TALLAND'S BLOG 10.1.25

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you had the most magical time during the Christmas holidays.

It's been a great start to 2025 and the children of Talland have brought with it their fabulous energy and creativity! Creativity is the value Polperro will be focusing on this term. Therefore, I can't wait to see the spectacular things the children come up with! The homework grid will be coming out on next weeks blog - I will try my best to think of some fun and creative ideas for you and your child to get your teeth stuck into!

Maths:
Year 4 have been continuing to multiply and divide. Mostly focusing on division skills. They will be completing this unit next week.
Year 5 have also been focusing on division problems, including using remainders. We've found the bus stop method to be helpful when solving these problems.
It would be fantastic to have a try of some division questions with your children to continue to build their confidence. Why not try out these and similar questions:
488 divided by 4 =
629 divided by 4 =  

English:
We have planned our persuasive letter and are ready to independently write our letter next week. Can they convince a Greek citizen to fight for either the Spartans or the Athenians?

Science:
We've experimented with sound this week and helped Justin Bieber out with a tweet he made. He thinks that having a larger pinnae (ear) will mean that you can hear more clearly. We put this to the test. Why not ask your child about the results...

PE:
This term, Talland will be performing dance and playing tennis (perhaps not the Wimbledon weather you would hope for but good fun all the same). 

That's all from Talland this week. We hope you have a brilliant weekend and can't wait to see you all on Monday.

Signing off from Mr. Langley, Mr. Bishop and Miss. Colton. 

Happy New Year!

This week, we welcome Mrs Lister to Penhallow class. She will be working with us every Friday. She also teaches at Trenode school and has experience at teaching all Primary age groups, and brings with her lots of experience and enthusiasm. Please feel free to come in and meet her, or to ask any questions that you might have. 

This week, we have launched our new enquiry question: ‘Why aren’t space ship’s made of jelly?’ The focus of the topic, is based around different materials and their properties. 

This week, we explored the story of The Three Little Pigs during our English lessons. We learnt the story and practiced reciting our own version of the story with actions. We also sequenced the story with pictures, and built models of the pig’s houses in our construction area. We practiced our phonics writing skills by drawing plans, writing lists and labelling our models. 

In art, Year 1 began to learn about the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. We watched videos about how he creates his work, and found out about the natural materials and techniques that he uses. We sketched the shapes that his sculptures make, so that next week, we can create our own designs and sculptures outside, using natural materials. Reception enjoyed making collages of the three pig’s houses, mixing colours to paint pig masks, and using junk modelling to build models of the houses. 

Have a lovely weekend!

From the Penhallow team

This week the children were introduced to a new story in English - Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs.  I thought a cleaner had left a bag of rubbish in the class but it was clues to the story...

In Science, the class sorted living, dead and never alive objects - this led to lots of interesting discussion about how 'never alive' some items were.  We are trying to improve out oracy skills as a school so this was a great chance to use some sentence stems to support our discussions.

This has been a fantastic week in Seaton for oracy. We started off by using our story maps of Hansel and Gretel to practise retelling the story. We used sentence stems to help structure our sentences. Please ask your child to retell the story at home.

Following this, we worked in groups to practise asking and answering questions from other students based on the characters from the story. This helped us when we were put into the hotseat and pretended to be the actual characters. The masks helped us get into character and we found the lesson a lot of fun. 

Next week we will be starting to write our own versions of the story but with a twist...it will be set in the alps with a house made of cheese and a yeti instead of a witch. 

In maths, we have been learning about percentages and how they link to decimals and fractions. 

In DT, we have started to design stuffed toys based on animals that can be found in the Alps.I was impressed with the sketches and templates I have seen so far. Next week, we will be learning blanket stitch which will help us to sew the fabric together and assemble to toy. 

In PE, we started our gymnastics unit by creating a sequence of partner balances using apparatus. The children enjoyed filming their sequences on the IPads to help them improve their tension and timing. 

What a busy week we have had, enjoy the weekend!

Miss Burton

Weekly Blog 10th Jan 25

Firstly, a very Happy New Year to you all! I hope you all managed to have a good Christmas break with friends and family. I hope you all managed to stay well too with all the flu and winter viruses around. The children have loved telling us all about their Christmas fun from skiing, visiting friends, sleepovers and exciting adventures to meeting Father Christmas. It has made us all jealous! It may only have been a four-day week but what a week it has been! Class 2 had their first session for their "Eden Sustainability Lunch" challenge on Wednesday. They will be working with each other to design a healthy and sustainable packed lunch that could be taken to the Eden Project. This is the second time the school has entered, and we won a prize last time! The children are keen to keep up their winning streak. Our school council spoke very eloquently about their learning to a governor on Wednesday. I was blown away with their answers and reasons and made me proud to be a part of Darite. They spoke very positively about school and both Mrs Richardson-Calladine and I were very impressed with their understanding. Thank-you to the school council and to Mrs Richardson-Calladine for giving up her time talk to the children. Having their voice heard is so powerful. I am sure you all shared our disappointment with the necessity to cancel the pantomime trip yesterday due to concerns around safety of pupils and staff because of the snow and ice. I am sure you understand that such decisions are never made lightly and without careful consideration for alternatives. Thank-you for the kind messages of understanding with this difficult decision. Despite this, the children who were able to make it to school had a great day - Class 1 made the best snowman I have seen in many years and Class 2 brought the pantomime to Darite with their performances in the afternoon! We definitely have some future Oscar winners in school! Mrs Norris has already been looking at other opportunities for a trip soon. Last, but by no means least, I would like to welcome Mrs Nel to school. She is covering Miss Bawden’s maternity leave in Class 2 and lunchtimes. She is a familiar face in school, having volunteered last term but it is lovely to welcome her formally. Of course, we wish Miss Bawden well with her maternity and when we hear from her, we will let you know! This half term is short but full of activities so please keep checking the diary and website for details. Thank-you from all the staff at school for your continued support of Darite. Have a lovely weekend and we will see the children back on Monday. 

