A fantastic start!

It has been an amazing start to Year 2. Well done and thank you to all pupils for such a fantastic start to a brand new academic year. We have been very busy already getting stuck in to our History topic for the half term; “How have significant people shaped our world?”. So far, we have studied Florence Nightingale, Muhammad Ali and Mary Anning.

In English, we have been writing about the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and have had lots of fun innovating the story to make our very own versions which vary from Three Cheeky Chimps to Three Merry Mermaids! Take a look at just one of the fabulous examples of extended writing. We are very proud of all of the children.

A reminder that Home Learning is sent home every Monday. Please ensure your child brings their Home Learning book into school with them so that we can update it. On a Monday, we also change reading books and visit the school library. If you have any library books at home from last year, please do send them in with your child. Each child’s Home Learning book has also been updated with their Numbots log in details for practice at home.

Thank you for your continued support,

The Year 2 Team

What a great start 

Wow! What a great start to the year. The children have settled in brilliantly and are becoming more confident in their new classroom and playground.

We started off their learning with Science exploring our key question ‘what are the characteristics of an animal?’ The children discovered which groups different animals belonged to, looked at their diet to decide if they were a carnivore, omnivore or herbivore and what makes an animal suitable to be pet.

In English the children learnt the story of ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ by acting it out with actions. This lead on them writing the story in their books before making up their own animal hunt adventure!

In Maths the children began with place value by counting and representing objects, recognizing numbers as words, counting on from a number and finding 1 more/1 less within 10.

You will find a log in for ‘Numbots’ in your childs reading record. This is an app which can be accessed from home. Please don’t forget we visit the school library on a Thursday if you would like a new book to read please return it each week. We update our class blog regularly so keep coming back to find out what else we have been up to.

Many thanks Year One team.

Canteen and School Dinners
Following my message yesterday, we can confirm normal service resumes from Monday!

House Captains
Mrs Orme and I had the pleasure of meeting nearly 40 Year 6 children as part of the House Captain ‘interviews’. The standard of applications was so high; they should all be so proud of themselves. They gave Mrs Orme and I such a difficult job to choose between them.

After much consideration, we were pleased to share the outcome with the children.

Choughs - Auriella & Lexie
Cormorants - Allie & Sasha
Puffins - Agnes & Harry
Swans - Holly & Stanley

Congratulations to our new House Captains and thank you to all the children who put themselves forward.



House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Choughs, with Swans taking an early overall lead:

Swans – 816
Puffins – 572
Choughs – 568
Cormorants – 550

Macmillan Coffee Morning
Year 6 look forward to seeing you at their Macmillan Coffee Morning next Friday 27th September from 08:45 in the Hall. Everyone is welcome to help raise money for this charity.

Foodbank Collection for Harvest
For Harvest this year, we will once again be collecting for Wadebridge Foodbank. Please send your child in with any donations between Monday 30th September and Friday 4th October. Donations such as tins and jars of food, rice, pasta, general toiletries and long life juice are most welcomed. Thank you for your support.

FOWPA - The Great Wadebridge Primary Academy Quiz, Friday 18th October 7pm, Town Hall
Why not get a team together, get those thinking caps on and join us for a fun evening of quizzing at The Great Wadebridge Primary Academy Quiz being held at Wadebridge Town Hall. This quiz is being organised by FOWPA and will be run by everyone’s favourite quiz master, Robin Moorcroft. There will be a bar on the night, prizes for the winning teams and a raffle where you can win some beautiful hampers, filled with lots of goodies.

Our last quiz sold out in days and there are limited numbers so get your table booked early to avoid disappointment! £20 per table, max of six people. Get your tickets now!

All proceeds go to Wadebridge Primary Academy.

Parent Support & Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Workshops
Caradon Parenting (Cornwall Council) and the Children’s Mental Health Support Team (MHST) are running a series of workshops. You’ll find further information on our website: Information>Health & Wellbeing.

Fire Evacuation
This morning we held our first fire evacuation of the year. The children did a fantastic job of exiting the school calmly and quietly. Later this term we will be practising our annual lockdown process. We will be in touch beforehand with details of this.

