What a busy week we've had in Chaipel Class! The week got off to a flying start with an assembly about our Bridge School value (being Excellent). During this assembly, we branched off into our House Teams and discussed what being excellent looks like at Polperro School. We then came back together as a school and shared some of our ideas with each other. Three of our Y6 pupils (Lily, Bayley and Wyatt) demonstrated 'being excellent' by recieving certificates from the Fowey Young Writers Competition. Bayley was Highly Commended and both Lily and Wyatt were Commended for their tremendous efforts on their poems about the D-Day landings.

In English, we have begun to write our explanation text on the seven life processes (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition).  In PE, we have started to learn what it takes to be an expert at badminton and amazing at orienteering. - ROSIE GRACE

Also this week, our class have picked out our new reading books. They are a range of very interesting texts which we can all enjoy as they are organised so that we can read and comprehend them independently. After we have finished our books, each pupil in Chaipel will do a book review and a persuasive leaflet, explaining why reading for 5 minutes a day is good for our wellbeing! In Computing, we are learning all about algorithms and for Art we have been looking at colour schemes for our tie-dye project! - DAISY R

Our new enquiry has got off to a great start and this week, we have learnt about the reproduction process in a range of living things, moving onto comparing the life cycles of certain animals.

In our Celebration assembly, Jack C got person of the week for being an excellent learning partner to his freinds. In 99 Club we have a big 'well done' for Lily R for achieving her Bronze club (100 arithmetic questions in 4 mins). 

PARENTS!
Your child has come home today with a letter about Chaipel's    tie-dying art project. If you could let Miss Randle know whether you are providing a white T-shirt or would like the school to purchase one no later than next week so that we can get the materials we need to make a start!  - JACK

Attached below, is the KIRFs, homework grid and Knowledge Web for this half term.

Have a lovely weekend,

JACK, ROSIE AND DAISY

It's been a very busy week here at WPA. Here are some of the highlights.

Eco Council

Our fantastic Eco Council led Monday's assembly marking Earth Day. They challenged everyone to play their part in making the school and Wadebridge litter free.

Fowey Festival

Congratulations to all children who entered the Fowey Festival competition recently. In our assembly we proudly presented certificates to children who were recognised by the judges.

FOWPA (Friends of Wadebridge Primary Academy)

I really enjoyed meeting with some of the committee members and hear about the fundraising and social events planned for the rest of the year. We’re really lucky to have such a dedicated team supporting our school community, whether through organising events or obtaining grants to help all our children at school.

Upcoming events:

Thursday 16th and Friday 17th May (after school) - Uniform Sale

Wednesday 22nd May - School Disco

14:15-15:00 Reception - Year 3
15:15-16:00 Year 4 - Year 6

Friday 28th June - Quiz Night at Wadebridge Town Hall (TBC)

Further details about these events will be sent out shortly.

RNLI

We were really grateful to the RNLI for their visit to speak with KS2 on Wednesday. The children were given a detailed explanation of the different flags they will come across at the beach. It was wonderful to see how well-informed they already were, but a little reminder never hurts. Two eager volunteers were selected to dress up as lifeguards; they really looked the part. Everyone was really attentive and showed great respect for the important messages shared.

Football Success

We are so proud of our Year 5 and 6 football team who competed on Tuesday. Despite not playing that many matches as a team, they showed great teamwork throughout the five rounds, winning the first four games without conceding a goal. What a fantastic achievement! Although we came runners up in the end, every player gave their all on the field. Thank you to the team for representing our school with such dedication and upholding our values.

Welcome Coffee Morning/Afternoon

You are warmly invited to come along to one of my welcome coffee mornings/afternoons in the school hall. I’ll share a bit about myself and the focus for the term. If you’re not able to come, I'm often around on the gate in the mornings should you want a chat. I will also be sharing the slides by email following the sessions.

There's no need to sign up, but if you can possibly attend the session according to your child's year group, that would help with numbers. If that isn't possible, please do still come along. If you have children across the school, you only need to come along once as the content will be the same in each session.

EYFS & KS1

Thursday 9th May 08:45-09:30 
Thursday 9th May 14:15-15:00

KS2

Tuesday 7th May 14:30-15:15
Friday 10th May 08:45-09:30

I’m hoping we can run regular coffee mornings throughout the school year. Not only might these be an opportunity to meet up with other parents and members of staff, we could also offer various workshops based on your feedback.

