Visitor, Anglo Saxon finds and Sound 

We have started off the final term of the year. So far we have had a visit from the RNLI and Geevor mine. 

Clint from Geevor visited for the afternoon, this gave us the opportunity to revisit our learning from our local history work from last year. He told us all about the mine and the jobs of the men, women and children. We got to try on the clothes and imagine how life would have been. 

We are looking at the Anglo Saxons in our history lessons, and this week we dug up the artefacts that were found at Sutton Hoo. We discussed why these finds were so important and how it changed people's perceptions of the Anglo Saxon times.

We have started to learn about sound in science  and have investigated how the size of vibration affects the sound we hear. We have also learnt how we hear sounds. 

In PE we are starting to develop racket skills and are working on tennis. In PSHE we are focusing on relationships and started by talking about jealousy. 

We are also looking at how music fits within film and TV, coding in computing, sketching skills in art and doing the final prep for the year 6 SATS!

There are lots of exciting events coming up this term, so keep an eye out for updates! 

Duck in a Truck 

We started off our duck in the truck topic by discussing different modes of transport. Our first step was to brainstorm the different types we could think of, reception thought of loads: plane, train, car, van, horse, feet, bicycle and more.

We then talked about tally charts and how so many different things can be recorded through tally charts, reception know  one line marked, equals the number one and know that when you reach five you cross over the 4 tally marks.

We then Fred talked 4 different modes of transport: Car, Van, Bus and Tractor and headed out to the front of the school to start our tally charts. Reception kept their eyes peeled for their 4 different moving vehicles, they were so excited when they saw each one and they were predicting what would come next.

Their final tally charts looked neat and you could see reception really understood the concept. Final tally marks came to: car =6, Van = 2, Bus = 1, Tractor = 0. This was a great hook to start off our duck in the truck story.

Duchy Farm 

What better way to learn about the ins and outs of a farm than by visiting a working one! Duchy farm kindly welcomed us to their working farm grounds for the day.

We started off our visit by exploring their equine centre, Martin, our guide, explained how the horses are looked after, how you can work within the equine industry and all about their diets and the horse’s biology. They were very beautiful, some of our children showed a real gentle and calming presence when saying hello to them all.

Within this topic we are really exploring British farming- how it works and why it is so important. Martin was really excited to share about all the different roles you will find on a farm and how important they are to our country.

Once we had visited the equine centre we moved on to the guinea pigs, bunnies, chickens and ducks. The children loved getting up close and personal with these animals and found them very cute. The lady in this centre explained to the children how they look after these animals, including their diets, grooming and health checks, they all had really funny names also.

Moving on over to the exotic animals centre where the children met different species of frogs, snakes, bearded dragons, spiders, snails etc. These were a big hit, the children were very intrigued by all these animals, the frogs were adamant on escaping and jumping all over the children! One was called Kermit!

To top off a brilliant day the children got to have a tractor trailer ride around the remainders of the working farm. This is when they got to see the cows and sheep. The tractor ride was very fun but also very informative, we met different people along the way. One particular lady worked in the dairy part of the farm, she told us that they have nearly 250 cows on their farm, all of which produce 21 litres of milk a day that makes our cathedral city cheese and David stow milk! Exploring a career in farming is something Duchy Farm are really passionate about and this was evident in the friendly welcome and high-quality care of their animals.

Reception had the best time visiting Duchy Farm, I wonder whether any of them will become a farmer one day?

Forest School Team Work

Today in forest school we had a fantastic rope activity set up. The activity focused on balance and co-ordination along with teamwork and trust.

We started off by following the rope around and we were not allowed to let go, they had navigate through low parts and high parts. The next part that impressed us the most was when the children were in pairs and they had to give instructions to their partner who had their eyes closed, their communication skills with one another was great and they guided their partners well. 

They also tried walking backwards whilst trying not to let go of the rope. 

They worked really well as a team and enjoyed the activity. 

