Governor Monitoring Visits
Mrs Reeves, Mrs Morrell-Davies and Mrs Rowe have all been in school across the week to visit lessons and talk to our children and staff. This term they are looking at safeguarding, attainment and progress, pupil premium, EYFS provision, our website and the wider curriculum. It is always lovely to have them in school, and they were all very impressed with the levels of engagement and learning enthusiasm throughout the school.

Staffing News
We are delighted to announce that Mrs Ellie Jackson, who is a published children’s author, and qualified teacher, will be joining us as an additional Teaching Assistant after half-term.

Instrumental Lessons
Instrumental lessons started this week, with the guitar and keyboard being particularly popular choices! The children have been buzzing with enthusiasm for their new found interest. There are still lessons available for a range of different instruments. Please contact the school office for more details.

Pre-School and School Parent/Carer Consultations
Just a reminder that these are next week, so please book your appointment, if you haven’t done so already. We would like to talk with the parents/carers of every child, so if you are unable to come into school and would prefer a phone call, please let us know. When you come for your appointment, please enter the school through the Class 2 doors, go through to the hall and wait for your child’s teacher to collect you. Your child’s work will be set out for you to look at before or after your appointment. No clubs will run on these days, apart from Pelynt Pirates.

Harvest Monday 9th October at 2.30pm, St Nun Church
Families and friends are invited to our church Harvest celebration with Reverend Allen. We would be very grateful for donations of tins/dried foods, to build a mountain on the altar. These will support local people experiencing poverty, via the Liskeard and Looe Foodbank.

We hope that you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing lots of you at Harvest!

Kind regards,
Mrs Abigail Oliver Head of School

School Council
This week we held our School Council Election. Candidates presented to their class about why they should be elected. Voting has taken place and we are very excited to reveal that the new School Council members are:

Class 1: Reception Emilia and Maya
Class 2: Year 1 Emily Year 2 Alecsander
Class 3: Year 3 Frankie Year 4 Daisy
Class 4: Year 5 George Year 6 Scarlet

National Fitness Day
On Thursday, it was National Fitness Day and children and staff celebrated this with a Danceathon fundraising event. Children from Pre-School to Year 6 danced non-stop and raised £54 for playtime equipment. The challenge set was 15 minutes for Pre-School and 30 minutes for Classes 1 and 2, but they managed the full 60 minutes that was completed by Classes 3 and 4! Well done everyone!

Outdoor Learning Enrichment Days
Next week classes 2-4 have their Outdoor Learning Days:
Monday 25th September: Class 2 (no PE on this day)
Tuesday 26th September: Class 3
Friday 29th September: Class 4 (no PE on this day and please note the change of day).
The children should come to school in clothes suitable for getting muddy and must have suitable footwear and a waterproof coat. If your child wishes to wear wellies, please bring these in a bag to change into.

Paignton Zoo Whole School Art and Science Trip 
Anyone with a child in classes 1-4 who hasn’t yet returned the Whole School Art and Science Trip to Paignton Zoo form, please do so as soon as possible.

Club Spaces
Clubs started this week. We still have some spaces in some clubs, so please see Mrs Thompson if you would like your child to join any of these:
Tues 12pm Choir (all classes) SPACES
Wed 3.15-4.15pm Multisports (Class 1 & 2) SPACES
Wed 3.15-4.15pm Art (Class 3 & 4) FULL
Thurs 3.15-4.15pm Yoga (Class 1 & 2) SPACES
Thurs 3.15-4.15pm Football (Class 3 & 4) FULL
Friday 12pm Cross Country (Class 3 & 4) SPACES

Celebration Assembly
Values certificates/being kind awards will be awarded to the following children this week:
Class 1: Thea, Josh, Nolan
Class 2: Alecsander, Isaac, Harrison, Emily, Billie
Class 3: Logan, Brody, Halle, Scarlett
Class 4: Alfie B-E, Eryn, Ruby, Micah, Alben
EDNA Best Attendance Award (Every Day Never Away) Class 2 (97%) OTIS Best Punctuality Award (On Time In School) Class 2

We hope that you have a fantastic weekend!

