Hardrock Cornish Miners

Today 3/4B had a workshop with the Kernow King and all of Key Stage 2 enjoyed the Cornish Caretakers assembly all about historic influential figures in Cornish mining. This included Richard Trevithick's Puffing Devil; Humphry Davy's mining lamp; a female mine captain in Helston called Lydia, whose mine was named after her as ‘Wheal Lydia’. As well as being thoroughly entertained we took a step through time to remember and cherish the rich Corning Ming Heritage that still marks our landscape and continues to provide infrastructure and employment. 

Books and potatoes 

This year we celebrated World Book Day in style.  The children really got into the spirit of the day and dressed up in some wonderful character outfits.

The day started with an MC Grammar rap about World Book Day, and then we had a class quiz to test our knowledge about children's books and their characters.

Once we had completed the quiz, our challenge was to decorate a potato into a book character.  We had lots of fun designing our potato characters - everything from Mr Men to ladybirds to Chinese gangsters!  Take a look at some of our photos.

In the afternoon, we had to figure out the 'Masked teachers' who all read a favourite children's story but had their voice masked by technology.  Then we were able to share our love of reading with our parents before we went home.  What a great day - and a bit thanks to Miss Kite for organising it all!

Multiplication murder mystery

This week, there was a terrible crime committed in 5H - and we were determined to get to the bottom of what had happened.  To round off our maths unit looking at multiplication and division, we took part in a murder mystery challenge.

The children were given a clue sheet - and list of possible victims, suspects, motives, locations, weapons etc.  To solve each element of the crime, the children had to work together to solve the multiplication problems.  The answers gave them one part of the key needed to 'unlock' that clue.  The only problem was that as the children progressed through the mystery - the multiplication problems became more tricky!

We loved solving the crime and used a lot of our school values (creativity, determination, excellence, kindness) to help us.  In the end we apprehended the killer and we are confident that there is no further risk to our school community!

What an exciting week. 

We have had a very busy week here in Pre School

From Kixx on Monday to WBD on Thursday and then today making Pasties. 

We learnt about St Piran's day on Tuesday and today we were lucky enough to have Will from Ginsters come in and show us how to make a pasty. The children really enjoyed this. We learnt what ingredients are needed to make a pasty and how to crimp!  

Our sound of the week is 's' the children are really enjoying learning their sounds. We have learnt  m , a and s.

In maths we are continuing to count objects from 1-10, by using touch counting. The children then need to find the correct number for example they counted 7 sports they then need to find the number 7 card. 

Next week we have lots of exciting things planned for St Patricks day!

Have a lovely safe weekend and we will see you next week :) 

World Book Day 

We have had a great time celebrating World Book Day in Year 6. Well done for all the excellent, creative costumes! We also had some fabulous potato book characters; guessed the teachers in The Masked Raeder; tested our book knowledge with a book cover quiz and created some story boards using our potato characters. I am looking forward to seeing the final animations!

Many thanks to the adults who were able to join us and support with our explosion books. I was very impressed with the children's folding skills and perseverance!

Please see the photos below.

Learning Cornish 

The Cornish Language is something that we celebrate in Reception class, we share the tales from Porth often in the classroom.

We were lucky enough to be visited by a very knowledgeable lady named Maureen Pierce. She can fluently speak the Cornish language and is very passionate about doing so. She taught all sorts of different words in Cornish and made sure we had the correct pronunciation. We learnt colours, emotions, names of toys and our numbers to five. The children loved learning the Cornish words. Celebrating and learning about this language is very important the opportunity we were provided this day was huge! We often still hear the children saying some of the Cornish words in their everyday provision and learning! It makes Miss Rowe feel Splann! (happy) If you would like to share some of the Tales from Porth click the link attached: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH3BwItdiB8

Diabetes UK Visit:

We had a visit from a lovely lady named Jane Gilbert from Diabetes UK, she came in to share her experience of having type 1 diabetes and explained how it works. She showed the children some educational stuffed toys of a red blood cell, pancreas and a bear, called Ralph, that showed where the injection areas are on the body. The children asked lots of great questions and understood really well! Our children in reception are very understanding of people with diabetes due to their knowledge of a child in our classroom with it, they are always so kind and curious. Having this experience was so beneficial for the children as it made them aware of just how important it is to look after our peers.

Care Home Project:

In support of Anti-Bullying week, that was a couple of weeks ago the Receptions set about to start their kindness project. Today the receptions were visited by Jonathan Steed to talk about his role as a Clinical Director for At The Park and about the residents that live there. He spoke about how his residents may walk, talk, see, hear, speak and look different to us but we are all still humans who are filled with love, care and kindness and love doing the same things such as swimming, playing in playgrounds, art and more.