Mini Police

Class 3 pupils have taken part in the Mini Police programme with its focus on crime prevention including internet safety, anti-social behaviour, road safety and environmental activities. The class have been very engaged and demonstrated their curiosity through asking interesting questions and sharing their views and ideas.
The class are currently creating internet safety posters to share their learning with the whole school and our wider community. 

Welcome back!

We came back to school after our Easter break to some very windy weather, so we used our wind ribbons to build on our gross and fine muscle development. We had great fun swirling and waving them around our outside learning area! 

Our new topic for this half term is "What is above the clouds?" our children have come up with some great responses such as "astronauts" "space" "the moon" and "rockets". One of our older children even came up with " Mercury"! 
Some of our activities this week have been making junk model aliens, split pin astronauts, and we have used geometric shapes to build space rocket pictures. The children have been very creative with their designs. Art and craft activities help children to develop their fine motor and hand to eye coordination skills, this gives them the skills needed to manipulate tools such as scissors and pencils, and leads to early writing skills. 

Today, in the morning, group one started with archery and bushcraft; group two did zip lining, the leap of faith and a climbing wall; and group three did tunnels and stream studies.
After a lunch of assorted rolls, group one did problem solving; group two did bushcraft and archery; and group three did zip wiring, the leap of faith and climbing.
We are looking forwards to our woodland walk and bonfire. See you back at school tomorrow!
By Tom 

It was wonderful to welcome Canute class back after the Easter holidays, it sounds like the children had a lovely break with lots of chocolatey treats!

 We enjoyed some very much needed spring sunshine this week and made the most of it by taking our learning outside as much as possible.

 In English Year 1 & 2  are reading Little Red Riding hood, we all went to forest school on Wednesday and the children took it in turns to wear the red cape and describe the sights, sounds and smells that our heroine would have experienced walking through the woods. 

 In maths yr 1 & 2 did very well in their end of unit assessments.  Year 2 were outside using the meter rulers to measure some of the objects in our playground, year 1 were comparing the capacity of different containers and reception have been building their understanding of doubles and odd & even numbers.

 We have started a new unit in ICT on data handling. The children did their own data analysis on hair and eye colour in Canute Class.  We discussed what is important to Muslims in RE and explored different types of family structures in PSHE,  how all families and relationships are important even though they may look different to our own.  In PE we are looking at team work and the children really enjoyed working as a pair to move an object from one side of the playground to the other – without using their hands! 

We finished the week with a fun and very important Assembly with the RNLI.  The children had lots of fun trying on the RNLI equipment but took away the serious messages of how to stay safe in the sea. Huge thanks to the RNLI for their visit.

 We hope you have had a lovely weekend.

Best wishes from all of the Canute Class Team

Year 6 have returned to school in a positive and upbeat mood. We have got stuck into revising our reading comprehension skills and the fundamentals of grammar ready for the SATs next month.

Both maths classes are working towards the end of the taught units in order to allow some time for revision of the maths curriculum and to fine tune our arithmetic abilities.

We’ve also had the thrill of football and netball matches - with both teams winning. Some Year 6s have started soft ball on Thursday afternoons, and the Reading Pioneers have started a new book. Feel free to ask the Softballers and Pioneers about their activities and if they would recommend them.

We have another couple of weeks of our current topic ‘What’s so special about clouds?’  and will spend the final two weeks ensuring we have answered all of the questions we had at the beginning. Who knows, we may have some budding meteorologists in our midst.

We rounded off our first week in style by participating in a morning of alternative sports. Pendower and Seaton had a go at archery, American Football and capture the flag. The last two sports demanded positive teamwork from all of the children – a challenge they rose too admirably.

Year 6 have returned to school in a positive and upbeat mood. We have got stuck into revising our reading comprehension skills and the fundamentals of grammar ready for the SATs next month.

Both maths classes are working towards the end of the taught units in order to allow some time for revision of the maths curriculum and to fine tune our arithmetic abilities.

We’ve also had the thrill of football and netball matches - with both teams winning. Some Year 6s have started soft ball on Thursday afternoons, and the Reading Pioneers have started a new book. Feel free to ask the Softballers and Pioneers about their activities and if they would recommend them.

