To commemorate 40 years since the passing of Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman CBE, Concern Wadebridge hosted a poetry competition for all Wadebridge area primary school aged children. The theme of the poetry competition was ‘Wadebridge.’ The competition was sponsored by Bricknells who provided the first-place prizes for the best written entries for Key Stage 1 & Key Stage 2 children. There were also special prizes for the most creative entries.

Manager Emma Burt said: “We were delighted to receive over 100 entries. I would not only like to say thank you to St Breock Primary School & Nursery and Wadebridge Primary Academy for promoting the competition but also to Bricknells for sponsoring the event. A special mention to Cathy and Kevin Daisy, our John Betjeman memorabilia volunteers who came up with the idea of the competition and helped me with the hard task for judging all the brilliant entries. All the winning entries will now be on display at The John Betjeman Centre for the half term holidays and until the end of June. Please come and see the talent for yourselves.”


Congratulations to our children:

Best Written Poem Key Stage 1: Lennon 

Best Written Poem Key Stage 2: Daisy 

Highly Commended: Tom

17/05/2024

What a busy 2 weeks we have had in Year 3!

Last Friday we had a fantastic alternative day of sports. Coaches from Arena came in to deliver some awesome games including Dartmoor 3 ball, Capture the Flag, American Football, Boccia and Archery. We had a fantastic day and we were very impressed with the skills and teamwork that we saw. 

Also this week we have been continuing with sewing. Year 3 first designed their pillows before cutting the fabric, sewing the motif and using a running stitch to sew it all together. The finished designs looks fabulous!  

In Science we have been looking at Plants and continuing with our work in the school Polytunnel growing flowers and vegetables. We conducted an experiment, which we have been monitoring for the last 3 weeks, to see if a seed will germinate and grow in a darkness, artificial light and natural sunlight. We also used soil and cotton wool to compare growth too.  We predicted that the seeds in the natural light and soil would grow the best as those conditions give a plant everything it needs to grow. The children were amazed to see that the seeds in darkness did germinate however, the seedlings were stringy, brown and did not look too healthy. After half term we will be starting to look at the Water Cycle and Rivers. 

We are looking forward to our Geography Field Trip on Monday and will post some pictures from the trip later next week.

Have a lovely weekend!

The Year 3 Team 

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

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

Summer 1 - Week 4 and 5

Adding to our learning journey

Over the last 2 weeks, the children have been busy impressing us with their writing and maths skills. 

Writing - Every morning, the children have been coming into class and writing sentences based on a picture stimulus. The progress the children have made in their writing has blown us away. They are saying their sentences aloud, applying their phonics knowledge, correctly forming their letters and getting more confident in using finger spaces. Great work Reception!

Maths - We have been working on addition and subtraction  stories over the last two weeks. In their addition stories, the children started with using concrete objects, and were then able to move on to writing addition sums. We moved onto subtraction within 10 this week which the children are starting to grasp. 

Music - We were lucky enough to have Mrs Wade join us to give the children an African drumming lesson. The children thoroughly enjoyed learning how to play the drum. They were able to copy rhythms and made their own rhythm up to perform it to the class. Thank you Mrs Wade for giving up your time to give the children this experience.

PE - After half term,  Reception will be lucky enough to have Pro20 for a sports session each week. This weekly session will be on a Monday afternoon, starting from our first day back. For this session, the children will need to come into school already in their P.E kits. They will not need to wear their school uniforms on a Monday until Pro20 has finished (we will inform you closer to the time when this will be). P.E kits can then be kept at home. It would be handy to still keep a spare pair of clothes/uniform in their bags daily or kept on their pegs, just in case of water play accidents etc. The children will continue to have a P.E session on a Thursday but this will be in their uniforms, as it is rehearsing for sports day.

Thank you so much for your help in making drop off and pick up a smooth transition through our new gate. We really do appreciate it. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Best wishes,
The Reception Team 

The children have been learning about the  'Life cycle of a butterfly’.
We have had some real caterpillars for the children to observe and to watch grow.

Over the past few weeks, the children have been lucky enough to see the caterpillars develop into chrysalis' and then turn into butterflies. 
This week, the children went to woody corner to release the caterpillars that had come out of their chrysalis.’

