We have come to the end of the first week in our final half term. Year 6 have been busy with Bike Ability, lawn bowls and delving into the world of Stanley Yelnats via the book ‘Holes’.

Both classes have been working on their English skills by developing their descriptive writing with a particular focus on characterisation, dialogue and setting. They have all produced an individual piece of work based on the novel, which many are thoroughly enjoying.

We also remembered the incredible bravery of all of those who were willing to fight for our freedom in the D-Day landings 80 years ago. Three of our pupils read their war-based poems to the rest of the school to mark this solemn and important date.

Over the coming weeks, our thoughts will begin to turn towards the end of year celebrations and how we can mark the culmination of Year 6 in style! Keep reading the blog and checking your emails to discover more.

Whilst most of the year group sped off to Okehampton, a select few were privileged to experience a collapsed timetable and a range of activities before the half term holiday.

Monday saw the group begin the challenge of creating giant insects for Saltash Library. A huge weevil and a delicate damselfly are both under construction and will eventually be hung from the library ceiling over the summer; read the future blogs for images of the completed creations.

Tuesday, the children were treated to an exclusive, private swimming session at Saltash Leisure Centre complete with inflatables. Thank you so much to the staff at the pool who generously offered this session to the children: they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Wednesday saw us at the mercy of the Cornish weather! We took a trip out o Kelly Bray woods near Callington for a forest fun day. We were able to play various games and build a shelter just before the heavens opened! Whilst the rain dripped through the leaves, we had fun making clay creations before retreating to the minibus for an early return to school. Typically, this was the point when the sun came out, so we ate al-fresco before heading home.

Thursday found us at Hessinford walking our way through the woods towards Seaton Beach. We had great fun finding various stick to play ‘Pooh Sticks’ along the route culminating with a flurry of games off the small foot bridge. We then made our way to the park and our picnic :)

Once at the beach, we all enjoyed cricket, Smite, paddling, shell seeking and burying Ayrton up to his neck!

It has been a great week, and we look forward to hearing about the adventures of the other Year 6s and their trip to Okehampton.

Chaipel Class have had a lovely first week back after half term.

We began, on Monday, with a visit from the NSPCC to give a talk to all Y5s and Y6s. The ladies were lovely and we really enjoyed the workshop.

English
We finished writing up our persuasive texts and shared our work with our peers who offered constructive advice and suggestions on how to improve our writing. Some wrote a letter to Mrs Hillman trying to persuade her to give Chaipel Class a 'Pool Party' at the end of term whilst other children wrote about the importance of daily reading - outlining the benefits to both attainment and positive mental health. These will be displayed as leaflets for all to read (in our school library) whilst Mrs Hillman will be receiving her persuasive letters next week...

Maths
Y5s have been working on reading and interpreting negative numbers whilst the Y6s have begun their second consolidation project entitled WHITE ROSE TOURS. They are applying all that they have learnt in Maths over their primary school years to real-life scenarios. This one being to study the climate of a range of popular holiday destinations. They will learn about the various aspects of planning a holiday, including airport and flight scenarios, hotel and budget planning.

Enquiry
We have begun to look into our final enquiry for this year, 'DID THE PUNISHMENT ALWAYS FIT THE CRIME OVER TIME?'
We will be looking into crime and punishment in Britain since the invasion of the Romans. This will lead to us writing our own crime-based narrative. The period the narrative will be set in is purely up to the individual and we are super excited to get started: we have already begun to design our own villain!

Swimming 
We will be swimming as much as we can from now until the end of term so please make sure that swimming kits are in every day.

Ice Pop Friday
Ice Pops will be on sale every week so remember to bring £1 in!

That's all from me, so enjoy the extended weekend and see you all on Monday!!
Miss Randle and Mrs Clary.

Further Batik art progress

Talland Class have been practising Batik techniques during this week's lessons. They have used resist strategies (wax, flour and water and no resist) to compare and make judgement on the best strategy to use when they make their own Batik piece of work. A resist is a technique used to prevent the fabric paint staining part of the material when dyed. They are able to use various patterns using this technique.