We have another couple of weeks of our current topic ‘What’s so special about clouds?’  and will spend the final two weeks ensuring we have answered all of the questions we had at the beginning. Who knows, we may have some budding meteorologists in our midst.

We rounded off our first week in style by participating in a morning of alternative sports. Pendower and Seaton had a go at archery, American Football and capture the flag. The last two sports demanded positive teamwork from all of the children – a challenge they rose too admirably.

Finally, an apology for any confusion around the non-uniform day for Pendower as a reward for winning the attendance trophy. The children can come to school on Friday 26^th April in their home clothes. Well done on having such super attendance. 

The children did not let the early start this morning put them off their activities today! They have had a super day. After unpacking and lunch, Group 1 completed the zip line, leap of faith and climbing wall whilst groups 2 and 3 carried out the problem solving activities.
We were incredibly proud of all the children for giving the zip line a go and lots even tried out the leap of faith!
The problem solving groups impressed us with their determination and communication skills- they did not give up and worked really well in their teams.
This evening, the children have enjoyed their evening meal and spent time in the games room and watching a movie.

Hopefully we will all get a good night sleep ahead of tomorrow’s activities.

Please see below for some more pictures. 

Summer Term 1 - Week 1 - Signs of Summer! 

English

In English this week we began a new learning journey on emotive writing. The children are exploring the video from literacy shed ‘The Piano’. Throughout the learning journey, the children will have the opportunity to write in different genres as well as investigating and using a variety of grammatical skills.

To begin the week, the children used their VIPERS skills to explore video and look at symbolism. They were presented with a range of ideas and discussed what this could symbolise and how it enhances the image in our heads. Next, the children learnt how to extend sentences using relative clauses, adjectival phrases etc. and wrote character descriptions for the old man in the clip.

Towards the end of the week, the children learnt about amplifications and how to use a range of literary devices to create them. So far, we have seen some lovely, descriptive language. We will continue to develop our writing over the next few weeks where we will end the journey by writing a recount in the form of a letter.

Maths

Maths varied this week, we had to complete our statistics learning journey before we moved onto angles. On the Monday and Tuesday, the children looked at two-way tables and reading time tables. They then finalised the journey by completing their end of unit assessments.

Mid-week, the children then began their angles and shapes learning journey. To begin their explored degrees, lots of this learning was recalling prior knowledge from Year 4. The children were confident in their recall and made notes of the declarative knowledge for the journey in their books.

To end the week, the children were involved in their weekly carousel, for these activities the children have the opportunity to look back at their arithmetic and reasoning papers and work on areas they find tricky. Teachers and TA’s are on hand to support, show methods etc.

Well done to those children who are continuing to access TTRS at home, keep up the fab work!

Wider Curriculum

We were scientists this week…

On Monday, the children learnt all about life cycles of humans. They learnt about the different stages and recorded key facts and information. During the lesson, the children were also introduced to different animals and their cycles, where we then made comparisons, noting the similarities and differences.

On Thursday, we then moved on to ‘Living things and their habitats’, where we explored the life cycles of common plants. Here the children looked at parts of a plant, how seeds disperse, what asexual reproduction in plants is, before embarking on an experiment. For the experiment, the children would be taking cuttings of a plant and replanting them to see if their grow. In their books they made predictions on what would happen to the plant based on the knowledge they had learnt from the lesson.

Please see this week’s home learning for further information!!

What a great start to a new term,

Have a wonderful weekend as always,

Best Wishes,

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Summer Term!

