The children have really enjoyed bringing these stories to life, and next week we’ll be diving even deeper into magical tales, exploring the characters and settings in more detail. In Computing, there’s a real buzz of excitement as Year 1 begin using Chromebooks for the first time- what a milestone! A big thank you to everyone who has donated books to our Help Yourself Library. We’ll be refreshing the selection over the weekend, so look out for plenty of new stories to enjoy next week!

Year Two Update

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Tiverton Museum Trip - Next Week

We are excited to inform you about an upcoming educational trip to the Tiverton Museum of Mid Devon Life on Wednesday 30th April. This is a fantastic opportunity for our students to learn about a broad collection of objects relating to the history of Mid Devon, including home life and toys; local trades and industries.

  • Cost: £10 per pupil – This payment is now available in the Trips section within MCAS and covers the entry to the museum and the coach travel required.
  • Pupil Premium: Please note that a discount is available for (PP) students. If you would like to discuss this, please contact reception@cranbrook.education for more details.
  • If you have not already ordered a packed lunch from SchoolGrid, you will need to provide a packed lunch for your childs trip. Please contact reception@cranbrook.education if you require assistance with this.

We hope this trip will be an exciting and educational experience for all students.

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at year2@cranbrook.education.

Thank you for your support!

Year Three Update

We are so proud of how brilliantly the children have settled back into school life—what a fantastic start to the term!

In English, we’ve begun reading Cinderella of the Nile, an alternative version of the classic story that is already sparking some great discussions. Over in Maths, we've kicked off our unit on Time, learning how many hours are in a day and how many minutes are in an hour, and learning a valuable skill of using an analogue clock.

In History, we’ve started exploring Ancient Greece, which will lead us into our end-of-term assembly where we’ll showcase our learning. (A little heads-up: we may ask children to bring in a plain white sheet to help bring our characters to life—thank you in advance!)

This history topic has also inspired our Art lessons, where we’ve been designing Grecian borders to create decorative headbands—beautiful and creative work all round!

And for a special Friday treat, the children joined schools from across the country for a Live Lunch at the Eden Project. It was a brilliant virtual experience where we explored the incredible rainforest biomes and learned about a wide variety of tropical plants.

We've updated our approach following feedback from some families about home learning and hope it will make priorities clearer for everyone. Each week, three tasks are expected: reading, Edshed, and Sparx. There are also three optional tasks that can be completed over the term linked to our History topic for those who wish to explore further. We hope this supports families in balancing home learning effectively

Thank you for all your continued support. Have a lovely weekend, Year 3 families!

Year Four & Five Update

Welcome back! What a lovely first week back, with many house points awarded, stickers and class gems being earned we’ve had a busy ‘engaging’ week.
This week children have been sent home with home learning activities to encourage more Maths and Spelling practise at home.
We kicked off our history learning this half term with Medieval Monarchs. Lesson one saw us debate the reasons for and against ruling a country and the conflict this could have amongst contenders.
In Maths our Year 4’s have been focussing on money, using all four operations.
For Year 5, we have been adding and subtracting decimals whilst linking this to real life scenarios.
We’re excited to see how this learning develops as we move through this half term.
Polite reminder-can ALL children bring a water bottle and snack (for morning break) if possible.
With warmer weather we are finding our children are more active and drinking/eating more.

Y5 Swimming

WOW- An amazing first week swimming with our Year 5 pupils. They made us very proud whilst representing our school. All children have been awarded 30 house points each for their efforts, patience and kindness shown to staff and one another.
A great time was had by all of the children and a post swim biscuit went down a treat!

Year Six Update

What a great 1st week back we have had in Year 6. The children have been learning about a famous person of their choosing from Marcus Rashford, David Attenborough, Taylor Swift or Nelson Mandela and taking notes about their lives ready to create their own biographies.

In Maths, the children have been learning and revising fractions ready for the SATs. They have been refreshing their memories on how to add, subtract, multiply and divide them, they have also been looking at converting and comparing them.

In PE, they have started their new topic of Tennis with Premier Sports and in PSHE the children have started to think about their transition to Year 7 and how this can make us feel and how to help with this.


HOMEWORK!!

SPELLINGS - this week we have set the Year 3 and 4 common exception words on Ed Shed and the children will have paper copies as well.

LbQ - the children will have Add Fractions with Different Denominators for Maths and Year 6 National Curriculum Test Practice (SATs): English Reading Set 1 Text 1: Non-Fiction for English

Please can you make sure these are completed by Friday 2nd May.

Have a wonderful and restful weekend.

Community Notice Board

Secondary Transition

The Mental Health in School's team are running a parent workshop on Transitions to secondary school. It is free and for any parents that want to join.

📣Calling all businesses and education providers 📣

CEC are very excited to announce the date of our annual careers fair taking place on Thursday 23rd October 2025. We would love for you to join year 6 to year 11 in career conversations around transferable skills and routes to employment in your sector.

If you would like to have a stand at our fair please contact careers@cranbrook.education and we can discuss further details.

Dates for the Diary

Please take a moment to review the Key Dates and mark your calendars accordingly. This will help you stay informed and ensure you’re up-to-date with all the key activities such as Trips and PTA Events.

If you have any questions or need further details please email reception@cranbrook.education

Please note that details of our Privacy Policy can be found here

Krisha Gandhi
Head of Primary