English

The children have had the opportunity to write up and illustrate their completed spooky stories during the English lessons. They shared their stories with the class and enjoyed both listening to others' stories and delivering their own. There was a vast amount of hard work and thought put into this piece of work. Thank you, Talland Class.



Maths

The maths' lessons during the work have been used to consolidate the children's understanding of decimal numbers to 2-decimal places. To ensure a good understanding of adding and subtracting decimals, the children have had to choose the correct operation to use to solve a problem and decide on the best method of solving it: for example, the column or the bar method. 

best wishes,

Mr Parry, Mrs Swabey and the Talland Class team (Mrs Walters and Ms Rowlands)

This week's jokes:

Did you hear about the artist that always took things too far? – S/he didn’t know where to draw the line.

What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? – A carrot!

Welcome Back!

Our first week back, and it has been a busy one! 

We have enjoyed rounding off our previous enquiry 'Could You Be An Explorer?', by participating in a class Kahoot quiz and recalling as many things as we could and placing these in envelopes. We have been working hard on our Polperro Festival performance too. We can't wait to show you! 

In Maths, Year 2 have continued our work on Fractions, learning the difference between unit and non-unit fractions and recognising the equivalence between one half and two quarters. Year 3 have been looking at how fractions make a whole and finding a fraction of a set of objects. 

In English, we revised nouns, adjectives and adverbs. Can you recall what each of these are? We had a go at writing 2A and Double 'ly' Ending sentence types this week, thinking carefully about our choice of vocabulary. This half term, we will be looking at legends and we started by reading the legend of King Arthur. Next week, we will be creating a picture dictionary of all the Arthurian language we come across in the story.

Congratulations to Charlie and Zach for being Landaviddy's People of the Week. And a big well done to Summer and Oliver for achieving their 55 club this week. 

Polperro Festival
We are working hard on our class performance for the festival. We have two songs that we have been rehearsing. Please find the links to these below. Any practise you can do would be amazing! 

Stone Age Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1nEhCGCr38 
Walking on Lava https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGZei2wiWI

We hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you next week!

Mrs Wilkie, Mrs Phillips and Miss Bowden

This week, year 6 children visited Looe Community Academy and took part in a music session to support them with their transition to secondary school. They thoroughly enjoyed the session and are looking forward to the next transition session at the end of the month. Their full day transition is on the 2^nd of July.

During our English lessons this week, the children have been concentrating on their editing and improving skills. We have also had a big focus on presentation.

In our maths learning, purple/yellow group have been focusing on decimals and have become confident adding and subtracting numbers with different decimal places. Red group have been learning about the cost of items and how to work out the cost of individual items when purchased as multibuys. They have learnt about profit and are creating a plan in the hope to raise some funds to support their show at the end of term.   

During PSHE, the children learnt to notice signs that theirs and other people’s screen time is too long. They have discussed strategies to support reducing the time they are using screens and the benefits this could have.

This week we enjoyed learning the rules of cricket and building on skills to help us play the game competitively. We also focused on our throwing technique and looked at improving the distance we can throw a ball.

Points to remember:

PE on Monday.

Residential- 12^th-14^th June – please see recent letter for details.

Year 6 LCA full day transition 2^nd of July. Please note we do not arrange the transport for this. 

As we move into the final half term of Year 2, the children are exploring Position and Direction in Maths. We have looked at left, right, up, down, forward, backwards, quarter turn, half turn, three-quarter turn and full turn! Phew. It's been great seeing the children practically explore and articulate where objects are and how they have moved. (See picture: can you look at this question with your child? Can they explain their answer using good mathematical vocabulary?!)

In English we have been looking at books by the same author. We chose to look at Julia Donaldson and have compared two of her books - What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday, and The Snail and the Whale. The children explored similarities and differences between the stories using a Venn diagram. 

We have also been busy in the afternoons with art. We are creating a piece of 'Layered art' by using different materials like paint, pen, fabric and stitching. Results to follow!

Please keep up reading and home, as well as Times Table Rockstars. We will see you all next week.

The Year 2 Team. 

Welcome back to Summer Term!