Kind regards,
Mrs Abigail Oliver (Head of School) 

Dear parents and carers,

This week we held Welcome Meetings for classes 2-4. We hope that you found these to be a helpful introduction to your child’s class. On Monday 18th September, families in classes 1 and 2 are invited to a workshop about supporting phonics at home. Please wait at the main entrance at 3.30pm.

Next week we will be holding our School Council Elections. Each class will elect two children to work with Mrs Forbes to make our school even better. The children are bringing home a form to fill in, if they wish to be considered for the role. Forms need to be brought into school to present to the class on Wednesday 20th September.

As part of our drive to help children to retain information in their long term memory, we are introducing a new maths initiative this year, called KIRFS (Key Instant Recall Facts). These are the most important maths facts that we want the children to remember. We have mapped out what needs to be learnt at home each term. These will be coming home in the next few days. Children will also practise these in school and be assessed on these across the term, to see how they are doing.

On National Fitness Day, Thursday 21st September we are having our first fundraising event. We would like the children to come to school in their PE kit, even it is not their usual PE day. Part of the day will be a Danceathon! For £1, the children will be seeing if they can meet the challenge of dancing non-stop (15 minutes for Pre-School, 30 minutes for Classes 1 and 2 and 60 minutes for Classes 3 and 4).

Would you like to get more involved in school life? We are looking for relatives and other local people in our community to come into school once a week to hear children read, and to read stories to them. We are calling these ‘Reading Champions’. If you, or someone you know, can help, please see Mrs Thompson in the school office, as a DBS check needs to be carried out for volunteers.

We hope that you have a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,

Mrs Abigail Oliver (Head of School) Kind regards

Welcome back to school, and a special welcome to our new families, our new teaching assistants, Miss Carr and Mrs Coombe and our new cleaner Amanda. We hope that you’ve all had a really lovely break and that the children are looking forward to an exciting year of learning ahead. We have emailed a list of dates for the year and will be in touch should any of these change. For classes 1-4, you will see that we have welcome meetings coming up, which are a great opportunity to meet your child’s teacher and find out about the curriculum. We also have a phonics meeting for families of classes 1 and 2, to support reading at home.

Ofsted
We are delighted to be able to formally tell you that our Ofsted grading is now ‘Good’ in all areas, following our inspection in June. We were previously graded as ‘Requires Improvement’ in all areas. This is a huge step forward for the school and our local community. An enormous thank you to our wonderful staff and children, who have worked so hard to achieve this, and for the support of our families. We have emailed a copy of the report home, which is also available on the Ofsted website. Here is a summary of some key points. We also received several hours of feedback, so the report is just a summary of this. Please note that ‘leaders’ refers to not just me, but the teachers who are leaders of an area of the curriculum and those who lead across Bridge Schools Trust, who have supported and guided us in this journey.

Quality of Education: Good
• All pupils follow a broad, challenging and well-planned curriculum which also includes opportunities for outdoor learning.
• The input of pupils and parents is a valued part of the information gathered. Staff use all of this detail to support pupils with SEND effectively, both in and beyond the classroom.
• Teachers share learning journeys with pupils to help them to understand how their knowledge links together.
• All staff are trained to teach the phonics curriculum and they do so effectively.
• Leaders regularly check the progress pupils make. Pupils who struggle receive support to help them catch up quickly.

Behaviour and Attitudes: Good
• Pupils show positive attitudes to their learning.
• They listen and respond well to staff.
• Children use their manners and share nicely with each other.

Personal Development: Good
• Personal development is an important part of the wider curriculum.
• Pupils are encouraged to share their views.
• They are involved in many decisions about changes to school life.