This week we have been enjoying some sunshine outside, whilst finding wild flowers in preparation for the Trelawny Fayre art competition.
We learnt about the work of Cornish artist Marjorie Blamey, who painted water colours of wild flowers. We then found real examples of flowers that she had used in her work. We chose bluebells as a focus, and have sketched some wonderful examples of them, in preparation for painting next week. The children have asked if we can sketch some different kinds of flowers next week. I am so pleased with their efforts and with the work that they have produced so far. Well done everyone! Entries will be judged next Friday. 
Our science topic this half term is all about plants. We learnt about the process of pollination this week, and drew a comic strip to explain the process. The children became very good at using scientific vocabulary to explain the process. 
In English this week, we have been learning about traditional tales. We learnt the story of Little Red Riding Hood and have used the story to help us with grammatical structures and sentence openers. Next week we will look at different versions of the story.
In maths this week, Year 2 have been learning about length. They have used metres and centimetres to estimate and measure objects. Year 1 have begun to learn about multiplication, by finding and making equal groups. We have been counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.
Next week, during our RE lesson on Thursday afternoon, we would like to walk to the church. We will be learning about things that people use to help them to worship. Thank you for completing the relevant consent forms at the beginning of this year, which allows us to take the children off site for visits. We will only be walking as far as the inside of the church. 
Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the long awaited sunshine!

The class 2 team!

Maths

This half term we will start by focusing on shape before swiftly moving onto money. We will also keep refreshing our arithmetic skills once per week. I can see lots of the children are accessing Times Table Rock Stars at home which is fantastic, please do keep practising at home as this really supports their mental arithmetic. We'd like children to be able to count in 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s by the end of Year 2. Below are some of the songs we use in school to help us. I have included lots here as the homework we send home will touch on all of these at different points so it may be a useful bank of resources to support your child at home.

Counting in 2s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvTcpfSnOMQ

Counting in 3s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_cn87hOCDM

Counting in 5s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EemjeA2Djjw

Counting in 10s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftati8iGQcs

This half term we are learning all about shape. Here are some songs and videos we will watch in class.

2D shapes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6/articles/ztpwdmn

3D shapes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6/articles/zcsjqty

Shape videos and resources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zjv39j6

Some other helpful resources:

Sharing (division): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z6pqh4j

Multiplication sentences: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/zbmk239

Using an array for multiplication: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z3tvcj6

Using an array for division: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqbg87h/articles/z9pc8mn

Addition and subtraction (all of these guides and videos will be useful): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zwv39j6

Fractions (all of these guides and videos will be useful): https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z3rbg82

English

This half term we will start by very quickly finishing off our recounts from before the Easter holidays. Then we will be moving onto story writing once again focusing on Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.

Science

Our topic this half term is living things and their habitat. We explore microhabitats and lots of different living things so we are excited to take our learning outside as much as possible!

History

This half term we are learning all about The Great Fire of London! The children are beyond excited about this topic and cannot wait to learn all about what happened, why it happened and how it happened. 

Our trip to The Box in Plymouth

On Friday 19th April we went on a school trip to The Box in Plymouth. The children were brilliant and their behaviour was exceptional! They listened intently to our guide and loved each and every exhibit we went into. They listened and asked questions and it was a joy to watch how enthusiastic they were. 

The second part of the day was an artist workshop focusing on sea life sculpture. The children explored plankton and noticed how different it all looks. They discussed how art made them feel and even got to use different materials to design and make their own plankton sculptures. The artist leading the workshop then joined all their sculptures together and this is now hanging up in the classroom if you'd like to come and see it! Please enjoy these great photos from our trip.

English

This half term we having been learning about an author and illustrator called Catherine Rayner. We loved exploring different books she had written, some of them we knew already.

We based our stories on Augustus and his smile. It's all about a tiger who was sad because he lost his smile and searches all over the world to find it. We practised sequencing the story and using ambitious vocabulary to describe what happens. 

We also used story mapping to really embed the sequence of the story and used actions to help us retell the story accurately.

We also used boxing up the text to help us identify the key parts of the story: the opening, build-up, dilemma, resolution and ending. We noticed in Augustus and his smile the build-up and dilemma were swapped around which we found was an interesting way to tell a story.

Firstly we practised re-writing the original story using lots of expanded noun phrases, verbs, adverbs and ambitious adjectives. Then, we made some small changes to the story to make it our own. We finished off this unit by writing our own versions of Augustus and his smile. 

Maths

This half term we have been learning all about fractions. We have focused off halves, thirds and quarters. We found out the half has two equal groups, thirds have three equal groups and quarters have four equal groups. We started by firstly recognising these different fractions by colouring in half of a shape, a third of a shape and a quarter of a shape. Then we started to use our knowledge from multiplication and division to help us divide numbers to help us find one half, one third and one quarter of a number. We used sharing into equal groups to help us.

