Dear Parents and Carers,

We are sure that, like us, you have lots of questions following the Prime Minister's announcement last night.
At the moment, for us in school, there is no change to the guidance, so we will be continuing to operate as we have over the last few weeks. We will continue to provide essential child care for key worker families as well as vulnerable children.
The message remains that it is safer to stay at home.
We appreciate this is a confusing time. Once we have received further information and reviewed the guidance on how to manage a safe, phased return we will of course keep you informed.
 
Please stay safe and take care.
Kindest regards
Mrs Waring 

A day like no other

It has been a while since I posted a blog, but that does not mean that I have not been thinking of you.  Although Trenode Primary is closed sadly, we are still seeing a small number of the children who come to Looe for a few days each week and Miss Pittas and Mrs David have been letting me know about all that you have been getting up to in lockdown.

As you can see, we have been enjoying the company of these two lovely young people and today was a special day as we were able to celebrate VE Day.  This was a real treat with 11 children in school; we would not have been able to commemorate and celebrate with any children were we not in the situation in which we currently find ourselves.  We decorated biscuits, made bunting, made crispy cakes, held the two minutes silence and chalked images of soldiers on the walls outside.

I would like to say thank you especially to Miss Pittas and Mrs David for the care and support that they are providing to you every day.  It is so hard given that they cannot easily contact you.  However, we are all grateful for the wonderful pictures and contacts that have been coming in.

Please do not forget that we are here for you and that Looe Primary continues to be available for you on a daily basis if you are a care worker or need support with a vulnerable child.  

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I hope to be able to see you all at some point soon.
 

How to Access Work for Your Child

Today has become a very interesting day and it will be one of those days where I think many of us will be saying, '... I remember where I was when the Prime Minister closed schools'. 

We have all been speculating what might happen in this very strange situation in which we find ourselves, so to some extent, while we are disappointed to have to close, we completely understand why.  It is our imperative now to support you as much as possible in the educational and emotional care of your children while they are unable to come to school.  We will of course wait for confirmation of how we will support vulnerable pupils and those children of key workers in essential positions, but once we know, we will communicate this to you as soon as possible.  In the meantime, it would be most helpful if you could only communicate with reference to ongoing absence.  This will enable us to spend more time preparing quality materials for you to use at home as well as continuing to teach those children who can still be at school until we close at the end of the day on Friday.

In the main menu section of the website, you will find the Class pages.  This is the page where we write class blogs for you.  They now also contain suitable materials for you to use at home.  The material posted now provides enough work to last until the end of term (27th March) and we will continue to post beyond that point.  We are sending a work book to write in for children who are still in school, and if your child cannot be here in the next two days, please use any suitable paper or notebooks that you have already.  Do not worry about any of this and we understand that for many parents who have more than one child and where you have to work from home for example, completing learning with your child will be difficult every day.  While teachers and staff who have been able to be in school have been focussing on the children in our care, the work on the Class pages for this week and next has been provided by those teachers who have been at home.  I would like to thank them for this as they have provided it very quickly and there is more than enough work for all age groups.  Once we are closed for the majority of pupils, the content on the Class pages will be provided by the class teachers.

Please remember that there are many other ways to learn.  Reading books, watching films and talking about them, playing traditional games such as board games, looking for bugs in the garden and then researching what they are, completing jigsaws for fine motor skills etc. are just as valuable as learning experiences.  There are also some amazing apps and websites that can be used in portions of time that can aid and progress learning.  Good examples of these that we recommend are Duolingo and GoNoodle as well as Mathletics and TTRockstars that you may already be aware of.  Please check the content of the class pages daily, especially from next week, as we will add more and more resources over time.  After the Easter break, we will change the format of the resources to give you more choice and flexibility with the learning that we will provide.

We will continue to send you emails and we will use Facebook to highlight new content. Feel free to email us during school hours if you have any questions.  Please do bear in mind that while some staff may be at home, they may also find it challenging to respond immediately, as they may be also looking after and caring for family members. We will always reply as soon as we can.  You can either email me at head@trenodeprimary.co.uk, especially if you have a general question or comment, or if your message is about learning and content on the Class page for your child, please email the class teacher using their initial and surname followed by @trenodeprimary.co.uk (e.g. sdavid@trenodeprimary.co.uk)

Finally, thank you so much for your patience, support and response over this last week.  The children have been very calm, and interested in understanding the situation in which we find ourselves, even if they are a little fed up of washing their hands!  This is a difficult and unknown time for us all, so from our amazing Trenode Primary Academy community, I send our best wishes and hopes that you can all stay safe, fit and well in the coming weeks and months.  If you have any photographs that you are willing to share of the activities you get up to when learning at home, please do send them to me and I may be able to add them to my blog; a great way to keep in touch and raise much needed smiles.