Summer 1, Weeks 3 and 4: Determined designers

Another busy fortnight in Year 1 but we have been particularly impressed with the resilience shown in Year 1 - we have a lot of "Keep Going Koalas"! 

DT

Linked to our wider curriculum learning of the seaside, the children have been busy designing jellyfish puppets. 
Firstly, they had to work with small pieces of felt and investigate the 3 different ways of joining the pieces together - with glue, safety pins or staples. Everyone tried all 3 methods and the glue station got very sticky at one point with no one having much success - but that's ok because designers try things and evaluate whether it worked or could have been better. The children unanimously decided the glue wasn't for them and we tried our hand at stapling. We had more success here but did get through a lot of staples! We also tried joined the felt together using safety pins. We soon realised these were tricky - especially some of the smaller ones - but some of our classmates were amazing at pinning the pieces together and were nominated as "class experts" and they helped others out who were struggling - some wonderful teamwork turtle skills on show! 

Finally, we were ready to design our jellyfish so children chose a colour of felt and sketched out on a template what their jellyfish would look like. These were photocopied before the children used their cutting skills to carefully cut out the template and - back to the safety pins! - pinned the template onto the felt. They then had to cut out the felt and join their 2 jellyfish pieces together. This was where they chose which method they would like to use to join them. The jellyfish need to be finished next week and we can't wait to show them off!


English

We finished off our learning of the Singing Mermaid by reinventing the story together and the children decided they would like their new character to be the Dancing Dolphin. The Dancing Dolphin lived in the deep, blue sea and was warned by William Whale not to go with Sam Sly to the circus where she was trapped in a tank. Luckily, her friend Ollie Octopus helped her escape back to the sea. The children loved writing their stories and we are seeing them apply the knowledge they have learnt in lessons to their writing, often independently. For example, children were using exclamation marks and some wonderful adjectives to describe the characters and their feelings in the story. We really enjoyed reading their stories. 

We then started on a poetry unit, looking at our different senses and thinking what we can see, hear, smell, taste and feel at the seaside. Children worked in groups and studied different photos of beaches to make lists and we added adjectives to these the following day. For example, I can see the sea became I can see the crashing waves; and I can hear the seagulls became I can hear the noisy seagulls squawking. The children are then going to use these ideas to write their own seaside senses poems.

Maths

We have now moved onto learn about fractions and looked at halving an object, such as a pizza or an orange, and talked about now having 2 parts. We moved onto discuss halving a group of objects, talking about having more than 2 objects but still having 2 groups of objects. We identified to be halved, the groups need to have an equal number and we shared out different numbers of counters equally to see what half of a given number was. The children are making the link between halving and doubling, knowing that if 5 is a half, they have to double 5 to find the whole number. 

History

As part of our learning around the question "have people always liked to be beside the seaside?", we looked at what beaches were like in the past and how they have changed over time. The children loved looking at a range of photos of seasides in the past and learning what many Victorians did when they went to the seaside. Their favourite part was looking at the bathing carriages some Victorians were lucky enough to use where ladies were pulled by horse in a carriage into the sea where they would lower themselves into the water and have a swim before climbing back into the carriage to change and be pulled back to dry land. What a wonderful idea! They were less keen on wearing a suit or a formal dress to the beach though - much preferring their t-shirts and shorts! 

Phonics

With our phonics screening check creeping ever closer, we have planned in some fun phonics afternoons where the children have enjoyed playing phonics games in groups to practice their sounds. Please do continue to read with your child at home and practice their phonics sounds. There are some great games on "Phonics Play" website which are free to play and the children do love them! 

Reminders

If you have already done so, please do return your trip consent letter for the aquarium trip. 
Library day is Thursday - please do send your child in with their book so they are able to change it. 
Monday is PE so children should come to school in PE kits please. 

Have a lovely weekend, 
The Year 1 Team

Summer 1 - Week 4 - Things are hotting up! 

English

In English this week, the children began a new learning journey focusing on the genre ‘Myths and Legends’ and the text ‘The Legend of Podkin One-Ear’. Throughout the learning journey, the children will have the opportunity to explore a range of grammatical skills and knowledge before writing their own version of a chapter from the text.