This week, although a little shorter, has been full of fun and some wonderful learning. 

We introduced our new enquiry; What is the Commotion in the Ocean? On Monday, we discussed, what we already know and what we want to learn about in this exciting topic. We had some great questions from the children! They would like to find the following and much, much more: 
Are all fish herbivores, carnivores or omnivores?
How do fish communicate with each other? 
Why is the sea blue?
Where is the star fishes face?
Does it hurt if you get pinched by a crab? (We hope to not find this out on our class beach trip to Talland Beach which is scheduled for the 1st of July!)

The children have already 'dived' into the enquiry by exploring our new English text; 'Commotion in the Ocean.' We are looking at the amazing vocabulary used, why this book is so much fun and what makes a good rhyme.

In maths, we have been exploring repeating patterns and their rules in Reception. Year 1 have been investigating position and direction and now know how to recognise their right and left.

We were very lucky to have a visit from Sheila on Wednesday from Sheila's School of Dance. The children (and staff) loved joining in with a high energy dance lesson.

Well done to Pehallow's People of the Week this week, Molly, Rosie, Sonny and Kai were all picked for showing 'Excellent' school values.

We return to school on Monday after a lovely 3 day weekend! Just a reminder that this week will see the Year 1s take part in their statutory Phonics Screening Check. Please try to take part in as much practice as possible with your child this weekend. This could be reading together, practising sounds, having a go on some of the TwinklGO! games (alien words is a good one to try out) or completing the worksheets that have gone home in book bags.

Enjoy a lovely weekend!

Mrs Taylor, Mrs G, Miss Colton, Miss Cullingford and Ms Hodge.

 

Summer 2 - Week 1 - Just Dance!

On Thursday, we took part in a sponsored Dance-a-thon. The children were dancing from 9am to 3pm; that’s 6 hours of non-stop dancing! Each child had plenty of opportunities for breaks and re-fuelling but there was a minimum of 10 Year 6 children dancing at all times. It was an exhausting but incredible day. Some children showed outstanding endurance; they only stopped dancing when it was absolutely essential. Highlights included singing (and dancing) to: Livin’ On A Prayer, exactly half way through, and The Final Countdown for the last 5 minutes.

So far, we have raised a whopping £956 to go towards covering the cost of entertainment, food and decorations at our Year 6 prom. We wanted to make sure this inclusive event was a memorable, well-deserved celebration and the funds raised will help us to achieve this. A huge thank you to everyone that has sponsored already. If you would like to donate our page is still open: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-make-our-year-6-prom-a-night-to-remember

History
This week, we compared the different time periods of Ancient Greece and discussed which time period we would have liked to live during and why. We then compared two societies within Ancient Greece: the Spartans and the Athenians. 6W took on the role of Spartans and 6B became Athenians. The children were given time to research their given societies. We then paired one Spartan with an Athenian and they interviewed each other. It was brilliant to watch some children fully embody their roles. We saw serious, proud Spartans and chatty, confident Athenians exchange all sort of information about their cultures and way of life.

Reminders
Your child should have brought home a form to fill in for the transition week beginning Monday 1st July. Please could you fill these in and return them back into school by Wednesday 12th June.

We hope you all have a great weekend – perhaps we’ll see you at the Royal Cornwall Show!
Best wishes,
The Year 6 Team

Car Park – Drop off and Collection arrangements
Please check your email today for a letter about important changes to the car park arrangements starting next Monday 10th June.



FOWPA Non-Uniform Day – Thursday 13th June
A reminder that next Thursday 13th June, FOWPA are hosting a Non-School Uniform Day.

Children may come to school dressed in normal, casual clothes of their choice! In return, we would like to ask you for voluntary donations of luxury hamper items to be used as raffle prizes for the FOWPA Quiz Night on 18th October. Suitable items for donation would be a bottle (alcohol or other), chocolates or biscuits, for example, so that we can put hampers together.