Dates

Please look out for the email today with dates for the rest of the term. If there are any updates, we will let you know as soon as possible. Key dates can also be found on our website under ‘Events Diary’.

Have a great weekend.

Chris Wathern

Three new Cafes for Brunel families

The KIRFs Cafe will be held at the start of each new half term. Thank you to those parents and children who have come along so far, we hope you found it useful.
What are KIRFs?
KIRFs (Key Instant Recall Facts) are pieces of mathematical knowledge that we want the children to learn off-by-heart or be able to work out very quickly (within 3 seconds).
They are designed to support the development of the mental skills that underpin mathematics.
They are particularly useful when calculating, be it adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing and include facts such as number bonds, counting on, back, times tables, equivalence of units of measure, and square numbers.
Each year group is allocated key facts to focus on throughout the year, in line with age related expectations. These should be practised for rapid recall.Check out the website and class blogs for the newest KIRFs each half term.
Reading Cafe (monthly) Parents, children and siblings are invited in on the following dates to share stories, recommendations and chat about books along with Miss Pentreath and our Reading Pioneers. Tuesday 23^rd April- Year R, 1 and 2 Tuesday 14^th May-Year 3 and 4.Tuesday 18^th June-Year 5 and 6.
At the first of the Parents Cafes, held last week, we welcomed Matt Wilmott, Autism Advisor from the Cornwall Autism Team, to talk about Autism and effective adaptations which can be made both within school and at home. Parents and Carers had the chance to network with other parents, ask questions and look at some of the resources we use to support neurodivergent children

We look forward to welcoming you at cafe events in the future and welcome suggestions for topics.

This week at nursery we have been continuing to look at planting and growing. The children have been planting beans in the hope that they can grow a beanstalk like in the story and coloured a giant's castle to go in the pot with it.
They have all been busy with arts and craft and have been creating handprint flowers and carrots in the paint.
The children have practiced writing their names in order to create a name flower.
We have enjoyed some nice weather this week and have spent lots of time outside, especially in the sand and water trays.

At story time, we have been reading the story of "The runaway pea". The children have also planted their own peas and we will watch as they grow here in nursery beofre they take them home.

In maths this week, we have been naming and ordering numbers. The children have been identifying smaller numbers up to 5 and bigger numbers up to 10 and beyond for some.

In phonics this week, we have looked at "shopping" and the children have enjoyed playing games such as Robot Rick's shopping trip where they had to blend sounds into short words. We have talked about and identified sounds in our nursery environment both indoors and out and have been identifying inital sounds in words.

Have a lovely weekend

Julie and Sarah

Wonderful Tregantle

What a hard-working week we’ve had! Our Year 1 children have been writing the class version of the story Christopher Nibble. We have changed the character to Fluffy Nibble and the place to ‘Carrotville!’ They have worked so hard to increase their stamina for writing. In maths the children have a new tuft tray with a weekly maths challenge. This week they have been showing their knowledge of doubling and halving. The EYFS children have been exploring in the garden this week. The BFA have kindly bought us some new resources for our mud kitchen which we have enjoyed using. We have seen some wonderful writing this week; all of the hard work in phonics is paying off as we can see from the wonderful ‘have a go’ writing! We all enjoyed another music lesson from the specialist music teacher Mrs Butlin this week. We worked on creating rhythms and identifying loud and soft, fast and slow music.

Week 2 

Year 1 have been very busy in the last couple of weeks! Last Friday we had an alternative sports day at school. We took part in activities such as Segway, athletics, fencing, archery, football and more! The children absolutely loved it and it was brilliant to see them trying new things and giving it their all.

We have been designing our rockets in computing ready for when we make our own. We have been using sketchpad to do this and we have talked about the importance of saving our work. We also talked about why it is really important to save our work in the right place so that we can find it again. We are really looking forward to our designs coming to life in a few weeks time!
In English, we have started our new learning journey based around the book ‘Mr Gumpy’s Outing.’ To launch our English learning journey we went on our own outing around the school to see what we might find.
In maths, our unit is all about length and height. We investigated the question ' do taller people have bigger feet?' We really enjoyed measuring our feet and sharing our findings.