Geography

This half term we were learning all about cities from all over the world. We started by focusing on capital cities in the United Kingdom before looking at some capital cities from all around the world. We thought about and discussed some key differences between cities and villages. We noticed that cities have more human features and villages have more physical features. We then compared Edinburgh to Cape Town in South Africa and the children thoroughly enjoyed learning about a very different capital city! We have used lots of songs this year to help us with our geography learning that the children have loved listening to. Here are some links below in case they'd like to listen to them at home too.


Continents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6DSMZ8b3LE

Oceans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BE4VcYngQ

Capital cities of the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDIZoQLgIE

PE

This half term in our PE lessons we were learning how to use rackets, the children loved this unit particularly when we were able to get outside! The children loved tracking their progress across the weeks and were very pleased with themselves when they were able to start short rallies! Well done Year 2. 

Art

This half term we studied a French-American artist called Nicki de Saint Phalle. We found some interesting information out about her, one thing in particular was that she didn't got to an art school, everything she did she taught herself! The children found this to be very inspirational.

We explored some of her sculptures and used this to help us learn about primary and secondary colours, mixing colours, bold and vibrant colours, strong lines and tints and hues. 

The children thoroughly enjoyed learning the skills when it comes to mixing colours but some of their favourite parts were creating different patterns using a range of colours inspired by a picture of one of her sculptures. The children loved exploring using black to create strong lines and contrasts.

Some of the children even incorporated our English learning and included tiger stripes!

We finished off this unit by creating sculptures in the style of Nicki Saint de Phalle using mod rock. We will finish painting and evaluating these after the half term.

DT

This half term we caught up and finished off our DT project all about food and we looked at fruit kebabs. We started by exploring different fruits by taste testing them and deciding which our favourite fruits were. Then we designed a fruit kebab thinking about our favourite fruits, colours, shapes and textures. Next we made our fruit kebabs before trying them of course! After we had eaten our fruit kebabs, we evaluated them and thought about what we could do next time to improve them.

Welcome back! The summer term has got off to a flying start with enquiry questions for this half term as follows:
Penhallow Class: Is it a Bug’s Life?
Landaviddy Class: Could you be an Explorer?
Talland Class: Can CHANGE change?
Chaipel Class: What do all living things have in common?
Please visit the class blogs to find out more about your child’s learning.

The whole school sang with the Polperro Wreckers in a singing assembly on Thursday and every child has designed a cover for this year’s Polperro Festival Programme competition. Watch this space to find out the winner. Their cover will be used on the programme and the other entries will be displayed around Big Green during the festival.

There is still time to sign up for clubs which resume next week as follows:
Monday: After school RUNNING AND ATHLETICS CLUB for Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 with Mrs Phillips and Mrs Turnbull
Tuesday: After school FOOTBALL CLUB for Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 with Mr Langley
Wednesday: Lunchtime SEWING CLUB for Y2, Y3, Y4, Y5 and Y6 with Miss Gibbings.
Thursday: After school ALTERNATIVE SPORTS CLUB for Y1, Y2 and Y3 with Miss Randle After school GARDENING CLUB for all year groups with Mrs Taylor

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs Hillman

At the end of our last term we created some superb water colour flower picture.  The skills we practiced came in useful as we took part in a one-off art competition, painting flowers, including roses.. 

We also started our next art theme.  We began with a still life of apples.  We will be looking at impressionism  inc. he work of Paul Cézanne, build to recreating our still life, but in the style of impressionism  

TT Rock Stars (TTRS) will be a big focus over the next few weeks as the Year 4s build up to the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) in June.  The 'Soundcheck' option on TTRS works in a very similar way to the MTC and we aiming to complete 6 (SIX) soundcheck per week to build up our times tables speed and stamina.  The Year 3s are joining us on our practice journey also aiming to complete 6 soundcheck per week.  Luckily, they have a year before they take the test.

Regards,

Mr Knight