FOWPA volunteers will be stood outside the school office at drop off on Thursday 13th June with trolleys to accept your wonderful donations. Please note that alcohol donations MUST be donated by an adult to either an FOWPA volunteer or brought directly into the secretary’s office (where other donations can also be made at any time). All proceeds raised from the raffle go back into supporting the children at WPA.

Congratulations to everyone for raising £123 at the second hand uniform sale and £306.79 at the recent school disco.

Thank you as always for your support.

The FOWPA Team



Year 6 Dance-a-thon
On Thursday, Year 6 took part in a sponsored Dance-a-thon. The children were dancing from 9am to 3pm; that’s 6 hours of non-stop dancing! Each child had plenty of opportunities for breaks and re-fuelling but there was a minimum of 10 Year 6 children dancing at all times. It was an exhausting but incredible day. So far, they have raised an incredible £916 towards covering the cost of entertainment, food and decorations for their Year 6 prom. The Year 6 team want to make sure the prom will be an inclusive, memorable, well-deserved celebration and the funds raised will help us to achieve this. A huge thank you to everyone that has sponsored Year 6 already. If you would like to donate, their page is still open: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-make-our-year-6-prom-a-night-to-remember



Year 5/6 Quad Kids
Well done to nearly 100 of our Year 5 and 6s for taking part in the first Wadebridge area 'Quad Kids' event on Tuesday. The children were split into countries with other schools and competed in 4 events: 75m sprint, 400m, Long Jump and Javelin. They all had a great time! Thank you to Wadebridge Secondary School and their terrific sport leaders for such a well-organised event.

Year 3/4 are taking part in the same event on Tuesday 18th June. Please can we remind Year 3/4 parents to check your emails where you have been sent a link to a form indicating whether or not your child is attending the event.

If you’re attending or exhibiting at the Royal Cornwall Show, we hope you have a fantastic time.

Enjoy the weekend, and we look forward to seeing everyone back on Monday.

Best wishes,

Chris Wathern

Upcoming Dates

Dear Parents and Carers,

I'm finding it hard to believe that this is my last ever half term as a teacher/headteacher. It's a daunting prospect after so many years as part of a school community. However, it's looking to be an extra special final few weeks with much to look forward to. Below are some of the events to which you are all warmly invited:

Early Help Team Coffee Morning - Thursday 20th June 

We would like to invite you to a coffee morning on Thursday 20th June at 9am to learn about the Early Help Services in our  area. Cornwall Council’s Early Help Team includes not only Family Workers and Youth Workers but also Parenting Workers,  who deliver a range of courses both face to face and online. The team will be attending the coffee morning to show you what is on offer, from single Bitesize sessions through to full 10 week courses, and how you can access them. You can also talk to them about the wider Early Help team and Early Help Hub Services.   Please email Mrs Linsley if you would like to attend senco@brunelprimary.co.uk

BFA Shorts and Shades Day  - Friday 21st June

Celebrate summer and wear your favourite hot weather outfits and accessories. Sensible shoes only - no flip flops. Instead of cash donations for this non-uniform day the Brunel Friends Association are asking that you send in items for the Summer Fair 'House Raffle'. If possible, please can your child bring in a prize related to the colour of the house teams, so Red, Blue, Yellow or Green. Please see the attached poster. 

BFA Summer Fair - Tuesday 25th June

Always a highlight of the summer term - more details will follow shortly.

Sports Day and Picnic - Tuesday 2nd July

Our sports day for the whole school will take place during the morning of Tuesday 2nd July, weather permitting. All parents and carers are invited to watch from the bank (picnic rug and sunscreen advised). You are then invited to stay for a picnic lunch with your children on the school field. Please book school provided picnic lunches in the usual way. Children whose parents/carers are unable to attend will picnic with their classmates. The children will return to their classrooms at 1.00 pm for afternoon school.

Last day of term for children - Tuesday 23rd July 

Please note that to bring Brunel in line with all other Trust schools the last day of term will finish at 1:30pm. Kids Club will be available as usual. 

Have a lovely weekend,

Welcome back to Summer term 2!

Thank you to those of you who joined us for our service at the church on Thursday morning.