It has been a great week here in Year 1.

As always any questions do not hesitate to contact. 

Miss Bolger 

Music to our ears...

This week in music, Mrs Butlin taught the class how to write musical notes - Quavers and Crotchets (quick and slow notes).

Summer 1 - Week 2 - Algebra, check!

Congratulations to Finlay for coming 1st place in Fowey Festival's KS2 Poetry writing competition! Another well done to the Year 6 boys that represented Wadebridge Primary this week in a football tournament; taking home the 2nd place medal. We were visited by the RNLI on Wednesday. They reminded us of the importance of staying safe at the beach and what to do if we got into trouble in the water. 

English
Over the past couple of weeks, the children have been learning how to incorporate a variety of writing skills into their writing. Some of these skills include descriptive writing, imagery, figurative language, building tension, creating atmosphere and micro-expressions. We have been using the animated video Alma as a stimulus for writing and the children have seemed to really enjoy the genre of this story. We have been very impressed with their writing so far. Next week, they’re putting all the skills together to independently write a narrative.

Maths
We’ve been tackling algebra this week and, although many of us felt unsure at the start of the week, the children have grown in confidence. They have demonstrated that they can form algebraic expressions and equations and have solved both 1 and 2-step equations!

Art
We have continued with our Greek Gods and Goddesses collages and the children are producing some colourful, creative pieces of work.

DT
We have started cutting and constructing the frames for our automata toys. The children have also worked in pairs to come up with a design.

Reminders
Please keep encouraging your children to work through the CGP books which were sent home before Easter. If you haven’t already, please ensure your children’s form for the residential trip is handed back into school next week.

Enjoy you weekend.

Best wishes,
The Year 6 Team

Summer Term 1 - Week 2 - Life is a cycle of ends and starts!

English

At the start of the week, the children learnt about ‘Triggers’ for flash backs. Using the video as a stimulus, they created a transition that would lead them into a flash back about the old man’s time at war. Within the trigger, the children were encouraged to use a range of descriptive language devices in order to expand their sentences. Emphasis was placed on their final sentence which would set them up for writing their flash back on Tuesday.

Next, the children wrote a detailed flash back, recalling the time where the man had lost his friend in battle. We focused on emotive writing, detailing how the old man would have felt and what he would’ve been thinking at the time.

On Wednesday, the children then looked at a different part of the video; honing in on his wife. They used similes and metaphors to describe her…

“His wife was the two pillars that held him up in his time of need” – Seb

Finally, on Thursday, the children then wrote a recount of the day the old man met his wife. The romance that poured out in their writing made us well up, they were truly beautiful across the whole cohort. The level of sophistication in their vocabulary choices were outstanding!

Maths

On Monday, we looked at a Year 6 arithmetic paper – The children had the opportunity to have a go at the different questions that could arise and made links to our pre-teaches in morning work. We marked them as a whole class and discussed misconceptions or specific questions they found tricky.

For the rest of the week, we continued our angles and shape learning journey. The children looked at classifying angles, measuring angles, angles around a point and angles on a straight line. The children will then have the opportunity on Monday to draw angles, where we will tape the tables and the children can really immerse themselves in the process.

In morning work, we have continued to go over our level 1, 2 & 3 fractions. Please do ask your children about these and continue to develop skills and knowledge at home!

Wider Curriculum

In Wider Curriculum, it was all about Science!

On Monday, the children investigated different species and their life cycles. The children were broken down into four different groups: Amphibians, Reptiles, Insects, Birds. Each group then created an information leaflet about their species. They worked together to collate facts, diagrams, stages of life cycle, titles etc. Once their booklet was complete, we shared information and findings. From here, the children then wrote about the similarities and differences between the different life cycles.  

On Wednesday, the children explored the work of well-known naturalists and animal behaviourists; David Attenborough and Jane Goodall. They completed a double page spread, researching about their work, it’s impact, why it was so important and found about their main achievements.

Finally, on Thursday, the children looked at the stages from Adult to Old age. The children completed a spider diagram about the key changes and wrote some ‘Top Tips’ from staying healthy as you grow older.  

