



Dear Parents and Carers,
This half-term, we have organised Year 5 into two larger crews with an additional teacher shared between both classes working with small groups and children on a 1:1 basis. This has helped Year 5 make a positive start to the new academic year and has meant we have been able to provide targeted support to really push the children’s learning on, ensuring they are fully ready to succeed in Year 5. .
After half-term, we have made the decision to return Year 5 to three smaller crews – Crew Shields, Crew MI and Crew Boswell – for the remainder of the academic year. This model worked successfully in Year 4.
Each crew will have their own dedicated teacher who will be able focus their teaching on a smaller class group and continue to build on the strong, positive relationships they have developed with the children this half-term.
Crew MI and Crew Boswell will remain in their existing Year 5 classrooms and Crew Shields will move into one of our upstairs classrooms. As a result of this move, Crew Shields will enter and leave school via the entrance to the left of the main office which is currently used by Year 3 and 4 after half-term.
Parents of children in Year 5 will receive a message today via ParentPay confirming which crew their child will be in and which of the three classrooms will be their crew base. The children have circled up to share this news and are excited to start next half-term in their new crews.
Thank you in advance for your understanding and support. As always, all decisions made are done so in the best interests of our children and to ensure we are able to provide the very best possible education for them.
Yours faithfully,
James Tucker
Crew nursery have been using chalk today to create pumpkin pictures! They have concentrated really well and are proud of their perfect pumpkin pictures 🎃 Drawing and writing with chalk is so much fun!








At Carcroft School, we are always keen to share our stories with you – what the children have been learning, how the children are progressing and keeping you up to date with any events, changes to normal routines or exciting opportunities taking place. We have worked hard to improve our website over the past few months to be able to do this in the most efficient way possible.
Our new website is now fully operational and you will hopefully have already seen lots of crew blogs, weekly phase updates and messages from the office. Your engagement and interaction with the website has been fantastic and we are now keen to develop this further. In order to do this, we will be closing down our school Class Dojo account on the last day of this half term, Friday 15th October.
From Friday 15th October (start of half-term), all communications will be shared via the school website with our text messaging service used to share urgent messages only. We will continue to post regular updates on what the children are up to in school and share any important information and updates.
In order to ensure you all receive the information shared by your child’s class teacher, we would advise you to subscribe to the website. This will mean you will receive an email each time we post on the website so you will never miss a message. You can subscribe to the website by visiting www.carcroftschool.co.uk, entering your email in the ‘Subscribe to Blog via Email’ section on the right hand side and clicking ‘Subscribe’. The picture below should help you find the right section:
If you would like to get in touch with school, whether that be your child’s crew leader, our Inclusion Team or the Office, you can do so by completing the School Contact Form on the right hand side of our website,
by calling the school office on 01302 722352 or by visiting school to speak to us in person. Our office is now open again between 8:00am and 3:30pm and will be happy to deal with any queries over the phone or in person.
Thank you in advance for your continued cooperation and support.
Tickets for our Halloween Spooktacular event (see poster below) can be purchased via ParentPay.

This week in crew nursery, we are learning about Halloween – an event that some families choose to celebrate together! To start our spooktacular week, we have been dressing up as witches and wizards and making spooky meals in the home corner! We have drawn pumpkins using chalk and have made pumpkins using the play dough. To strengthen our motor skills, we have carefully hammered golf tees into a pumpkin – we needed to be really careful and concentrate when doing this!







Dear Parents and Carers,
As you are all aware, Neil Butler (Executive Prinicipal, XP Trust), has been our Acting Headteacher this half-term whilst Miss Laing is on Maternity Leave. Mr Butler has worked closely with leaders in school to help ensure we are continuing to develop our practice to deliver the best education possible for our children.
Mr Butler has thoroughly enjoyed working with the Carcroft Crew and has been impressed by both the staff and children’s drive to be the very best versions of themselves. However, his role as Executive Principal is incredibly demanding and, due to ongoing developments at Trust Level, he is unable to continue to provide the time needed to work closely with Carcroft until Miss Laing’s return later this year.
As a result of this, we are pleased to inform you that Mr Tucker will take on the role of Acting Headteacher from November 1st until Miss Laing’s return later this year.
With Mr Tucker taking on this role, his crew will be taught by Mr Gerrard for the remainder of the school year. Mr Gerrard has been a teacher at Carcroft for the past two years and has already spent time with Crew Tucker by providing leadership cover this half-term. He has strong, positive relationships with the children and will be able to hit the ground running after half-term.
Mr Tucker is really looking forward to building on our great start and will ensure that Carcroft continues to move from strength to strength until Miss Laing returns.
Yours faithfully,
Carcroft Crew
We have struggled for a few weeks to upload our videos, but finally we have cracked it (with a little help from Mr Wilson 😃)
Check out all of our exciting learning from the week!
We’ve been working hard in maths, getting smart in writing, being kind in Cojo and had some special treats as part of our Howlopoly rewards!
Our HOWL average has shot up this week – our average was 2.8 🤩 … we’re getting closer and closer to a secure 3!
During The Write Stuff sessions 🖊, we’ve worked hard on using models of excellence around our room to help us get smarter 📕📝.



We’re loving Scotty’s Heroes… pushing us to achieve our limits 🥵💪🏼!









This is helping us build stronger crew relationships❤️!
During expedition, we’ve been researching the history of the Doncaster Plant, using our historian researching skills…




Next week, we are aiming for a SECURE 3 HOWL average to end Autumn Term 1 on… 🤩. We are really trying harder with our concentration and are aiming to reach gold standard all day.
Happy Friday everyone, enjoy the ☀️ while it lasts!