On Tuesday, the children used their VIPERS skills prediction and inference to write a blurb. The only information they had was the contents page and a map. The children were presented with a range of WAGOLL’s to encourage imagination.

On Wednesday, the children then used their retrieval skills, where they learnt about some of the treasures from the text via an information piece. Using notes, the children then wrote two additional paragraphs, mimicking style, tone and vocabulary.

We’ve also noticed within writing lessons, the children find it tricky to edit, improve and re-draft their work. Therefore, on Thursday the children had the opportunity to improve a paragraph, continuing on from the information writing. They had to look at, sentence structures, formal language, punctuation etc.

Maths

In Maths, the children began their position and direction learning journey. To begin the journey, we introduced them to vocabulary that may appear throughout. We also used our Freya models, to discuss misconceptions and examples which the children can refer to throughout their learning.

So far, the children have looked at reading and plotting co-ordinates and then applying this when problem solving. They have also explored translation and then translation with co-ordinates. For this journey, we have also had the chance to apply our knowledge to real life scenarios.

In Morning work, we continue to revisit learning from our shape learning journey. This week, the children had the opportunity to draw angles using protractors accurately. We will continue to embed this over the next few weeks.

Wider Curriculum

In Wider curriculum, we have continued with our Art learning journey. On Wednesday, the children worked in their sketch books, experimenting with colour palettes for their Modroc animals. They decided which colours and designs words well and how to mix colours in order to generate the correct shade.

On Thursday, the children then began painting their base colours and painting the more intricate details. With the weather being so lovely, we were able to get outside and enjoy the sunshine whilst we painted. Once their animal was complete, they went back to the sketch books, writing annotations and evaluating their work.

We are going to keep hold of the animals and use them in our computing/animation project! WATCH THIS SPACE!

As always, have a magical weekend,

Enjoy the glorious weather,

Best Wishes,

Year 2 have been scientists this week investigating everyday materials. They started off finding and naming materials in the classroom (glass, plastic, wood, water, metal, rock, brick, paper, fabric). Then they thought about other objects that are also made from the same material. From here they were able to talk about if certain materials are suitable or not suitable for particular items. For example is glass suitable for a hammer? Why is wood suitable for a table? Why is cardboard not suitable for a water bottle? Then they used scientific descriptions to write why these materials or suitable or not suitable (waterproof, stiff, hard, smooth, absorbent, stretchy etc). Towards the end of the week they conducted an experiment to see how different materials can be bent, squashed, twisted and stretched. This helped them to deepen their understanding about the suitability of materials for everyday items and why it is important for some items to have its shape changed. For example, playdough needs to be squashable and elastic in clothing needs to be stretched.

Here is a link to continue the learning at home Everyday materials - KS1 Science - BBC Bitesize

Enjoy the sunny weather!

Whilst it’s been a shorter week, it has certainly been a full one (and the sun came out too which was a bonus). I had the pleasure of showing another headteacher working in Cornwall around our school. We were both impressed with the calm and purposeful atmosphere in and around the classes. From seeing how well our Big Nursery and Reception children are settling into their new rooms to the quality of teaching and learning as we toured the school. We also saw politeness in abundance; such an important quality. From greetings to opening doors, the children should be rightly proud of themselves.

Coffee Sessions
I really appreciated being able to meet you during this week’s coffee sessions. Thank you for the opportunity to share a bit about my experiences as well as how we will continually develop our fantastic school. I was also grateful for your feedback, questions and ideas about what’s working well and what we can do together for the future. From each of the sessions, one message came out clearly, and that’s the chance to have regular opportunities to come into school. Watch this space!

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 with the link to complete a Trust-wide questionnaire that each school is sending out. For Q20, as mentioned at this week’s welcome coffee sessions, 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. Thank you. 

House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Swans, earning 282 points.

Swans – 282
Choughs – 276
Cormorants – 238
Puffins – 237

Our overall leaders this year so far are Choughs, with an impressive 10,577 points!

Good luck Year 6!
Good luck to our Year 6 children next week as they complete their end of KS2 SATs. We are really proud of what they have already achieved throughout their primary years, both in the subjects that are assessed, and those areas that aren’t. Go Year 6!