Important Information:

·      On Friday 3^rd May 2024 – The children have an Arena Health and Well-being Day where they will be completing a variety of activities such as; Healthy eating orienteering, ultimate frisbee, dodgeball, capture the flag and Zumba! *Children to come into school in PE kits as usual*

Have a wonderful weekend,

Best Wishes,

Year 3/4a have been busy with their learning over the last two weeks; starting their new Learning Adventure on Henry VIII in History, exploring and investigating forces in Science and braving fierce dragons and sinister characters, such as Morgan Le Fay, in their writing on 'Myths and Legends' and 'King Arthur'. We enjoyed 'Hot-Seating' key characters.

Our term's Value of 'DETERMINATION' has turned our focus to presentation and handwriting where we've been thinking carefully about cursive joins and the consistent size of our letters within independent writing. Well done to all those who have been practising at home - SUPERSTARS!

Within Math, Year 3 have started their new topic on 'Mass and Capacity' and have worked hard at learning their KIRFS too as these have helped us with certain scales.
Year 4 are consolidating their understanding on fractions and are working hard at applying their knowledge of multiplication and division to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers. With the Multiplication Check nearly upon us, we're also working hard to have a quicker recall of our tables, improving our scores each day - Well Done!

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. 

Summer 1, Weeks 1 and 2 - Busy Beebots!

What a start to the summer we've had - and with the weather we've had this week, it's actually feeling like summer term! 

We've had a really busy start to the term and here are some of the highlights:

English

Our class book is The Singing Mermaid by Julia Donaldson and the children are loving it just as much as we are! We have used the book to explore using question marks by thinking of questions to ask the Singing Mermaid and to explore exclamation marks in our writing by exclaiming over how mean Sam Sly was! We discussed emotions by focusing on how the Singing Mermaid felt when she was trapped in the fish tank and used these adjectives and ideas when writing a letter as the Singing Mermaid to our friends at Silver Sands letting them know what had happened and how we felt about it. The children have really embraced the story and we are seeing some great ideas and vocabulary in their writing. 

Maths

We have had a really busy 2 weeks in Maths - starting with counting in 2s, then in 10s and then in 5s. We then moved onto recognising equal groups, which included problem solving when the groups were not equal. We moved onto adding equal groups, using our skills of counting in 2s, 10s and 5s and the children are becoming more fluent in these. Why not play some games to use these skills as you're out and about over the weekend? Try counting pairs of socks or grouping their toys and seeing if they can show off their counting skills! 

Art

Last week, we used the primary colours to explore making secondary colours and used our sketchbooks to make a note of our work. We then made a printing stamp using different shapes of thin polystyrene, which we glued onto cardboard. The following day, we used our stamps with printing inks and rollers and made pictures in the style of Andy Warhol. We really enjoyed our arty week! 

Geography

This week, we returned to our learning of human and physical geographical features and looked at these in relation to the beach and seaside, identifying different features we can see on the coast. The children were very enthusiastic about these and shared their ideas as a class. We identified features such as, cliffs, hills, harbour, pier, lighthouse, ocean, beach, rocks, beach huts, shops and boats. We then used a picture of a local beach to describe what we could see, for example, there is a lighthouse on the pier or I can see cliffs above the ocean. Wow! Some great learning!

Computing

We had great fun in our computing sessions when learning about algorithms as we were able to get the Beebots out! We started by "programming" our Teachers to move around the classroom and then programming our friend to do the same. Then we learnt how to operate the Beebot (making sure we clear the instructions every time became very important!) and we programmed the Beebots to move to different places. We set a finish point for them and tried to instruct them to land on a spot. It was a good lesson in giving very clear instructions! The children soon learned what to do and have been able to write a short series of instructions for the Beebots this week. Amazing! 


PE

We are very lucky this term to have Pro20 delivering PE sessions and we have had 2 weeks of football - there are some awesome skills on show! We have played different games involving finding space and evading other children, which we have then put to good use when playing with a ball and children are now learning to evade other people whilst dribbling with the ball. We have had some mini games of football at the end of sessions, which have been great to see the children putting their new found skills into action - and some great sportsmanship on display too! 

Reminders

We have sent letters out re out trip to the Aquarium - thank you to those who have sent them back in. Please continue to send them in next week with your child.

Mondays are PE days so full PE kit please. 

Thursdays are library days so please send your child in with their library book ready to change. 


Have a lovely weekend and we look forward to seeing you again on Monday! 

The Year One Team

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