Lost Uniform
We’ve only been back two weeks, but are already gathering up lots of uniform from around the school. Please encourage your children, as we will do at school, to take responsibility for gathering their own belongings. Please name all uniform; thank you for your cooperation.

School Photos
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, Tempest Photography will be in school taking individual and sibling photos over the two days. Please ensure your child is looking super smart in their full uniform (as always) and if wanted, provide them with a comb/brush for their hair.

Dates coming up next week

Monday 23rd September
After School Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs) begin
Year 5 & 6 Boys Active 
Year 1 Hearing Screening Check (pm)
Year 4 Swimming

Tuesday 24th September
School Photos (Tempest)
Year 5 & 6 Our Girls Can
Year 6 Swimming
No Woodwind lessons this week

Wednesday 25th September
School Photos (Tempest)
Year 3 Swimming

Thursday 26th September
Year 5 Swimming

Friday 27th September
08:45 Year 6 Macmillan Coffee Morning 

Autumn Term 1 - Weeks 1, 2, & 3 - Sensational Start to Six! 

English

In English over the past couple of weeks we have been looking at extending narratives using the text ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ by Shelley Hughes as a stimulus.

Across the journey, the children have unpicked the text using their VIPERS skills, reminded themselves on the skill of using relative clauses, wrote setting descriptions and diary entries. All of the knowledge explored across this journey resulted in the children extending the narrative by writing an alternative ending.

The children have loved looking at this text as it links nicely to our first wider curriculum theme of WW2. The children have been able to use their topographical knowledge to inform their creative pieces used a wide range of tier one, two and three vocabularies.

We are incredibly proud of their first extended piece of writing and look forward to seeing what they produce in our next learning journey of Poetry – The Power of Imagery!

Maths

In Year Six we continue to follow the White Rose Small Steps beginning with our first journey of ‘Place Value’. To begin this learning journey the children, harnessed their prior knowledge to identify, read and write numbers to 1,000,000 and 10,000,000.

The children then looked closely at the powers of 10, this required the children to multiply and divided by 10s, 100s & 1000s. With the Year 5/6 curriculum so closely knitted, the children are very much familiar with the strategies and methods presented and are therefore able to approach more complex reasoning questions.

In this journey, we have also explored rounding any integer, negative numbers and using number lines to 10,000,000. We then ended the journey as we always do with an end of unit assessment. This allows us and the children to see not only their progress in place value but their next steps. From here, the children set themselves new targets for the term.

Wider Curriculum

We have hit the ground running with wider curriculum and the children are certainly on board. As mentioned above, our current theme we are exploring is WW2. Throughout this journey, the children will explore a range of subjects, concepts and knowledge across all areas of the curriculum with links to the overarching theme.

Within each area of the curriculum the children will have enquiry questions that they’ll find the answers too. To begin our journey, we have started with History and our enquiry question is ‘What was the impact if WW2 on the people of Britain?’  

So far, the children have used their chronology skills to sequence key events that took place during WW2.They have investigated what life would have been like during the blitz and the emotions felt by the civilians. They have unpicked the story of Dunkirk, delving into the ‘Dunkirk’ spirit, as well as looking into the roles of women during WW2. They made comparisons between WW2 and today’s roles for women and what impact the war would have had!

It has been wonderful to see the children’s enthusiasm towards our new curriculum theme. WATCH THIS SPACE for our incoming artwork…

Important Reminders:

·        Monday 23^rd September – Boys active

·        Tuesday 24^th September – Our Girls Can

·        Tuesday 24^th September – Boys Swimming

·        Wednesday 25^th September – Individual Photos

·        Friday 27^th September – Macmillan Coffee Morning

·        Friday 27^th September – School Sleepover

Have a wonderful weekend.

Best Wishes,

Autumn 1 - Week 1, 2 and 3 -A Super Start!

We are so proud of how well the children have settled into school life. It’s been a busy first few weeks learning new routines and discussing our school rules: Be Safe, Be Ready, Be Respectful. It has been lovely getting to know the children and watching them play and interact with new friends.

