12 March 2021

It has been so lovely having all our pupils back on site and we have enjoyed a wonderful week, catching up and immersing ourselves fully into Cranford life! The smiles emanating from all our pupils and staff have been clearly evident as we have embraced a very busy week of teaching and learning, broken up with pupils enjoying the intermittent sunshine outside at breaks and lunchtime, chatting in their Year Group bubbles.

There has also been lots of discussion and debating in all lessons in Senior School, with pupils sharing their views 'live', for the first time in a long time. In English, there has been some animated debate on a range of issues related to texts pupils are studying and Year 7s have explored new digital technology using Book Creator to transform their own writing and illustration into an impressive professional book format. Meanwhile, our Year 8 pupils have enjoyed getting to grips with the characters in Macbeth and have also been writing to pupils in South Africa to offer friendship in the pandemic and to find out how they are adapting to life at the moment.

There has been an explosion of practical work with our Year 8 pupils making scones, our Year 9 pupils creating some tempting bakes and our GCSE Food Technicians creating a dish to reflect their understanding of food science and provenance. This included scotch eggs, soufflés, stroganoff, Chelsea buns and sushi! Our Creative Arts department have been no less busy, challenging our Year 8 pupils’ skills to create a textile village using hand stitching, applique techniques and exploring colour and texture. Year 9 have used the experimental dyeing techniques they did over lockdown to make a paper collage inspired by Timorous Beasties.

Our Junior pupils have also plunged themselves into a range of exciting practical experiments, with Year 4 testing a variety of foods on their melting points – there were some astonishing results! Meanwhile, our Year 3 pupils have been out and about around the school site, creating some truly amazing observational drawings of plants and finding out if they are native or not.

The PE department are also overjoyed at the return of pupils, not least because it lets them off the virtual ‘Workout of the Day’! The last week has been a riot of house and tutor group competitions in netball and hockey and it has been lovely to hear the excitement and noise of activity bouncing off the astro courts and back field!

We hope your children have enjoyed being back as much as we all have!

Have a restful weekend, ready for another fast-paced week next week!

James Raymond

Headmaster