WHITKIRK NEWS 9th January 2026

A Message From Miss Quarmby

Hello everyone, and if I haven’t seen you yet – Happy New Year! It’s been a fantastic start to the new term. Year 5 enjoyed their trip to the Jorvik Centre, and I was lucky enough to join Year 4 for A Christmas Carol at the Playhouse. As you may have seen, our CEO, Mr Sheriff, will be retiring at the end of this half term. On Tuesday, he’ll be visiting school to say goodbye to pupils and staff as part of his ‘one last lap’ around each school. Then, on Thursday, we’ll welcome our new CEO, Mr Tucker, to Whitkirk who officially starts in February. He’ll be touring the school and joining our youngest learners in Pre-School for lunch. We’ve also welcomed our newest cohort of Pre-Schoolers this term, and they’ve made a brilliant start. It already feels like Pre-School has always been part of our school, and we’re so proud of what’s been achieved. Looking ahead, we have spaces available for September 2026. If you’re interested in your child joining us, please get in touch – we’d love to show you around. Children can start the term after their third birthday, and we offer wraparound care and holiday club options. Thankfully, the snow didn’t reach us this week! As we move into a period of possible bad weather, please remember that school remains open unless you hear otherwise. If we do need to close, we’ll email families, update the website, and set a recorded message on the school phone. A big thank you to Mr Chamberlain for keeping the paths clear around school and Templegate Walk! Have a wonderful weekend, and I look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Attendance

This week, finishing in first place with 98.3% are 6NT. In second place are 5AK, with 98.1% and in third place are RLE, with 97.92%. A shout out also goes 2CH and 3RD who have also finished the week above our school target of 96.5%. The whole school attendance this week is 95.37%: can we beat this next week? The only way to do that is if we all come to school as often as we can. The Autumn Term 2 attendance award for lower school goes to 1LR with 97.11% and upper school is 6NT with 96.25%! Please remember look at the NHS guide Is my child too ill for school? - NHS (www.nhs.uk) This is used to determine which reasons for absence will be authorised or unauthorised.

let's take a look at what each year group has been up to this week!

EYFS

We are incredibly proud of how well our January starters have settled into our Pre-School room at Whitkirk, and we can’t wait for them to make lots of new friends and explore our Whitkirk school over the coming weeks. Our first class text this half term has been Whatever Next? We have focused on the key words 'found,' 'explore,' and 'under,' and the children have taken part in a range of activities to understand these words. They created a rocket to explore the room, searched for items in the classroom to take to the moon like Baby Bear, and during Welly Wednesday, took Baby Bear on an adventure under different logs and materials! Well done Pre- School - what a super first week at Whitkirk for some and first week back for our September starters!

We’ve had a fantastic start to the new term in Reception! Our new Big Idea , “Who can help us?”, began with discussions about people who help us in the community, such as the police, fire service and ambulance crew. We also shared our new class story, 'The Feelings Doctor', to help the children learn about their feelings and simple ways they can help themselves feel calm and happy again when emotions feel big. The children really enjoyed creating our class Emotions Tool kits including bubbles to encourage the children to take deep breaths to calm, dough to squeeze to release any tension and fidget toys. The children then created calming sensory bottles to support this at home! During Muddy Monday, the children worked together to build a regulation station den and explored outdoor ways to relax, including listening to birds, watching clouds and enjoying a warm hot chocolate! A lovely start to the term!

LOWER school

Year 1 have had a brilliant week starting new topics of learning! In Science, we explored different materials and what they are used for. In Art, we loved discovering Giuseppe Arcimboldo and his portraits made from fruit and vegetables. In English, we began our new non‑fiction book Seasons and talked about how the world changes throughout the year.

What a brilliant first week Year 2 have had! This week, we have taken an imaginary flight to Kenya in Geography. We have learnt all the countries we will pass on the way. We have launched our topic of multiplication in maths. 

We have had a great first week back and got stuck into some fascinating new topics in Year 3. In English, we are reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and have been learning the key features of a persuasive letter, so we can write to the Dursley's to convince them to let Harry to go Hogwarts! In Geography, we made models of the Earth's structure to help us answer our Big Idea Question "Why do some countries shake and roar?". In Science, we have began looking at Rocks, Soils and Fossils.​​

UPPER school

What an amazing first week back we have had in Year 4! We enjoyed a fantastic trip to the theatre to see A Christmas Carol brought to life, and the children represented Whitkirk brilliantly while loving every moment of seeing the characters in action. In maths, we have been busy multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100, and in DT we have started practising key skills such as measuring and cutting to create a decoration. What a busy and exciting week!