Beautiful butterflies

This week our learning about life cycles has reached its climax! We've been eagerly watching our caterpillars this term as they've eaten and grown into huge caterpillars - just like our story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar.' It was amazing to watch them build their cocoon  - and then we waited. This week was the week when we witnessed the butterflies emerging from their cocoons and it was truly spectacular. Tregantle Class watched in amazement as the butterflies stretched their wings and began to move around. The butterflies remained in their net in the classroom for most of the week, until finally on Friday we took them into our garden and release them into the wild. It was very interesting to see how the butterflies reacted to being set free. A few were very brave and flew off immediately to find new homes. Some were more cautious and were quite still sitting in the sun before they tentatively made their way into the sky. It was a wonderful experience to watch this life cycle first hand - from tiny caterpillars to beautiful flying butterflies!  

A HUGE well done to all of Year 6 this week. The children have really persevered with their SATs assessments and have done themselves, and their adults, very proud indeed.  They are all FAB-U-LOUS! Thank you also for your continued support at home.

We celebrated the end of a busy week with a walk, BBQ and the children receiving their hoodies along with a special invitation. Thank you very much to the adults who have organised this for the children to celebrate the end of their time at St Cleer.

Mines and Mosques!

KS2 SATs
Well done to our wonderful Year 6 children. They approached the assessments this week with a determined and calm attitude. Today they have certainly let their hair down (and given it a rinse too) as they finished the week with some water fun. The warmer weather certainly added to their afternoon!

Summer 2024 Bridge Schools Trust Parent and Carer Questionnaire
Your feedback is really important to us as we work in partnership to achieve the best possible education for the children. Please check your email to complete a Trust-wide questionnaire that each school is sending out. For Q20, I would really appreciate your views on the key strengths to celebrate, as well as areas we could develop even further for all our children. Your time in completing this questionnaire is valued and will help us continually improve. Please complete by Friday 24th May, thank you. 

FOWPA Disco – Wednesday 22nd May
A reminder of arrangements:

14:15 – 15:00 Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 (in school time)
15:15 – 16:00 Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6

Children are invited to wear party clothes into school. Please note that Year 6 will need to wear their PE kit to school and bring a change of clothes if they are going to the Disco.

We will have a couple of quieter areas should children want to have some time out from all that dancing!

Don’t forget to complete a permission slip if your child is in Year 4 - Year 6, as the Disco takes place at the end of the school day. Spare letters are available from your class teacher/office. For this fundraising event, we would welcome a suggested donation of £1.50. Please ensure your child brings into school a water bottle that can be topped up. A small snack will also be provided.

Lost Property
Thank you to FOWPA for organising the nearly new uniform sales this week. Next Monday-Wednesday after school, we will be putting out all the lost property by the main entrance. Please do take a look to see if anything belongs to your child. Anything that isn’t collected will be donated to a local charity/clothes bank.

House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Choughs!

Swans – 365
Choughs – 369
Cormorants – 281
Puffins – 331

Important dates coming up:
Monday 20th May: Year 1 and Year 3 Trips
Monday 20th May: Year 2 PE instead of Wednesday (please wear PE kit)
Wednesday 22nd May: 14:15-15:00 Reception-Year 3 Disco; 15:15-16:00 Year 4-Year 6 Disco
Friday 24th May: INSET Day – School closed
Monday 27th – Friday 31st: May Half term
Monday 3rd June: Back to school
Tuesday 4th June: 14:00-16:15 Year 5 and Year 6 Quad Games
Wednesday 5th June: Class Photos
Thursday 6th June: Year 6 Dance-a-thon
Friday 7th June: Community Day for Royal Cornwall Show – School closed for children

A reminder that school is closed next Friday 24th May for INSET. It’s a four-day week for the children before the May half term break.