Events next week
Monday 13th – Thursday 16th May: Year 6 SATs

Thursday 16th May: Census Day - Change of school lunch menu

Thursday 16th May: Deadline for sign-up for May half term Bridge Kids Holiday Club

Thursday 16th May (after school): FOWPA Uniform Sale

Friday 17th May (after school): FOWPA Uniform Sale


Have a relaxing weekend.

Best wishes,

Chris Wathern 

Summer 1 - Week 3 - Healthy bodies, healthy minds, healthy hearts... 

English

In English this week, the children came to the end of their emotive writing, learning journey. Their main ‘Big write’ was to write a recount in the form of the letter. Within the letter, the children had to recall the old man’s time in the war, the moment he lost his friend and the time he first laid eyes on his wife. The content of the letter embedded skills and knowledge learnt across the learning journey.

Once the children completed their letters, they wrote them up into their star writer books!

Our next learning journey is based on the genre ‘Myths and Legends’ – The children will explore the text ‘The Legend of Podkin One-Ear’.

Maths

In Maths this week, we began looking at our old arithmetic papers during our carousel activity. The children had time to look at questions marked incorrectly and re-attempt them. They had support in addressing misconceptions and setting next step targets.

For the rest of the week, the children continued their shape learning journey. The morning work supported this, where the children had the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge of recognising and drawing angles accurately.

To end the journey, the children completed their end of unit assessments. They are then given their score backs and set targets accordingly.

Our next learning journey will be position and direction!

Wider  Curriculum

It was art, art and more art this week! The children began to make their insects/animals. They sculpted them using newspaper, tape and metal wire; all forming the body, head and legs.

Next, they used Modroc to protect and finalise the shape. They worked effectively to model the Modroc to fit their sculptures. Once dry, they would be ready to paint.

Some children still need to Modroc so we will continue this next week. However, the ones who were finished then went back to their sketch books to continue to develop their designs and explain their learning journey.

A special mention to Kyro and Harry who were sent to show their sketch books to Mr Wathern. These were then displayed in our shining stars assembly, WELL DONE BOYS!

Arena Health and Well-being Day

Year 5 on Friday, were lucky enough to have Arena in, to carry out a health and well-being day. The children engaged in a range of activities such as; ultimate frisbee, dodgeball, healthy eating orienteering, capture the flag and team building exercises.

We were incredibly lucky to have wonderful weather and it was great to see the children enjoying being active and working together outdoors.

We hope to have them back again soon!

Hope you have a lovely weekend,

Best Wishes,

Summer 1 - Week 2 and 3 - Amazing Africa

Over the last two weeks we have continued our topic based on' The World Outside our Window' by exploring a contrasting place to where we live in Cornwall -  the continent of Africa! We started by reading Handa's Surprise and discussed the setting and characters in the story. This led us to learning a wide range of facts all about Africa. We have looked at the 'big 5' animals that can be found there, what a carnivore, herbivore and an omnivore is,  the different types of homes that are there, the climate and the lovely fruits that Handa had in her basket. We really have been busy bees!

In maths, we have been blown away with how well they are getting on with learning their numbers up to 20. This week we have had a particularly focus on 1 more and 1 less of numbers up to 20.  The children have been true 'Have a Go Hippos' in their perseverance to understand this concept, and they are becoming more and more confident with this. Also, to help us recognise the numbers up to 20, we have been having a little game of bingo. Ask the children to tell you all about it! They absolutely love it and ask to play everyday! 

Reminders -

• Please ensure that bookbags come in daily.
  
• Sun safety - As we head into the Summer Term, we hope to see more of the sunshine and here are just a few reminders…

A busy couple of weeks!

It’s all go with our new topic, ‘Did the Cornish do a Proper Job?’ The children have completed Geography lessons where they located Wadebridge on a map and explored its locality within Cornwall. They then looked at map symbols and used this knowledge to make their own maps of Wadebridge!

This week we have been Historians and explored the history of the railway in our local area. The children learned that Bodmin and Wenford Railway had a branch line that went through Wadebridge and into Padstow. They were shocked to learn that the Camel trail was once a railway, and is now used by over 500,000 cyclists per year! We then learnt all about Tin Mines and the Tin Miners - the children had to find posters dotted around the classroom to add facts to their Tin Min Fact File. 

