Over the last couple of days, we have used our courageous advocacy in thoughtful ways.

We have hosted a disco to further support Shelter Box and their provision to the Ukrainians. These funds will be put together with the money we already raised in previous weeks.

Thank you for your support Trenode friends and families.

This week, we have welcomed the lifeguards into school. Their yearly visit helps us to remember how to safely visit Cornwall’s beaches each summer. 

On Friday, we will welcome the music specialist Mrs Butlin. We cannot wait to welcome our families to our music extravaganza. we look forward to see you all there.

And finally… Mrs Pike will be here in the Summer Term as I go across to Looe primary. You will have a fantastic term learning all about The Great Fire of London and so much more… Until September…

Thank you for all of your support and, as always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email.

The children at Trenode made a great job of acting as the waves while our two RNLI visitors helped to rescue two of the children in distress on their body boards!  We are really enjoying having visitors into school again and now that the weather is improving and a few of the children have at least dipped their toes into the sea, this was a very timely visit. 

The talk was very interactive and the children were helped to understand how floating can help them if they are in distress and how to call for help using their voice and hands at the same time.  They also learned about the dangerous rip tide currents that could take them out to sea, with some great advice on how to make sure this doesn't happen.  Finally they were reminded how to use 999 or 112 if they see someone in distress.  

Living in this beautiful part of the country is a privilege but it is also so important that the children learn how to repsect where they live and to understand the dangers of the sea, at the same time as using it as an amazing playground and adventure opportunity.

I have no doubt that we will be seeing some of these children wearing those yellow shirts on the beach one day, helping others and doing their bit to be courageous advocates; serving the community in which they live.

Using 'Scratch' to make a quiz!

In Computing this week, we have begun to learn how to write and debug programs, using a programming package called, 'Scratch'.

We learnt about open-ended and closed questions and for our own quizzes, we decided upon a series of closed quiz questions. 

Some of us have already begun to write our programs, drawing from previous computing knowledge, to choose our own 'Sprites', adding backgrounds, speech bubbles and even sound effects!

Learning how to keep ourselves safe!

We really enjoyed our trip our to Liskeard Fire Station. We split into two groups and travelled round a carousel of activities.

We learnt:

• How to keep ourselves safe around railways and train stations
• How to carry out basic CPR, should someone have a cardiac arrest
• How important it is to purchase a train ticket if travelling by train and what some of the consequences might be 
• Some of the jobs of the Cornwall Traffic enforcement officers
• What we can do to keep ourselves safe online and how to report anything that worries us or makes us feel uncomfortable
• The importance of having smoke alarms on each floor of our houses and that they should be tested regularly.

A busy few days in Kilminorth Class!

We have had a busy few days in Kilminorth Class. We have enjoyed celebrating Science Week where were learned all about planting seeds and setting up a fair test for good growth. We also went outside to look for signs of spring time (a great link with our RE learning about Easter) in our school grounds and for the wild plants that have begun to bloom around this time of year. We completed tally charts and Year 2 applied their recent Maths learning about Bar Charts to create a bar chart with the information we found out.

Over the next couple of weeks we will nurture and care for the seeds we have planted to see what light and dark conditions do for growth after seed germination.

Watch this space…

We have supported Red Nose Day by wearing mufti and by having a cake sale. We had fun inviting our families into the playground after school to raise money.

Altogether, we raised £36.40 for the Red Nose Day Mufti and a whopping £91.40 for the cake sale. Our mufti for Ukraine also raised £38. All donations being so gratefully received and sent off to their respective charities.

May the staff and children of Trenode thank you for your support and contributions.

Trip Reminder:  Please bring your forms back to the office in plenty of time for our trip to Truro Cathedral next Wednesday.

And finally, Kilminorth Class had the priviledge of welcoming in a story teller from the Cornwall Library Service today. What fun it was to share the love of reading once again with more and more people. At the moment, we are reading James and the Giant Peach in school. It was recommended to us by one of the young ladies in Year 1 who wanted us to read something that her mother once read as a child. We voted as a class and the decision was unanimous. We are proving that, once again, books are timeless and can be enjoyed the world over by everyone; children and adults alike.

What are you reading at the moment? Ask you children to share their love of reading with you. I wonder what adventures you will go on?

"Growth!"

This week is 'British Science Wek' and the theme this year is 'Growth'.