They have had a go at writing their own names, experienced their first PE lesson in the hall and we have begun to learn about our over-arching topic: What’s awesome about Autumn? Lots of children knew that the leaves on trees change colour and fall to the ground. In Maths, the children have been learning to recognise and create patterns using peg boards, interlocking cubes and pens.

Next week, we will begin our Phonics lessons. Every Friday, your child will come home with a worksheet stuck in their Home Learning Book and an information sheet all about this week’s sounds for you to practise at home. Thank you in advance for your support with this.

Reminders
Please label absolutely everything your child brings into school so that nothing is lost. We are a nut free school so please do not send your child into school with foods containing nuts - thank you. 

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Best wishes,
The Reception Team

Super scientists!

Year 4 have made an excellent start to their learning and have impressed us already with some beautiful writing! 

Science 
Check out our fabulous human models of solid, liquid and gas particles in action. We were "teamwork turtles" and worked together to read all about how the different particles move and decide how best to demonstrate this to the class. I think you'll agree we did a fantastic job!

English
After finishing our poems, we moved on to a unit based on "The Catch" (short movie - https://www.literacyshed.com/the-other-cultures-shed.html). We used the video to help us include lots of descriptive details in our writing and are now revising how to use inverted commas properly for speech - which has included remembering our rhyme from Year 3 to help us remember..!

Maths
We have begun our baseline assessments for the multiplication check and will be sending the results home very soon. Extra practice at home really does make a difference so please do try and squeeze this in if you can! (https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check)

Swimming/P.E. 
Swimming will begin on Monday 23rd September for all Year 4 children (please see the letter that has been send home for info). This will be in place of our P.E. on a Wednesday - so school uniform as normal on Wednesday please.

Have a fantastic week! 
Mrs Graham, Mrs Keat and Mrs Hodkinson  

The beginning of the year is always busy getting back into the swing of things and mapping out all our learning and opportunities. It is also the time we elect or select our student leadership. This week, Mrs Orme met with our newly elected School Council. Our Year 6 children heard about the new responsibilities our House Captains will undertake this year. Mrs Orme and I look forward to their ‘interviews’ next week.

Alongside these roles, we also have other opportunities for student leadership, such as: Eco Council, Reading Ambassadors and Year 5/6 Play Leaders. In the next couple of weeks, we will also be pairing up all our Year 5 and Big Nursery children, and our Year 6 and Reception children as ‘Buddies’. We look forward to supporting our youngest and eldest children develop confidence and empathy throughout the year together.

I was also pleased to meet the new Headteacher of Wadebridge School, Mr Mat Winzor. We toured our school and had a positive meeting about working together. Both schools are really invested in serving our community – exciting times ahead! Mrs Orme and I look forward to visiting Wadebridge School in October to take part in a Learning Walk and meet some of our former Year 6 students now in Year 7.

Coffee Morning – The Year Ahead
It was fantastic seeing so many parents this morning and being able to share our school development priorities and get feedback. If you couldn’t make it, the presentation slides have been emailed to you. We will be holding Coffee Mornings roughly every fortnight throughout the year - check out the dates emailed out today and on the Events section of our website. Some are just a social occasion and some have an additional workshop attached. We hope to see you there. 

Meet the Teacher Presentations
Thank you for attending our recent Meet the Teacher presentations. If you couldn’t make it, we have uploaded all the slides to your child’s Class Page on our website. Thank you for the positive feedback as well as suggestions about timings/supervision for your children during this event. This is certainly something we will look at next year.

Asda App
If you have the Asda rewards app, your shopping will convert into money for our school. 

The Great Wadebridge Primary Academy Quiz, Friday 18th October 7pm, Town Hall
Why not get a team together, get those thinking caps on and join us for a fun evening of quizzing at The Great Wadebridge Primary Academy Quiz being held at Wadebridge Town Hall. This quiz is being organised by FOWPA and will be run by everyone’s favourite quiz master, Robin Moorcroft. There will be a bar on the night, prizes for the winning teams and a raffle where you can win some beautiful hampers, filled with lots of goodies. Our last quiz sold out in days and there are limited numbers so get your table booked early to avoid disappointment! £20 per table, max of six people.
All proceeds go to Wadebridge Primary Academy.
Thank you!
The FOWPA team

Medication
Please complete the necessary orange medical form from the office and ensure any medication is handed in to the office or your child’s teacher.

