Week ending 3rd October 2025

Year 3 Half Marathon

The weeks continue to fly by. This week the Year 3 children have been running laps of the field during their break and lunchtimes. They ran enough lengths to complete a half marathon. Thank you to those of you who sponsored them in this endeavour. All sponsorship raised has raised money to pay for their upcoming trip to Wildwood. 

Bag 2 School

In the next week or so we will be sending home some Bag 2 School bags for you to fill with your unwanted items of clothing, shoes, towels, handbags etc. These bags need to be returned to school by first thing on 6th November. Thank you, in advance , for your support with this.

Honey Fair

Sadly, the choir's scheduled performance at Honey Fair on Saturday was cancelled, due to the weather conditions. Thank you to Miss Owen for preparing them - what a shame they were not able to perform.

Individual Photographs

The school photographer will be visiting the Infant and Nursery School on 16th October  to take individual and sibling photographs. If you would like younger siblings included in these photographs then you can bring them into school from 8.15am. These photographs will then be returned in time for Christmas as they make excellent presents!

Mufti

This Friday (10th October) is a Mufti day. Children can come to school in non-school uniform. We ask for a donation of a prize for either an adult or a children's tombola. Thank you.

September 2025

Year 5 have made a fantastic start to the year! We have built on our Maths learning about place value; using and applying what we have learnt in previous years to larger numbers - up to 6 digits. Rounding has proven a bit challenging, but we have persevered and definitely got better at it. In English, we began the year revising the eight main word classes and how three of them can be used to create noun phrases and expanded noun phrases. We have also been reminded how to accurately punctuate direct speech and have been using this in our narrative writing.

Art has been a big focus for the first couple weeks of term as we have been preparing our pieces for the Honey Fair art competition. The theme for Year 5 and 6 this year is Big Cats so we have been experimenting with different materials to create big cat fur patterns. Alongside art, we have been learning about how to use search engines and how to identify reliable sources of information on the internet. And in French, we have been learning how to introduce ourselves, ask and explain how we are feeling and what our name is.

Week ending 12th September 2025

We have made it through the first full week back at school.
It has been so lovely to see all of your lovely children again- haven't lots of them shot up during the summer!
They have all settled very well into their new classes and are getting to know the routines of the classrooms and their new teachers and teaching assistants.

Meet the teacher
Thank you to those of you who were able to visit your child's class on Wednesday. The beginning of the school year is always a great opportunity to find out what the children will be learning and to visit their classrooms. I hope that those who came found it useful.

Y3 Bake Sale
Year 3 raised over £120 in the bake sale on Friday to help to lower the cost of their upcoming trip. The children had great fun with Mrs Speare and Mrs Birkenshaw baking a whole range of delicious delights- they even made an apple cake with apples picked from the Reception class garden. Thank you to all parents who also donated cakes and supported the event.

Newsletter
You should have all received a copy of the latest school newsletter, via email last week. This gives you important dates coming up at school, including all term times and INSET days. There are paper copies available in the foyer of the school.

Holiday Requests/Absence
A reminder that you need to complete a holiday request form if you wish to take your child out of school during term time. Time off during term time is only authorised for exceptional circumstances and if you do take your child out of school this will be an unauthorised absence, If your child is absent for a period of 10 or more sessions/5 days within any rolling 10 school week period then a penalty notice can be issued. Unauthorised absences are also recorded for a child when a parent does not provide the school with a reason as to why the child is absent. There are leaflets in the school foyer with more details about penalty notices.

Mufti
The next mufti day is on Friday 10th October. Pupils do not need to wear school uniform on this day. We ask, in return, that they bring a tombola prize which would be suitable for either an adult or a child.

Welcome to Year 5!

We've had a fantastic first week back and have settled in to learning again after the summer break. 
Please see below for more information about what the future holds for Year 5.

Welcome to Year 4!

Please find below a copy of our class newsletter. 

Every month we will be posting what we have been learning in Year 4 on our class blog.

June 2025

This month we completed our Geography topic on Cornwall before starting our History topic on World War One. The children began looking into to the question 'Was Britain Ready for World War One?' The children started this unit by investigating when and why World War One started as well as exploring some of the main events during this war. The children also investigated which countries were involved in World War One and how. The children are currently learning about other aspects of WW1 such as soldiers, trench life, children, women and how technology evolved during this time all to help them answer our topic question.

In Literacy, we studied two books linked to WW1. We read and studied 'The Little Hen and the Great War' along with the story of 'Sergeant Stubby'. The children completed lots of work on both stories and then planned, wrote and edited their own short story which involved both the main characters of the above books meeting each other during the war.

In Maths, the children continued to work hard on their times tables before completing the MTC test. They also completed the White Rose statistics unit before carrying out some of their own class surveys and creating their own bar charts to present their findings.

This month we were lucky enough to take part in sports week which involved the children completing lots of exciting sporting events in order to help earn house points for their teams. The week ended with our traditional sports day.