In PE we have been fortunate enough to have DT Coaching leading our lessons. They have been working on the pupils Striking and Fielding skills. They will spend a few weeks working on catching and throwing skills before being introduced to modified Cricket and Rounders games.

We are nearing the end of our English unit about the story, ‘The Mousehole Cat’. The children have been busy writing their own versions of the story, and adapting characters and settings. They have been using the 'Boxing up' technique for writing and planning each paragraph before writing it. We are so impressed with their use of vocabulary, adjectives, adverbs and sentence structures!

In maths we are learning about time – a tricky concept at this age, but Year 2 are taking on the challenge! It has been wonderful to hear the children tell each other what time it is throughout the school day!

Please keep up with the reading and times table rockstars at home, it really does make a difference.

Thank you,

The Year 2 Team

Courage

At the start of our Shining Stars Assembly today, we were treated to hearing music performed by Oscar, Phoebe, Imogen, Hana and Merryn.

The theme this week has been ‘Courage’ and it was fantastic to see the children show this in abundance taking to the stage to play in front of everyone. We look forward to offering this regular slot in our Shining Stars Assembly for children to showcase their skills. I know many of the children are very keen to sign up.

Teachers also recognised other acts of courage this week across the school. It is something we will continue to remind children of and support them with; especially to speak up (politely) for what they believe in or where they see unfairness.

The range and quality of learning around the classes this week has been impressive. I’ve seen amazing letter writing ‘from the trenches’ in Year 6 to Year 3 writing their own version of the Sand Horse story. Equally impressive has been the amazing Modroc artwork in Year 5.

A special well done to our youngest learners in the school (and a huge thank you to the staff) as they began the process of moving classrooms, as we re-purpose our EYFS environment. They have taken these changes in their stride.

Next week, one of the areas I want to explore further is the experience our children have at playtime and lunchtime. It’s such a crucial part of our children’s experience at school that I’m keen to see what is working well and what can be improved. I’ll be following this up with a discussion with the School Council to get their invaluable feedback.

House Points

Congratulations to this week’s winners, Puffins, earning 439 points. Our overall leaders this year so far are Choughs with an impressive 10,301 points!

Donation

We are really grateful to the Padstow Harbour Commissioners for their generous donation of £1000! We will be considering how best to use this for the benefit of our children.

Events next week

Monday 6th May Bank Holiday (School closed)

Tuesday 7th May 14:30-15:15 KS2 Parents/Carers Coffee Afternoon with Mr Wathern (Hall)

Tuesday 7th May 15:25 Year 4 Porthpean Residential Meeting for parents (4B classroom)

Thursday 9th May 08:45-09:30 EYFS/KS1 Parents/Carers Coffee Morning with Mr Wathern (Hall)

Thursday 9th May 14:15-15:00 EYFS/KS1 Parents/Carers Coffee Afternoon with Mr Wathern (Hall)

Friday 10th May Year 3 Alternative Sports Day

Friday 10th May 08:45-09:30 KS2 Parents/Carers Coffee Morning with Mr Wathern


Have a relaxing long weekend and we look forward to seeing everyone back next Tuesday.

Best wishes,

Chris Wathern

Summer 1 - Week 3 - Designing and constructing!

English
This week, the children have been completed their extended writing piece for the animated story: Alma. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the children’s recounts of this rather creepy story. Many of the children have managed to include figurative language, imagery, short, snappy sentences to build tension, descriptions of micro-expressions and ambitious vocabulary. Some children have written a dual narrative; most of their writing has been in 3rd person but a couple of paragraphs have been in 1st person (written from the perspective of the Alma Doll). It’s great to see the children experimenting with the motivations of this character - many children have opted for the doll to be sinister which makes for great reading!

Maths
We started this week by revising arithmetic style questions. The children were responsible for identifying areas they felt less confident in and working through targeted questions. It was fantastic to see so many children finding their weaknesses and turning them into strengths. Towards the end of the week, we worked on reasoning and problem-solving questions. These questions sparked some great discussions and it was interesting to see just how many different methods the children used to tackle the questions.

