Quilters make kind donation

The wonderful people at Newbury Market Square Quilters have been busy beavering away making a wonderful quilt as shown below:

They then, very kindly, raffled it off and made an incredible £1177.20 for The Castle School. The money will be put towards a redesign of our Red Zone playground for young people with severe autism.

We are very humbled and indebted to the quilters for their generosity.

Easter Egg Competition

The lovely people at The Variety Children's Charity donated a large quantity of Easter eggs last week. As such (although a little belatedly) we decided to task each class with creating an Easter design to win the eggs. 

The classes produced the most amazing things and the winning entries are shown below:

Primary 1st Place - Appleby

 

Primary 2nd Place - Corfe

 

 

Primary 3rd Place - Conway

 



Secondary 1st Place - Ludlow

 

Secondary 2nd Place - Highclere

 

 

 Secondary 3rd Place - Pendragon

 

 
All pupils who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd got to choose an egg each. Here are some of our happy recipients

 

 

Well done to everyone - you showed wonderful teamwork to produce all these creations.

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.