Latest Head's Blog

We are now truly fully immersed into the second half of the summer tern. The Year 1 children have been assessed on their knowledge of phonics and the Year 4 on their knowledge of multiplication tables. If you are a parent of a child in these classes you will be told how they got on in the very near future.
On Thursday night we held our annual art exhibition in the hall in the Infant and Nursery school. It was really well attended and we had some lovely comments from families about the quality of the art work. Well done to all of the pupils and thank you to the staff for helping them to achieve such high-quality results. Thank you to Mr Day who played his keyboard some brilliantly at the event and to Mrs Hannaford who ran the craft table on the night. Last, but not least, a huge thank you to Mrs Wright, who organised the event  and displayed all of the art work and to Mr Wright who ran the bar and helped to put up the display boards. We made just over £200, which will be used to buy materials for both schools to support the development of the art curriculum. 
A reminder that next week is sport's week. You will have received a letter from Mrs Hannaford detailing what is happening each day. The main event is the traditional sport's day next Friday (20th June) Parents are invited top come to watch and support their children , joining us for a family picnic lunch. Year 6 will be running games and selling various items in order to raise funds for their end of term treats so please bring some extra pennies or even pounds to support them!
The school choir will be opening the St. Ann's Chapel fete tomorrow (14th June ) at 12.00 noon. It would be lovely to see as many of you as possible there. We also have an awesome adult and child's tombola thanks to your generosity on the mufti day last week- thank you. We will also be selling toys and books. I hope to see you there! Have a great weekend.

May 2025

On the 8th May, for the 80th anniversary of VE Day, we dressed in red, white and blue and headed onto the field at lunchtime. We decorated with bunting and shared a picnic together to celebrate the end of World War II in Europe and remember all those who didn't get to see the end of the war.

This month, Year 5 have also been enjoying developing their striking and fielding skills in PE. Towards the end of the month, we have started learning about the continents: North and South America, mainly labelling their countries and key cities so far. But, we have also started looking at a Brazilian artist called Tarsila do Amaral and started to experiment with working in her style by mixing tints and shades, understanding and trying to draw objects in a surrealist way and composing Cornish-inspired landscapes in her style. These are in preparation for our Art exhibition next month!

May 2025

This month we begun studying Cornwall. Our geography question being; ‘Where in the world do we live and how could we improve our local area?’ The children used maps and atlases to firstly look at the seven continents and after recapping that we lived in Europe the children began investigating exactly where Cornwall was located. They were able to tell me, using maps and atlases that Cornwall is in the South West of England which was part of the United Kingdom which is in Europe. They also used a local OS map to locate exactly where our local area of Gunnislake/St Ann’s Chapel is. During our next lesson the children spent time creating their own sketch map of Cornwall from a high view point. This required them to use observational skills to recreate the shapes of the coastlines. Next, the children compared local maps from the 1950’s to the present day to identify similarities and differences between them. This encouraged them to ask and answer questions about place, positions, patterns and processes whilst investigating the maps.

In literacy this month we began to read and study ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes. We completed lots of VIPER activities to help us learn more about what we were reading and the children spent time writing character and setting descriptions. They completed hot seating activities to help them think about the questions they may ask certain characters as well as how those characters may answer the questions. We completed work on fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases and apostrophes to help us prepare for or final write. The children used a story plan to plan out the story of the Iron Man from his point of view. They used writing toolkits to make sure they were including all of the necessary features.

In Maths we finished our decimal unit whilst continuing to practice our times tables.

In Science the children have been learning about ‘Changing States’. They identified the three different states and learnt about their particle arrangements and properties. They looked at reversible and irreversible changes and melting and boiling points of different materials. They then planned out an experiment investigating the melting points of different foods.

Spring is here!

A Busy and Brilliant Term in Our Classroom!

What a fantastic term it’s been in our class! We’ve been diving into a wide range of exciting topics across all areas of learning.

In science, we’ve been learning all about how to stay healthy. We explored the different food groups and talked about the importance of a balanced diet. We also learned about the importance of sun safety—especially as summer approaches—and discovered what UV light is and how it can affect our skin. We even investigated how shadows are formed, bringing some real curiosity and creativity to our science lessons.

In art, we were inspired by the work of Paul Klee. We looked at how he used colour, shape, and line to create his unique style, and had a go at creating some wonderful Klee-inspired masterpieces of our own!

In French, we’ve been growing our vocabulary by naming shapes. C’est fantastique! The children have enjoyed linking their language learning with their work in maths and art.

It’s been a term full of learning, creativity, and discovery. Well done to everyone for their enthusiasm and hard work!

April 2025

Much of April was spent hunting for Easter eggs and eating chocolate in the Easter break. However, on the first Monday back after Easter, Year 5 went on an exciting trip to Cotehele house. They worked alongside an ecology lecturer from the University of Plymouth to collect species and help monitor the biodiversity in their orchard. In the afternoon, the lecturer, James, suggested having a 'quick' look at the biodiversity around the pond area. Well, an hour later, we had to drag Year 5 away from the pond because it was time to catch the coach back to school!
A huge thank you to the University of Plymouth and Cotehele for this amazing, immersive day of Science!