Have a relaxing weekend.
Best wishes,
Chris Wathern

Busy week for all

It’s hard to believe that there are only 4 more days until half term! The last few weeks have been so busy with learning, trips, events and so much more that we have blinked and missed it! We break up next Thursday as the 24th is a staff training day. We have lots to get through before then though so please stay posted through the blog and website!

Year 6 had a fantastic "Breakfast week" this week. They enjoyed delicious bacon and egg sandwiches cooked by Lisa - and completed some tests as well. We were, as always, blown away by their hard work, dedication and resilience for the SATs and each and every one of them gave 100% all week. We could not be more proud of them and they can now relax, ready for their final few weeks at Darite. They celebrated today by destroying their practice papers outside and using them to toast marshmallows. They folded their paper into various shapes and said a little personal goodbye before burning them. The children were thankful for all their hard work to prepare for the SATS! Miss Edwards said that the group were wonderful and it was lovely to hear their reflections on the work that they had put in and improvements they had made. Well done Year 6!

Thank-you also to those of you who were able to attend the reading breakfast in aid of the Book Trust. The donations helped us raise a fantastic amount of money to give to this worthy cause. It is a real bonus for the children to have an audience for their reading, and being able to raise money as well is a bonus. The children joined in with PJ day fantastically - even though some of the pyjamas were a bit warm! 

Have a fantastic weekend. 

A Creative Week

Talland Class have enjoyed exploring the Batik art form during this week. This is linked to our study of the Maya civilisation and to the beautiful colours they used in the materials they used: their clothing, in particular. The children noticed the use of complementary colours, shape and shading when they produced their own representations. 

English

During this week, the children have entered a poetry competition using their own unique poems. They have developed good confidence in using many poetry devices to good effect: metaphors and similes, for example.

Maths

The children's knowledge and understanding of place value is becoming clearer. Due to this, they have been able to add and subtract decimals to 2 decimal places.

best wishes,

Mr Parry, Mrs Swabey and the Talland Class team (Mrs Walters and Ms Rowlands)

This week's jokes:

Why should we always look up to the sun for positivity? – He always focuses on the brighter side of life.

What did the sun say to the ice? – You’re gonna have a total meltdown!

Summer 1 - Week 5 - Innovating, researching and recording! 

English

In English this week, the writing genre focussed on information texts. The children read up to chapter 7 gathering information about Podkin, his siblings and most importantly the 12 gifts from the Goddess.

The children used a planning format to innovate their own gifts from the Goddess. They had to consider its name, its magical properties, its history and its current whereabouts. They used 3 of the original gifts to give them inspiration before generating their own. The plan would then provide them with notes for writing their information texts independently.

The children then began writing the introduction, here they had to provide the reader background context, what the text would be about and some information about the Goddess.

Finally, they began writing their main body of the text; this was broken down into weapons, tools, armour/clothing. For each, they had to explain information about the gifts using descriptive language.

Next week, it’s poetry where the children will explore how to use onomatopoeia.

Maths

For Maths, we continued with position and direction. The children learnt about translation, and then translation using co-ordinates in order to be more accurate. They then were introduced to symmetry, where the children had to make connections to previous learning. Using mirrors, they located lines of symmetry on shapes and identifying horizontal and vertical lines of symmetry.

On Thursday, the children then completed their end of unit assessments. Their scores were recorded and next steps/targets set.

On Friday, the children then completed their half termly arithmetic assessment. This is where the children can work towards their targets making progress in their scores!

Wider Curriculum

This week, the children were Geographers learning how to describe and understand key aspects of the water cycle, whilst outlining the impact on human geography through the distribution of natural resources.

This was a heavy research lesson, with lots of discussion and use of retrieval skills to unpick information and record key facts. The children then created a double page spread explaining their understanding of the above. They then use iPads to continue gathering data and statistics.

Next, the children then looked at natural disasters, again the recorded what they had learnt making links to the UK and other foreign countries, outlining the impact on human geography.

We’ve had a busy week, next week is the countdown to half term!

Have a lovely sunny weekend,

Best Wishes,

The Year 5 Team