DT
In our wider curriculum learning, we have continued with our automata toys projects. The children have used hot-glue guns to construct a frame and have experimented with using different cams for the moving component of the toy. The cams didn’t always work straight away and it was wonderful to see children coming up with solutions to the problems they encountered. Finishing touches will be applied to the toys at the beginning of next week.

Reminders
Please keep encouraging your children to work through the CGP books which were sent home before Easter. Children who are not going on the residential should have received a letter informing you of the activities that they will be taking part in from Monday 17th – Wednesday 19th June. Please return the permission slips for the beach trip if you haven’t already. We’re also waiting on a few more permission slips for the school disco on 22nd May.

Enjoy you bank holiday weekend!
Best wishes,
The Year 6 Team

Year 3 Get Planting!

As part of our new topic- What Makes the World Survive and Thrive?- we have been busy sewing seeds and getting our Polytunnel into shipshape! 

We dug over the raised beds ready for seeds and planted a variety of vegetable seeds and flower seeds into seed trays.

As well as studying plants and how they grow as part of our topic, we are entering into some of the upcoming Royal Cornwall Show competitions with what we grow at school.  A slip has been sent home with information regarding bringing in recycled material and other items for these entries. 
 
This week we also began our 3 week Science experiment on how light and soil can affect a seeds germination and growth. We planted Runner Bean seeds in soil, tissue and cotton wool and have placed them in either direct sun light, artificial light or darkness. We will be checking up on the seeds each week to see which ones grow the best and why. 

Keep a look out for next weeks blog on our current DT project - designing and sewing our own cushions! 

Many thanks,
Year 3 Team 

It's been a very busy week here at WPA. Here are some of the highlights.

Eco Council

Our fantastic Eco Council led Monday's assembly marking Earth Day. They challenged everyone to play their part in making the school and Wadebridge litter free.

Fowey Festival

Congratulations to all children who entered the Fowey Festival competition recently. In our assembly we proudly presented certificates to children who were recognised by the judges.

FOWPA (Friends of Wadebridge Primary Academy)

I really enjoyed meeting with some of the committee members and hear about the fundraising and social events planned for the rest of the year. We’re really lucky to have such a dedicated team supporting our school community, whether through organising events or obtaining grants to help all our children at school.

Upcoming events:

Thursday 16th and Friday 17th May (after school) - Uniform Sale

Wednesday 22nd May - School Disco

14:15-15:00 Reception - Year 3
15:15-16:00 Year 4 - Year 6

Friday 28th June - Quiz Night at Wadebridge Town Hall (TBC)

Further details about these events will be sent out shortly.

RNLI

We were really grateful to the RNLI for their visit to speak with KS2 on Wednesday. The children were given a detailed explanation of the different flags they will come across at the beach. It was wonderful to see how well-informed they already were, but a little reminder never hurts. Two eager volunteers were selected to dress up as lifeguards; they really looked the part. Everyone was really attentive and showed great respect for the important messages shared.

Football Success

We are so proud of our Year 5 and 6 football team who competed on Tuesday. Despite not playing that many matches as a team, they showed great teamwork throughout the five rounds, winning the first four games without conceding a goal. What a fantastic achievement! Although we came runners up in the end, every player gave their all on the field. Thank you to the team for representing our school with such dedication and upholding our values.

Welcome Coffee Morning/Afternoon

You are warmly invited to come along to one of my welcome coffee mornings/afternoons in the school hall. I’ll share a bit about myself and the focus for the term. If you’re not able to come, I'm often around on the gate in the mornings should you want a chat. I will also be sharing the slides by email following the sessions.

There's no need to sign up, but if you can possibly attend the session according to your child's year group, that would help with numbers. If that isn't possible, please do still come along. If you have children across the school, you only need to come along once as the content will be the same in each session.

EYFS & KS1

Thursday 9th May 08:45-09:30 
Thursday 9th May 14:15-15:00

KS2

Tuesday 7th May 14:30-15:15
Friday 10th May 08:45-09:30

I’m hoping we can run regular coffee mornings throughout the school year. Not only might these be an opportunity to meet up with other parents and members of staff, we could also offer various workshops based on your feedback.

Dates

Please look out for the email today with dates for the rest of the term. If there are any updates, we will let you know as soon as possible. Key dates can also be found on our website under ‘Events Diary’.

Have a great weekend.

Chris Wathern