Up for the Challenge

We are very proud of our pupils from Windsor and Bamburgh Class for their efforts at the Agricultural Challenge at Mary Hare School this week and achieving runners-up. One of our pupils Tyrell said that it had been the first time he had ever been to something like this. He had never spoken in front of a group before, but did us proud in presenting the items that our young people had produced including a fantastic cake in the shape of an allotment, complete with potatoes, turnips and cabbages made out of icing (pictured below). Our pupils really enjoyed the day working collaboratively with other pupils from different schools across the region. They were also exceptional ambassadors for the Castle School and I am very proud of all they achieved.

Welcome back

Welcome back to everyone for our new term - and hopefully some better weather this term!

Our whole school theme is bugs and shrubs, which will be really exciting. The pupils have already built several bugs homes around the school to attract our small friends.

We also look forward to our secondary and primary sport days. Primary Sports is on the afternoon of Tuesday 13th May and Secondary Sports is on the morning of Thursday 15th May. Come along and enjoy all the activities (weather permitting of course!)

As this is a very short term, just a reminder that we finish for half term on Friday 23rd May. We also have a bank holiday on Monday 5th May when school will be closed.

I hope you have an enjoyable term and I look forward to being able to tell you about all the exciting things we get up to.

Update on Sport Relief

An exciting update on our Sport Relief day. We have now amassed an incredible £878. This amazing increase is thanks to Tiffany Mann who managed to raise a remarkable £158! Thank you so much Tiffany, you are a star. And of course, thank you to everyone else who contributed and helped out.

I would like to wish every one of our young people and their families a wonderful Easter. I hope that the weather is good for you all.

We very much look forward to welcoming all our pupils back to school on Tuesday 22nd April 2014.

Best wishes,

Jon Hewitt
Headteacher

Our Primary Sporting Heroes

On Wednesday this week an intrepid group of sports boys and girls headed along to Bradfield College for the Berkshire Games.

Adam, Louie and Louise represented West Berkshire in the KS2 Boccia competition. They had a fantastic time and worked very hard to come in 4^th place. They had a wonderful time experiencing a new venue and meeting new people.

  

 

 

Cameron, Christopher, Ethan, Kirk, Ethan, Marcus, Henry, Oliver, Adam, Jensen, Jonathan and Vicky from KS2 represented West Berkshire in the Para-Sportshall Athletics competition at Bradfield College. They took part in various throwing, jumping and running activities. They all worked extremely hard and had a fantastic day. They did incredibly well and achieved 3^rd place.

 

Congratulations to both teams. We are all very proud of you.

A little reminder - if you happen to shop in Sainsburys please can you collect the Active Kids vouchers and bring them into school. We will use them to buy sporting equipment for our pupils to help enhance the sporting provision we already provide.

Thanks

Governors Learn how to read!

Last week The Castle School Governing Body got together with The Castle School Leadership Team for our annual Strategy session. We had a very good and productive time and the first hour was spent taking our governors through our exciting new reading interventions that we are using with our young people in school. We felt that it was very important to give our governors a first-hand idea of what it is like to experience one of our reading interventions - such as Fisher Family Trust, Catch-Up or Read Write Inc. The governors had a great time in their groups, led by Rhona O'Neill, Sandra Young and Julie Reeve. It was great to see everyone working together and the governors throwing themselves into it.

We are very excited about reading this year - there is a real buzz about the school.If you would like to know more about any of our reading interventions please contact your child's class teacher.

Kenya-Do-It..... Yes we can!!

On Friday last week, staff pupils and many parents took part in our Sport Relief Challenge to virtually travel the 896km from Kitale to Mombasa in Kenya. Everyone got involved with various activities to try and complete the vast distance including walking and running our special 1km wiggly track on the field, traveling in wheelchairs, cycling on our exercise bike, walking, dancing in fact moving in any way possible. Ali Watkinson, our music teacher was the most inventive - she covered a distance of 2km with her hands by playing scales!

After a very enjoyable and exhausting day we are pleased to announce that we smashed the distance by over 100km with a grand total of 1020km covered! We also raised an amazing £612.66 for Sport Relief in the process.

A wonderful day had by all. We are also in the Newbury Weekly News in an article about Sport Relief, which is great.

Thank you to all the pupils, staff and particularly the parents who made this all possible.
 

Paralympic visit on NWN website

We have had a lovely article written by the Newbury Weekly News  for their website (Newbury Today). Click the link below to have a look at the article:

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/paralympic-gold-medallist-pays-visit-to-castle-school