We have had a wonderful time, kicking the week off by looking at some time-lapse videos of plants and cities. (If you haven't yet dicovered David Attenborough's 'Green Planet', it is well worth a watch - especially if you like a time-lapse video - and it truly shows how plants are every bit as fascinating as animals, if you just know how - and where - to look!

Next, we discussed what can be meant by, 'Growth' and we produced our own acrostic poems.

Following on from this, we designed our own healthy, planet-friendly burgers, discovering how to make sustainable food choices in order to save our planet.

We also learned how to calculate the age of a shark and aimed to determine whether height is a good measure of pupils' age in our class. Did you know that sharks can live to up to 500 years old and that their age can be calculated by its size, as sharks grow every year?!

In the afternoon, we created some antibody and virus origami to celebrate our amazing bodies. We learned that antibodies are produced by special cells in our bodies, to counteract the effects of a disease, germ or its poisons. Antibodies (also called immunoglobulins) are large Y-shaped proteins that can stick to the surface of bacteria and viruses. We made Y-shaped antibodies!

Later on, we designed an animal that could survive on Mars. We had to decide what it would look like and what it would need to be like in order to survive the conditions on the red planet. For this activity, we had to be creative, imaginative and tenacious!

Finally, we ended the day with some outdoor gym. We thought about different ways in which we can exercise outdoors as well as moving in more unusual ways to keep fit outdoors. We researched and planned our exercise and then used our outdoor space to trial our exercise.

What an amazing week we have had, celebrating British Science week and becoming super scientists!!

We have launched our new story this week which is Handa's Surprise. As we are learning about a story from a different culture, we immersed ourselves today by going bare foot, walking both in and outside of school carrying our basket of fruit on our head. We had different fruit stops on the way and we tried: bananas, kiwis, mangoes, pineapples, oranges, avocadoes, passionfruit and tangerines.

We look forward to continuing this writing unit with some fantastic writing.

We are a little 'late to the party' on this, but we had a wonderful World Book day again this year.  We started the day with a reading breakfast in the school hall.  Parents joined us for the event and we read together while eating toast and drinking juice.

The theme for the day this year was words, so everyone was encouraged to come dressed as a 'word'.  It was interesting that so many of the children chose a sleep themed word, including Mrs David, who was many sleep and comfort themed words throughout the day!  The word of the day went to Mrs Burrows, one of our lovely TAs, who came as 'MAGNARA'.  Can you guess who she was?

... ANAGRAM of course!  We also celebrated the fact that World Book day is 25 years old this year and we reflected on the theme for the year based on reading for joy.

We love to sing at Trenode, but we think we might like reading just that little bit more!

Welcome Back!

We have had such an exciting first week here in Kilminorth Class.  We welcomed 2 new Teaching Assistants and 2 new children and had great fun helping our new friends get to know us and our school. 

On Shrove Tuesday, we learned about some of the UK's customs surrounding Pancake Day. From traditions including running to church flipping a pancake to dances and races, it sure seems like all 4 countries manage to have lots of fun and frolics whilst taking part in such deeply historic events. We didn't quite enter into running to Morval Church flipping our pancakes but we did have some fun making and eating them with Mrs Bryant. The question is... how do you eat yours?


This week we held World Book Day celebrations.  The day started with a reading breakfast and, when we got to class, we began to guess all of the interesting vocabulary we all had dressed up as.  Look at the interesting words we managed to collect! Do you know what they all mean? Can you match the words to the costumes?

Sleepy, intelligent, demolished, adventurous, terrifying, love, magical, punctuation, sailor, explorer, vibrant, friendship, illuminate and lovely

To end our exciting week, Kilminorth Class took a Geography field trip up into Widegates Village to draw a ‘sketch map’ of the local area.  When we got to the top of the hill, we noticed a good spot to stop and take a look at the landscape around us.  We spotted our school field, the moors, Liskeard and on our way back to school, we saw a train go past and when we looked closely, we even noticed cars driving on the A38!

Since we are not in school on St Piran's Day, we enjoyed an early pasty 1 day early. We will be learning more about St Piran at the end of the month.

Next week we will be using our walk to help us write letters in English and Geography. We will also be planting seeds in Science to help us think more carefully about just how light affects good growth.  What are your predictions?  Does light matter?  Can we grow seeds and beans without light?  What happens if we give them lots of light?

Please feel free to send any of your photographs from these celebrations to our Facebook page.  All of the children look to see each other when we do have time to send them.

Miss Pittas

Shrove Tuesday, St David's Day & St Piran's Day!