During maths this week we have focused on sharing equally and unequally. We particularly enjoyed sharing the conkers between two squirrels! We have learnt that when sharing we need to give one to each person/ animal in turn, rather than giving multiples to begin with. 

In English, our story this week was 'The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch'. We have been writing character descriptions, sequencing the story and labelling parts of a lighthouse. 

In art we designed a bird that we are hoping to make out of paper mache in the coming weeks. We started to explore artist Jane Tomlinson and enjoyed looking at and discussing some of her artwork. 

This week we had our first PE session with our Arena coach. We will be working on various athletic skills in readiness for our Sports Day.

The theme for Show and Tell next week is: An item/object that you have found at the beach. Please bring the item/photograph in on Thursday morning or if emailing photos please send to rhorn@pelyntprimary.co.uk by 8:40am on Thursday.

Please find the curriculum map which outlines our learning for this half term in the uploads below. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Class 1 Team

Summer 2 Update

I can’t believe that we have already moved into the final half-term in Year 5! I hope that you and the children have had a great half-term  We have a whole range of fantastic learning opportunities planned for this half term and the focus in firmly on ensuring that the children are prepared and confident going into Year 6. Please see some of the important details below.

The Year 5 Mind-map - attached below is a mind-map which details what we plan to learn across the curriculum this half term.

PE Lessons - Our timetable for PE remains the same this half term. Our PE will be on Tuesday. Children can come into school in their PE kit on PE days.

Times-tables and Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) – Much of the maths we do in Year 5 and Year 6 relies heavily on the children already knowing important number facts.  We call this ‘declarative’ knowledge.  We use the KIRFs in school to help the children learn and remember these important facts.  The most important facts that the children learn and remember are their quick addition and subtraction facts (eg: 13 - 6 =, 21 + 7=) and their times-tables facts (and corresponding division facts).  We do a lot of work in school to support your child to know these key facts and any support you can give at home to ensure that these facts are recalled automatically would be fantastic.

Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)

This year, we have continued to implement the Jigsaw PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) Programme in Year 5.

The Summer Term units are all about Relationships (unit 1) and Changing Me (unit 2) and they will cover all areas of statutory requirements for the delivery of Health and Relationship education which came into place for schools to follow from September 2020. The Changing Me unit includes lessons to help children understand the changes puberty brings and how human reproduction happens.

We sent a letter home with the children detailing the objectives we cover in Year 5, and have attached a copy of the letter below.

Supporting learning at home - We encourage learning at home to support the work we do in school and enable children to become more confident.

Our home-learning expectations are:

Daily reading (15 minutes) - reading which is recorded in your reading record will contribute towards your Reading Karate reward.

Times-tables and KIRF practice (20 minutes weekly) using Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS) and the KIRF sheets (attached below).

Spellings (20 minutes weekly) - focusing on our focus spellings and the Year 4/5 and 5/6 statutory spelling lists (attached below).

Online learning - This will be set on Atom Prime (logins stuck in thy front of children's reading records)

This term we will be running additional 'booster' sessions for selected children in Reading, Writing and Maths.  To support these sessions we may send home a CGP Question Book for the children to use.  We will be in touch directly if we have selected your child for the additional booster sessions.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please do get in touch.

All the very best, the Year 5 team.

Summer Term 2 - Week 1 - Sun, Science and Show!

English

In English this week, we began our poetry learning journey. The poetry unit is based on the ‘Tale of Three Brothers’ from the Harry Potter novel. To begin the journey, the children explored the tale, discussing its themes, characters, language and tone. They discussed with their learning buddies the impact of the animation and the effects it has on the reader/listener. For the first lesson, the children then explored different perspectives, focussing on ‘Deaths’ and then created a story map to match that point of view. The story map will then inform the rest of the journey, where the children will right a narrative poem using dramatic conventions.

Next, the children explored poetic devices and began collating a range of vocabulary ready to create their poems. They thought carefully about each of the brothers and their characteristics, along with the gift they were given by death. Within the lesson, we revisited the definitions of adjectives, similes, metaphors and personification.

In the following lessons, the children will begin to structure and plan their poems, by using their VIPERS skills to unpick a range of narrative poems.