Bridge Kids and Nursery Vacancies
We are currently recruiting for Bridge Kids After School Club Assistants and Nursery Teaching Assistants. Please see the Vacancies page on our website for more information.

Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs)
Don’t forget to sign up for ECAs by Sunday. This week, you will have also received information about DT Sports. DT Sports are one of our external providers also used to support the teaching of PE and sport. Their after school ECAs start next week and it isn’t too late to sign up!

Wishing you a fantastic (and warm) weekend. 

Welcome to Year 4!

It has been lovely to see everyone back at school this week and everyone in Year 4 has been raring to get going with their new learning.

Traveling back in time! 

This term, our History topic is all about the Victorians and how they lived, travelled and invented. We kicked our learning off by examining some interesting Victorian documents and we discovered quite a lot about Queen Victoria’s life. Take a look at the 1881 census – we discovered that although Victoria was the Queen of England, her husband, Prince Albert, was still the ‘Head of the household’!  We wondered how Queen Victoria would have felt about that!

We will continue to become great historians as we discover what it was like to be poor in Victorian times especially if you ended up in the workhouse.

English

We were all very keen to share the activities that we’d been up to in the holiday and so we thought that it would be great to write a poem however, we decided to put a clever twist to our ideas.  Instead of writing a poem about what we did do in the holiday, we let our imaginations run wild and wrote about what we didn’t do!

You can read some of the ideas here.

Maths

We always start a new year off by revisiting ‘Place Value’. We worked with numbers up to 10,000 and got to grips with what happens when a number is partitioned and what happens to each digit when it’s multiplied and divided by 10, 100 and 1000.

As you can tell, even though it was a short week, we packed a lot of great learning into our first days back!  We have a lot of interesting and exciting things planned for our forthcoming year and we are looking forward to seeing the children develop.

Best wishes for the Year 4 Team

The children have only been in for three days but have settled brilliantly. Our theme this week was ‘Super Start’ – and what a fantastic start it has been. We also heard in the summer break that we achieved EcoSchools Green Flag status and ‘Gold’ for our School Games Mark application. Congratulations to Mrs Harrison and our Eco Council, and Mr O’Dwyer and our Sports Leaders for all their hard work.

Coffee Morning – Next Friday 13th September 08:45 (Hall)
I’m looking forward to our first coffee morning of the year – everyone is welcome. I’ll be sharing some of our plans for the year. One change already introduced is the new play and lunchtime arrangements. Despite the difficulties with the canteen oven (a big thank you to the team for managing this setback) having all children eating and socialising in the Hall has been wonderful. If you can’t make the coffee morning, I’ll be sharing the slides via email/website. We will be holding coffee mornings approximately every fortnight throughout the year as well as many new opportunities for parents to get involved. More on this next Friday. 

FOWPA BIG UNIFORM SALE ALERT
Back to school and need some bigger or spare uniform bits? FOWPA is having a second hand uniform sale outside on Thursday 12th September after school and Friday 13th September in the Hall at the Coffee Morning. Items are £1 each with all proceeds helping FOWPA support our school. We welcome any clean, good condition uniform that you would like to donate. Please drop them into the box in the main entrance.

Thank you for your support!
From the FOWPA Team



Music Lessons
Music lessons with our external teachers begin next week. Don’t forget your instruments!

School Crossing Patrol
We’ve been informed by Cormac that from today there will be no patroller on Gonvena Hill, until further notice. If you know of anyone who may be interested in this important role, please contact the School Crossing Patrol Coordinator: schoolcrossingpatrol@cormacltd.co.uk


Meet the Teacher
An opportunity to meet your child’s class teacher, talk to other parents in the class and learn more about the year ahead.