It was lovely to see the children's curious and kind response to what Jonathan was sharing and how insightful they all were when answering questions. At one point an apple was passed around for the children to say something kind to ''you are beautiful'', ''you are kind'' were some of my favourites. We also learnt some sign language that we included in our animal song in our nativity.

Encouraging the children to see and understand difference but to also celebrate it, is such as important thing and something we foster in our school and classroom. Thank you so much to Jonathon for joining us this afternoon and making it so enjoyable! As our project the reception children made each resident a stain glass window decoration to help with the sensory needs of the residents. Reception also wrote notes to each resident to add an extra kind touch. Well done reception we are proud of your love and respect of all people.

Thank you for joining us for a St Piran's Day sing this morning in the sunshine! Some of the things we love about Cornwall are the pasties, the clotted cream, the beaches! We also mentioned our sense of community and being together. We also have a newly crowned indoor world champion pole vaulter - well done to Molly!
There is much to be proud of.
It was not cream teas and pasties, but metallic ore that made Cornwall one of the most mineral rich areas of the world.
“Hard rock breeds hard men / Who slip between earth’s cracks for a living….” The words of West Country poet James Crowden (“The Wheal of Hope”). 
Whatever you love about the county we live and work in I hope you enjoy a little of its sunshine today.

Well done to all of our Cross Country runners who have taken part in any of the Primary Schools Cross Country League races this season. It really is a fantastic achievement - whether it has been 1 race or all 5 of the series well done!

Particularly well done to one of our Year 5 girls who has qualified for the Newquay Team Cross Country Finals on the 25th March.

There will be a presentation evening in Liskeard Public Hall at 7pm on the 27th March to congratulate all runners who took part. 

Our artwork has been inspired by American artist Andrea D'Aquino who creates her work using a mixture of collage and printing.

Year 3/4 A have designed their own prints for collaging and then used a digital image of themselves next to the infamous lamppost in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (our English topic) to create their finished pieces. Well done!

We have also been enjoying our music lessons with Mr Warwick and the glockenspiels. 

Well, the first week of Spring 2 saw lots of rain and even some rainbows. I am reminded of the wonderful rendition of “true colours” performed by 3/4B in our assembly. Here is a clip from one of our rehearsals – what lovely singing voices!

This term we are developing our descriptive writing in English and basing our stories on “Imaginary Worlds”. We will then complete a unit on poetry, exploring Limericks.

In Maths we have moved from lots of work on number to learning about Length and Perimeter. The children are enjoying measuring items around the classroom and have really impressed me this week with their independence in their problem solving!

Our new Learning Adventure topic is Italy. We will be focusing first on understanding the physical geography of Italy & where it is in the world before talking about Italian culture and the destruction of Pompeii.

Please see the attached mind map for more information about what we are learning this term. As ever, please let one of us know if have any questions. Thanks for all of the  reading and KIRF practice you are doing at home.

YEAR 3 KIRFS: 8x table (multiplication and division facts) YEAR 4 KIRFS: 7x and 12x tables (multiplication and division facts)

Miss Boney 

I would walk 500 miles (or steps)

LIt has been an excellent start back to the new half term.  We're well under way with our new Learning adventure looking at the importance of water on Earth, have started learning about the important grammatical features in instruction texts and have mastered long multiplication in maths.  However, the highlight of the week so far has been creating step counters using the Micro:bits.

We learned that the Micro:bits have something called an 'accelerometer' in them which senses when the Micro:bit is moving.  We were challenged to write an algorithm which would allow us to use the Micro:bits as step counters.  At first we were a bit daunted by the scale of the challenge but with a little bit of determination we were able to create effective step-counters.

We are looking forward to seeing what else we can program the Micro:bits to do!

A Spring or two in our step

Year 3/4A have had a great start to Spring Term 2.

English
Imaginary worlds is our theme and we're venturing into the magical land of Narnia to inspire our independent writing. Year 3/4A have been thinking how to create imagery with their description and hook the reader with their  use of adjectives and senses to describe a setting.



Math
I've attached the KIRFS for this Half Term.

Reading Challenge -

Congratulations to all that took part in the Half Term Reading Challenge. You merged into book covers - Fantastic!
Please remember to bring your Reading Journals in each day, recording any home reading. We will still be visiting the library each Friday afternoon and I wonder who can read at least 5 'recommended reads' from our class reading corner?


Science-  Let there be light!