Leadership and Management: Good
• Pelynt is a welcoming school.
• Leaders have high expectation for what pupils can achieve. They are ambitious for pupils.
• They place importance on the school’s values. For example, pupils are keen to show their curiosity and enthusiasm in how they approach their learning.
• The wellbeing of staff is important to leaders. They consider the views of staff when making decisions.
• Staff agree they are well supported. They say leaders are approachable and flexible.
• Staff are proud to work at this school.
• Parents are supportive of the school. They appreciate the ‘family feel’ that leaders have created.
• Leaders provide staff with clear strategies to support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).
• Subject leaders have carefully considered the knowledge they want pupils to learn. For example, in art and design, pupils gradually build their knowledge of different artistic processes. By Year 5 and 6, pupils produce artwork in sketchbooks of a very high quality.
• Pupils enjoy the positive relationships that exist with staff.
• Leaders keep detailed safeguarding records. They take quick and decisive action, including making a referral to an external agency, if a child is at risk.
• Pupils are safe in school. They are confident to talk to a trusted adult with any concerns.

Early Years (Pre-School and Class 1): Good
• Children in the early years benefit from a calm and nurturing environment in which they follow well-established routines.
• They happily re-tell and act out stories.
• Adults model a variety of language choices for pupils to use when sharing books.

As part of their continuous drive for improvement, Ofsted also provide schools with recommendations. We only received one, which is fantastic, as schools are often given several. The recommendation is one that has been given to lots of schools who have been inspected recently. It asks us to look at improving how children keep information in their long-term memory in some subjects, as some children who were asked to recall facts from learning in previous years were unable to do so confidently during the inspection. This was a snapshot of the memory of a small number of children, but we take that onboard, and it will be something that we will continue to improve.

The whole team at Pelynt and across Bridge Schools are delighted with the outcome of this inspection which reflects the hard work of everyone in school and across the trust over the last four years. We hope that you, as our parent community, also share our feeling of success. Please do help us to spread the word, we have a few spaces left in most classes!

Outdoor Learning
To provide the children with the opportunity to complete more complex projects, you will also see on the dates list that classes 2, 3 and 4 have whole days allocated to Outdoor Learning each term this year. On these days we would like them to come to school wearing home clothes and sturdy footwear that you don’t mind getting muddy. Children in Pre-School and Reception will have weekly sessions in our forest throughout the year, and daily outdoor learning opportunities. These children need name labelled waterproofs and wellies in school every day for these activities please.

P.E. lessons for Classes 1-4 in the Autumn Term
Class 1: Tuesday and Thursday
Class 2: Monday and Wednesday
Class 3: Monday and Wednesday
Class 4: Tuesday and Friday

On these days children should come to school in their PE kit, which is a yellow or white t shirt, green or black PE shorts and trainers. In cooler months they may wear a tracksuit jacket with this and replace the shorts with leggings or tracksuit bottoms.

Pelynt Pirates Wrap Around Care
Spaces are still available for our new before and after school care club. This runs from 8-8.40am and 3.15-5.45pm. Please see Mrs Thompson in the office for more details. If we receive Pupil Premium funding for your child, breakfast club is available free of charge. Please speak to Mrs Oliver to discuss this.

Instrumental Lessons
This year we will be starting payable group and individual instrumental lessons with visiting teachers. The children were visited this week by some of the teachers and a letter was emailed home about how to book.

Autumn Term Clubs
These start on Tuesday 19th September

Tues 12pm Choir (all classes)
Wed 3.15-4.15pm Multi-sports (Class 1 & 2)
Wed 3.15-4.15pm Art (Class 3 & 4)
Thurs 3.15-4.15pm Yoga (Class 1 & 2)
Thurs 3.15-4.15pm Football (Class 3 & 4)
Friday 12pm Cross Country (Class 3 & 4)

Please book via secretary@pelyntprimary.co.uk We hope that your child has a wonderful year. As always, please do get in touch if there is anything that you wish to chat about relating to your child or family. You can catch me at the front door at drop off, by the gate at collection, or email head@pelyntprimary.co.uk.

Kind regards,
Mrs Abigail Oliver (Head of School)