Kind regards
Janine Waring

If you know the school, when you look at this picture, you will think, that's not Trenode!  You would be right, because for World Book Day this year, we were invited to spend the day at Looe Primary and as you can see - we grew from 39 pupils to 260!  It felt a little daunting at times but we had a fantastic day taking part in lots of activities.  
The day started with a reading breakfast and a whole school assembly.  After that we all joined other classes to work as a mixture of KS1 and KS2 children.  We found out about books that we all like, books that were new to us and we completed some amazing writing based on our favourite books - the theme of the day.  As well as all this, there was great art work to be done and all things books.  It's going to feel strange but great to be back at Trenode after such a busy day!

Over the last few months, children in the Trust have been working to write a song about climate change. To achieve this, they were visited by some guest speakers to help them to think about what climate change means to them and how they might be able to spread the message and do their own small things to help.  They were given time with a professional musician to write the music for a song.  Last week, it all came together at St. Martin's Church in Liskeard where the schools came together to share their songs.  Singing has a strong tradition at Trenode and we were delighted to be part of this project.  Although we could not take all of the children, Mrs David was as ever very complimentary about the standard achieved by the children.    Well done yet again to you al and we look forward to the final part of the process at The Eden Project in September!

We are spending a very thoughtful and reflective week this week, beginning to explore who we are as a school in more detail.  Our focus for the week is spirituality.  We know that spirituality can mean different things to different people and we have begun to think about what it means to us as a Church of England school in the context of celebrating God in all that we do.

The children have thought about how they think, how they reflect, how they like calm, peace and quiet in amongst their learning and activities.

We have been delighted to welcome Sean Hewitt to school this week.  Sean is a local abstract artist and the children are working with him to look at the art of Andrew Goldsworthy.  They are using this to create beautiful art work such as the circle of life art you can see here.

We can't wait to see what the finished product will look like by the end of the week.

As part of a Bridge Schools Trust opportunity for pupils to eventually create a new piece of music that has its inspiration in the environment, the pupils at Trenode have been meeting professionals to help them to think about the impact of their actions on the environment and to help them to understand that even a few small changes in their lives can make a difference.  

As well as a visit from Luci Issacson to show the children an electric car, they also had a visit from Nick Hart.  When the children met Luci, they were asked to consider some pledges for things they could do at home.  These included turning the tap off when they brushed their teeth, switching the energy supply to a green supplier (with their parents of course!), using electric cars when they grow up, cycling or walking to school etc.  The children talked about what they found easy and difficult.  They also talked about how they would like to see the world change in an environmental way, for the better and the pledges that they would like to make for the future. Nick also introduced some ideas about global warming and he steamed up his glasses to show condensation and then evaporation.  Finally, he showed them a special metal water bottle which he left with the children as a prize.  He explained that the bottle can be used in some shops and cafes to fill up your bottle for free if the shop displays a special symbol.

So, we will have a prize to give away soon and if you are wondering why the children are talking about changing your energy supplier, now you know why!  We are really looking forward to creating the piece of music in the near future.
 

Welcome to our new School Council. We held a democratic election after all of the pupils who wished to be a part of the School Council had an opportunity to give a speech or presentation. It was well done to all, as they were all confident speakers. We now have a wonderful team of representatives who have already begun to show that they would like to do all that they can to play their role in keeping this lovely school fun and happy and a great place to learn.

Together, we have agreed that the School Council aims are to:

- Enable all pupils at Trenode Primary to have a voice
- Ensure the school is the best place it can be for learning and stretching learning
- Help everyone to help each other
- Keep the school a happy, fun and enjoyable place to learn and care about each other
- Work as a team
- Fund raise for the school and for charity and to do all that we can to support the environment

These are great aims and all chosen by the children. I am sure you will agree that they are already doing a great job! We will keep you posted.

Trenode Primary Academy is a wonderful family of children, staff and families and it is perhaps most obvious on the Annual Sports Day.  It was wonderful that the sun shone and the children were able to show their support and encouragement for each other despite the competition.  Congratulations to the green team, Fowey, for their success on the day.  Thank you too to all of the support and help given on the day and for the Summer Fayre events that also took place.  

The Trenode team were also in action at the Area Sports Day held at Liskeard Secondary School.  Special congratulations to Olivia for winning the Year 5 sprint.