What a week to come back to! So wonderful to have everyone safely back after quite an eventful half term, full of of storms, power cuts and internet-free entertainment!

Returning on Tuesday, after an INSET day, the children learned all about Shrove Tuesday, taste-testing and reviewing different pancake toppings! Tuesday was also St David's day and tomorrow (5th March) will be St Piran's Day, so we have been finding out about various patron saints, including our very own tin-discovering, miner-protecting, Irish import!

We also celebrated the 25th anniversary of World Book day on Thursday and for a bit of a change, we dressed up as our favourite words - creatively recreating 'fascintating', 'melancholoy', 'onomatopoeia', 'cerise', 'suspicious' and many, many more!

Today, we have continued on our musical journey with Mrs Butlin. We began with some body percussion to Encanto's, 'We don't talk about Bruno' and then we learnt how to draw musical notation, composing our own rhythms and practising our ukulele skills - watch this space for news coming soon regarding a concert!

Have a lovely weekend everyone - you have worked your socks off again; even in just a 4-day week, look how much you have achieved!

What an unexpected final day of the term!

Our message here at school is please do stay safe everyone and have a fun-filled day and half term.  Attached is the PE grid I have emailed across to everyone in Kilminorth Class and have put it onto our Facebook page too for ease-of-access of everyone.

Feel free to send me some photos of your creativity and fun today. I do hope that you have a marvellous time having a go at some of these challenges.

I am available by email all day to answer any questions or concerns you may have.

Another quick reminder is that we come back to school on Tuesday 1^st March due to staff CPD on Monday 28^th February.

Stay safe today in these winds and have a wonderful time next week with your family and friends,

Miss Pittas

Safer Internet Week:

Over the last couple of weeks, Kilminorth Class have taken part in Safer Internet Week. We have thought about the types of technology we each have at home and have talked about the rules we follow to keep safe online.


We have learned about the importance of personal information and took part in a target challenge with our friends to establish who needs to know personal things about us.

When responding to online bullying, the boys and girls read an email from ‘BLLY99’ and wrote an email back to Digiduck to tell him what he should do when someone is unkind online.

When talking together, we found out that more people than we thought knew about people being mean online. We are now on the look out for how we can keep ourselves and our friends safe.

We look forward to a safe and happy half term but also are a little sad this week. We say goodbye to our trainee Mis Rowe and our amazing TA Mrs Cunliffe.  We are sad to say goodbye but are so excited to hear all about how Mrs Cunliffe gets on in her new job.

Bon Voyage Mrs C. We will miss you!

Next term, we look forward to continuing our Big Question: What is so special about the world around us?

Have a lovely week everyone.

Miss Pittas

Stone Age to Iron Age!

This week, many of our units for this term have begun to reach their conclusion. The children have been developing their scrapbooking skills, to produce a final piece of work, showing what they have learnt about the period of History, from the Stone Age through to the Iron Age. This learning has begun to help us answer our big question, 'Why don't we make cars out of jelly?' as we have seen how the discovery of different materials helped human life, technology, weapons and tools to develop.

In RE, we have continued to study the question, 'Creation and Science: Conflicting or Complimentary?' We have been trying to decide whether both can work together and we have looked at some famous scientists who are also Christians.

Getting ready for Songfest has also been high on our list of priorities this week! We have listened to 'Don't Stop me now' (a child-friendly version - be careful if your child tries to find this song to play at home!) along with another three new songs! 

We were very pleased that the Safter Internet Day this year celebrates 'Respect and Relationships' as it fits into so many of our Church school values.  Our act of worship today looked at respect for others on the internet in particular, and it helped to remind us all that it is so important to be respectful, thankful, kind and caring in the way in which we communicate with others online.

We know that over 48% of children will have been contacted by someone they do not know online, but it was reassuring that the children could tell us why it was so important not to respond.  One of the children shared one of their house rules at home, which is never to talk to someone online who you do not know as a friend, or if you do not have permission from your parents to chat or game with them.

We read the fabulous story of 'Digi-duck and The Magic Castle' which helped us all to understand that when you are gaming, if you share your password, others can then use it to spend money on games and other things.  We enjoyed listening to the adventures of Cool.com and Shy_sheep too!

We will spend more than a day looking at online safety this year as the topic is so important for our young children.  They do know what is right and wrong but we found out that they worry about peer pressure to join in with things harder to deal with; this will be a big topic of conversation as a result.