Friday 10th January- Happy New Year! 

Happy New Year to everyone, and what a wonderful start back to school we have had!

The children seemed to have grown over the two weeks not at school and it reminds us just how quickly the Foundation year goes!

This half term’s big question is: What can we explore today?

Currently we are exploring polar regions, we have our very own Antarctica in class and the children have loved exploring it. The weather has kindly helped us with our exploration and we have been looking closely at all the ice in our playground. We even completed an experiment to see if we blow bubbles onto the ice will the bubble freeze!!

In English this week we have started to read the story The Emperor’s Egg. The children loved this book, and they learnt it well by using our class story map. We also watched a compilation of Happy Feet the film. The children made connections about what we read in our book. The children have used their oracy and sequencing skills to retell the story in their books.

As we discovered that daddy emperor penguins have a very important job in keeping the egg warm and safe on their feet for 2 months, so we decided to see if we could be an emperor penguin. We had a go at balancing an ‘egg’ on our feet and waddle- it was so tricky! Although Janet was a pro!

In math’s this week we have explored zero, subitise to 5 and count back from 5. Miss Hughes has challenged the children every day to a math’s activity and the children have beat her every day, they are the best mathematicians!

In phonics the children have started level 3 this week we explored phonemes j/v/w/and x. The children have come back to school with such enthusiasm for their phonics and have been so excited to learn level 3!  

The children have also: made arctic scenes, drawn penguins, tried to make igloos from Lego, played read and find, and so much more!

Have a wonderful weekend

The Foundation Team

Marazion class have had a super first week back after the Christmas break!

They were thrilled to try some cave art to introduce our topic (see last blog post) and were 'wowed' by our toilet roll timeline to demonstrate prehistory and how long ago this was!

We have started our new English sequence of learning around 'Stone Age Boy' and the children can retell the story really well whilst using tier 2 vocabulary from the book.

Year 3 have started to work with multiplication and division and Year 4 continue to do so.

In PE, we started our dance unit with the theme of weather. We did our wind section and the children were wonderfully creative with their ideas and performances.

Homework:
New maths homework is now on Anton.

Reading 5x a week and Reading Records to be signed each time as we give out rewards and take note for our KS2-wide book trail.

Please rehearse times tables weekly

Information for a new half term

Spring 1 in 5/6H

It has been an icy start back to the new term but the children have settled back into their learning with enthusiasm.

CURRICULUM

Our topics for this half term can be found in the overview that I have attached below. In addition to this you will find this half term’s Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs) to practice with your child. I have also included the Year 5 and Year 6 recommended reads and statutory spelling lists.

PE

Our PE day has had to change to a THURSDAY – please remember that children should come into school in full PE kit.

CLASS BLOG

We will endeavour to regularly update this blog to give you a flavour of what we have covered in class, and also pass on any important information. To help us with this, please make sure that all permissions are up to date on Arbor so that we can share images as soon as possible.

SUPPORTING LEARNING AT HOME

In Upper Key Stage 2, it is important to support the children’s learning at home as much as possible. A reminder that our home learning expectations are:

Daily Reading (15 minutes) – recorded reading record to contribute to a Reading Karate reward

Times-tables and KIRF practice (20 minutes weekly) using TTRS and the KIRF sheets below

Spellings (20 minutes weekly)

Online learning – set on Atom Prime (logins will be stuck into children’s reading record)

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please do get in touch.

All the very best, Mr H and the Year 5/6 team

Welcome to Spring 1 2025 - we have loved welcoming everyone back this week. We weren't quite expecting the snow and ice that have challenged our transport routes this week but well done to all for travelling safely and working with us to keep everything going! We were treated to a beautiful blanket of white and a stunning view of the moors this morning so it was all worth it. Here's to a healthy and successful term again at St Cleer. 

Welcome back, we hope you had a wonderful holiday and are ready for an action packed Spring 1!
I've attached the plan below so you can all see the coverage for the term.
More updates and pictures will be added as we go through the term!
Mrs Alberts and Mrs Nute

Happy New Year

Welcome back everyone. It has been nice to see all of the children return to nursery this week and we had some new children start with us so we have enjoyed welcoming them into the nursery. We hope you all had a lovely Christmas break.

We have come back this week to some very cold wintery weather which goes perfectly with our enquiry question "Why is it cold in winter?"
The children have been exploring our snowy themed road on the tuft tray and have made some lovely handprint calendars to take home.
They have made handprint birds in the snow and we have started creating lolly stick snowmen.

At story time, we have been enjoying the book "The Gruffalo's child" and in phonics we have been talking about hospitals. The children have been clapping to a beat, matching hospital sounds to different instruments and trying to match objects to there initial sounds.

On the maths table, we have been making comparisons and looking at more than, fewer than or the same. The children are been encouraged to mark make and have a go at forming numbers 1-3 or beyond.

Have a lovely weekend

The Nursery Team 

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Spring Term; What a snowy start!

Year 3/4A have started their unit on Multiplication and Division in Math, talking about efficiency in methods and practising recall of related facts as well.
With the Year 4 MTC approaching in June, we've stepped up our daily activities and challenged ourselves to improve our scores each week, aiming for 25/25.

Please find attached your KIRFS and Timetable for the Spring Term. We're looking forward to our Ukulele lessons starting next Friday.