Maths

In Maths this week, the children began their negative numbers learning journey. So far, they have learnt to understand negative numbers, count through zero and count through multiples with negative numbers.

The children our confident in their negative numbers and this is due to our morning work. The children have been exposed to negative numbers previously and can now use their tools from their morning work to be successful within the lessons.

In the mornings, children are being active with their next steps, seeking help from teachers to support their misconceptions. This fab to see!

Please continue to access TTRS at home, with negative numbers, counting through multiples, the fluency in times tables is important for this unit.

Wider Curriculum

In wider curriculum the children have been scientists. We have begun by looking at materials and their properties. We carried out an experiment where we looked at a range of materials and investigated whether they were transparent, magnetic or a conductor of electricity. The children made predictions and recorded their findings within a table. To end the lesson, the children selected a material, wrote about its properties and what products it would be best used for. All of this was evidence through the experiment!

In our next lesson, the children honed in on conductors of heat and insulators. The children once again completed an experiment, they were given three cups, filled with warm water and then three materials to wrap around. They had to discover which material would keep their teacher’s tea the warmest for the longest amount of time. With a stop watch, they timed how long it took for the water to cool, checking with a thermometer.

Important dates:

·      WC: 17^th June 2024 – Sports week

·      WC: 8^th July 2024 – Art week

·      Wednesday 10^th July 2024 – Our girls can

·      Friday 12^th July 2024 – Reports will be given

Have a lovely, sunny weekend,

Enjoy the show if you’re going!

Best wishes,

Good to be back!

Tregantle Class have returned to school after the half term break full of energy and ready to learn for the final half term of the year!
Our Year 1 children have been very thoughtful this week during our learning about D Day. They took part in a reflection assembly and learnt about this significant event in our history. They then used their knowledge and creative skills to design a medal for the soldiers who fought in the war. 
In maths the Year 1 children have been getting active! We have learnt a really fun dance to help with our unit or work on position and direction with a focus on left and right, full, half and quarter turns and ordinal numbers. It's been a really fun way to learn these new things! In English we have learnt a list poem called 'Ten Things in a Wizards Pocket.' We are now changing the poem to be about a farmer!
Our EYFS children have been very busy writers this week. They have learnt the story 'The Three Little Pigs' off by heart and have been using this along with their amazing phonics knowledge to write some brilliant sentences about the characters in the story. In maths they have been learning how to identify odd and even numbers by finding pairs and then checking if there is one left over. What a busy week it's been! 

This week we have been exploring superhero’s and answering our enquiry question “can anyone be a superhero”
At story time we have been enjoying the stories of “Supertato” and “Supertato: Veggies assemble” The children have been busy making their own super potatoes to take home.
They have also been busy making superhero masks.

In phonics this week, the children have been listening to sounds they hear in their environment, clapping syllables of words and learning about rhyming words that they hear.

In maths we have been counting and grouping objects 1-5 and practicing writing numbers and creating marks that represent numbers.

It is INSET day today (Friday) but we look forward to seeing everyone back to nursery on Monday.

Have a good weekend 

Julie and Sarah

summer 2 - week 1 

What a great first week back we have had.

Our new big question this half term is: What’s it like to be beside the sea?

We have lots of wonderful learning planned this half term to explore this question.

This week the year ones have ben exploring a list poem, they have been reading and learning the poem Ten things found in a wizard’s pocket. The children have been writing sentences using adjectives and working hard to correct sentences with capital letters and full stops!

They have also been exploring fractions in maths this week and have tried so hard to recognise and find halves and quarters!

In History we explored seaside holidays then and now and we compared going to the beach in Victorian times to going to the beach now!

The foundation children have been impressing Miss Hughes with their phonic knowledge and have been writing sentences to match pictures about the seaside! The foundation children have been exploring sharing in maths and they have worked so hard.

In PE all the children have been learning running skills and the basics of tennis with coach Ryan!

The children have completed so much wonderful learning this week!

Please remember that tomorrow (Friday 7^th) is an INSET Day.

Have a wonderful weekend

Foundation /year 1 team.