As I write on my laptop, having used my phone to find infomation and play music to concentrate as I write, we cannot ignore the amazing positive influence of the internet on our lives and we need to celebrate its value as well as taking care to be safe and careful in all that we do.  We would like to share our prayer for the day:  


Dear God,
We thank you for the amazing advances in technology
Thank you for the wonderful resource of the internet
We ask that you help us to use it wisely - to broaden our minds and not to harm others.
Amen

The Tibicena!

Ask us about the terrible 'Tibicena'! In English, we are currently working on a 'Beat the Monster' story. We have been using the Pie Corbett Storytelling strategies to learn the story, with actions and now we have begun to write our own sequel!

We are really enjoying using lots of descriptive language: relative clauses, adverbial phrases and even some passive voice! Oh how school has changed since I was a child!

In History, we have learnt about Stonehenge and had a debate about why we think it was built and what it was used for. We also had a go at building Stonehenge out of Playdoh! Now, we are learning all about Celtic Hill Forts, as we have moved from the Stone Age, through the Bronze Age and now into the Iron Age. We have been making mini pop-up information books and we also did some drama, to explain the different reasons why Hill Forts were important to the Celts.

In Maths, some of us have moved on to learning about Fractions this week, whilst others carried on tackling decimals. Year 4 have a short unit on Area.

Continuing on our RE quest, this week we learnt about some Scientists who are also Christians - this unit is really making us think!

Bags2Schools!

A massive thank you to all of our families and friends of Trenode for your amazing contributions to 'Bags2Schools' this week.

Once collected and weighed, we were delighted with the fantastic total raised - £124!!

A huge thank you also to our PTFA, for organising this super fund-raiser!

Ukuleles

We were very excited to welcome the ukuleles into school this week! Already, after only one lesson, we were able to put on a concert for KIlminorth, who were a fabulous audience!

This week, in English, we worked in small groups to write our own, innovated, 'Jabberwocky' poems, creating our own weird and wonderful monsters! We then performed these to each other, gave each other feedback and then worked hard to improve our performances. We even added in percussion instruments!

In Maths, most of us have been working on our multiplication and division skills. Year 5 particularly enjoyed using the 'Area model' for multiplication.

In RE, our question is, "Creation and Science: Conflicting or Complimentary?" There is some really big thinking going on and some fantastic questions being asked!

This week, in History, we have been learning about the end of the Stone Age and how and why this then became the Bronze Age. We learnt about the lost (and then found) Stone Age settlement of 'Skara Brae' and we worked in groups to create and record a TV report, explaining the discovery of this amazing historical find!

The Jabberwocky

Welcome back to school and a very Happy New Year! We hope that you had a restful break and enjoyed some much-welcomed family time - so nice to be able to be with our loved ones again! 

Our Big Question had us all giggling this week, as it is "Why don't we make cars out of jelly?" We have lots of questions about this and will be answering some of them through History (Stone Age to Iron Age), Science (Properties of Materials & States of matter) and DT (making a moving vehicle).

Mrs Butlin is joining us again this term, from the Cornwall Music service - we are very lucky to be accessing ukulele lessons!

In English, we began the term looking at the poem 'Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll. We have really enjoyed learning all the nonsense words and having a go at making our own 'portmanteau' words! (words made by combining two existing words together).

This week, we also finished and evaluated our 3-D classrooms - I am sure you will agree, they looked amazing!

We have made a really good start to the year so far. Firstly, our new Big Question is:
‘What is so special about the world around us?’.

We have begun to ask questions and can’t wait to find out lots of new things. If you have anything that we might be interested in, please do talk to your children. We are ALWAYS ready to learn something new and recognise that school is only one of the places where we can learn new things.

So far this term we have been busy!  On Tuesday 11^th January, we not only welcomed Miss Rowe, who will be with us until Easter, we had an exciting Wild Tribe Day at school. The photos for our blog this week show the children in their different groups. Group 1: Fire building skills and toasting giant marshmallows. Group 2: Den building skills and Group 3: Bug hotel building skills. As you can see from the children’s faces, this was a huge treat for us all. We enjoyed it so much that we are writing a recount in our English lessons to tell Key Stage Two children all about what we did.

Along with the exciting story breakfast (see previous blog) and welcoming in parents to their first Collective Worship since the start of Covid, we can safely say that 2022 is looking like a fantastic year for all of our Trenode family so far.  Keep an eye out for our blogs to keep up to date with some of the many things we will get up to.

Miss Pittas