Tuesday 10th September – Class 3W only
15:20-15:40

Wednesday 11th September – All other Classes (not Class 3W)
15:10 – 15:30 Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
15:30 – 15:50 Year 3-6
15:50 – 16:10 Year 3-6 (repeated session)

Bridge Kids and Nursery Vacancies
We are currently recruiting for Bridge Kids After School Club Assistants. Please see the Vacancies page on our website for more information.
Additionally, we have two vacancies to join our existing Nursery team. These positions will be advertised on Monday on our Vacancies page.

Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs)
Next week we will be sharing details on how to sign up for our teacher-led Term 1 ECAs for Y1-6 (running from Monday 23rd September-Friday 6th December). We also have a number of external providers offering paid ECAs (Pro20, DT Sports and Dance) who organise these separately directly with parents. As soon as we have information from them, we will pass on. You should have received an email about Pro20, which starts on Monday.

Coming up next week:

Monday 9th September
09:30 & 10:30 Nursery Stay and Play

Tuesday 10th September
Nursery begins
15:20 – 15:40 Meet the Teacher (Class 3W only)


Wednesday 11th September
Meet the Teacher (All other classes - not Class 3W):
15:10 – 15:30 Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
15:30 – 15:50 Year 3-6
15:50 – 16:10 Year 3-6 (repeated session)

Thursday 12th September
15:00 FOWPA Uniform Sale (Outside)

Friday 13th September
08:45-09:15 Coffee Morning and FOWPA Uniform Sale (Hall)

Wishing you a fantastic weekend.

Year 6 Leavers
Last night Year 6 had their Leavers’ Prom – what an amazing evening despite the Cornish mizzle! It was lovely seeing them celebrate their final year of primary school having fun at the outdoor disco; in the face paint booth; tackling the inflatable assault course and tasting all the wonderful doughnuts provided by Barnecutts (after their fish and chips supper). A special thank you to the Year 6 team for organising such a special evening. Alongside their assembly this morning, they did themselves very proud at their recent performance as well as letting their hair down on the Slip ‘n’ Slide trip. We wish them all the very best as they transition to secondary school.

Year 2 Cornish WOW Day
To celebrate the end of their Cornwall topic, 'Did the Cornish do a Proper Job?' Year 2 had a day full of Cornish activities! They sang a special WPA version of 'Cornwall My Home' to start the day, then designed Cornish tea towels and played Cornish games that consisted of Welly Wanging and Tug of War. The Maids and the 'Ansomes had a brilliant day topped off with Cornish pasties in the afternoon. This term the children have learnt the Helston Flora dance and the history of the railway in and around Wadebridge. They also learnt how children worked in the tin mines and that conditions were very dangerous. The children did not fancy doing that job! We feel that Year 2 now have a better understanding of the county they live in, and are proud of the culture that is around them.

Gwres da Year 2! (Well done, Year 2)

September Opening Times
From September, the gates in the morning will be open at the following times for children to come into school:

08:25 Nursery gate opens
08:30-08:45 Reception to Year 6 gate opens

Please note that children arriving before these times won’t be supervised; thank you for your co-operation.

Thank you!
A special thank you to our children. You have achieved great things and shown so much perseverance this year. You can do anything you put your mind to and we all look forward to being part of your ongoing learning journey.

None of this would be possible without the support and dedication of a fantastic team of staff. Thank you to the team! I wish them a well-deserved summer break.

A final thanks to you, our parents; your incredible support is so valued.

On behalf of everyone at WPA, I hope you have a truly restful summer break. For those who are moving on, we wish you the very best and hope WPA has provided many fulfilling memories. For all those families returning, we look forward to seeing you back at school on Wednesday 4th September (Nursery opens on Tuesday 10th September).

With very best wishes,
Chris Wathern

Both Year 3 classes experienced some outdoor education this week and learnt how to make their own fires. 

All groups were successful in lighting their own fires with the flint before roasting our tasty marshmallows over the campfire. 

Thank you for being such an amazing cohort and enjoy Year 4!

From the Year 3 Team 
.