In such unprecedented times, we are developing ways to support the children in their home learning, so please see below for information. Thank you for your support so far and I hope we can support you too, particularly with your child’s learning.

Don’t forget, I am only at the end of an email, if you get stuck with anything or need something explained please get in contact; I would also love to hear about your home learning experiences. My email is sporter@pelyntprimary.co.uk

The children who were in school at the end of last week came home with a home learning book. This is to ensure that they can collate all the learning that they do at home. These class blogs will provide regular home learning tasks and activities that can be completed over the course of a week.

We understand that being isolated at home is going to be challenging, and we also know that many parents/carers will have to continue working at home during this time. Therefore, whilst we are setting work, we also appreciate how difficult this may be. During this first week, we have provided some simpler tasks. We hope that this will enable you and your child to establish a routine whereby you can make time for home learning. After Easter, we will be able to provide more focused tasks to offer opportunities for challenge and new learning.

Please find attached the documents you will need this week to support your child and the following website links that may be useful. I have uploaded the homework grid that was in homework books this term; there are some suggestions of activities that the children could complete to continue their learning about the Vikings.

After the Easter break, we will continue this on a weekly basis and will keep you informed of any updates. So please look at the class blog again on Tuesday 14th April and each week from then onwards.

Some children were absent at the end of last week and will therefore not have received a home learning book. The class teachers will communicate directly via email with those parents after Easter; this will ensure that for those families no longer in isolation it may be possible to arrange collection of the children’s belongings and home learning books.

If you would like the TT Rockstars login (they were glued into your pink homework books already, but some of these might have gone missing) then please drop me a quick email so I can send these back out to you.

Some useful websites:

Oxford Owl is a great website for free e-books, English, maths and other fun activities. Click on Oxford Owl for Home: https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

White Rose are currently adding maths home learning activities, a group at a time from Early Years to Year 6: https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/

World Book Online have made 3000 books available to read online: https://worldbook.kitaboo.com/reader/worldbook/index.html?usertoken=Mjk5MzQ6MTpJUjA5MjAxNjoyOmNsaWVudDE2OTc6MTY5NzoyMjE2Mjg4OjE6MTU4NDM4MDExMzA2Mjp1cw==

Phonics Hero offer a free 7 day trial and is worth looking at for phonics support: https://www.phonicshero.com/

The National Literacy Trust have developed a portal called Family Zone where you can access reading and writing activities which are appropriate to the age of your child: https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/?mc_cid=1a89f05f20&mc_eid=379abc23a6

Twinkl provides a huge range of learning resources for all areas of learning and are currently offering these free using this weblink and use the code UKTWINKLEHELPS: https://www.twinkl.co.uk/offer

iMoves provides physical activities linked to all areas of the curriculum and is currently free to use. No password is needed: http://theimovement.com/

Please also see the Useful Website and Apps list which is uploaded to this page.

We've had another busy week of learning in Class 4.

During our English lessons this week, we have been learning different key skills to help improve our story writing. We have learnt about the active and passive voice. The children tried to write examples of both, to include in their story. We also learnt how to use direct speech effectively in our stories. The children started by trying to edit some passages of writing, which were not punctuated accurately; they then learnt how to punctuate direct speech accurately, not just using inverted commas in the correct places but the layout of speech and the other important types of punctuation that also need to be included. They then compared their original passages, which they had initially edited, to that of passages with accurate speech layout and punctuation and noticed any differences. The children also learnt how to use speech to convey character description and advance action. They then used their improved understanding to write a conversation for their stories.

During our maths lessons, we have been learning about measurements; we have currently focused on finding out the perimeter and area. We found missing lengths and started solving fluency questions as well as problem solving ones based on area. Some children also started learning about converting between measurements too.

In our forest school lesson we learnt about the properties of shape; they then had to use different resources to create the different shapes. Some children drew in the mud, others chose chalk and some used sticks. Because it was particularly bad weather on Monday some children also decided to use indoor resources too!

Our RE lesson this week saw us learn about Viking gods. The children learnt different names of gods who the Vikings worshipped and learnt what they were the god of. They then discussed their own beliefs and designed their own god, thinking about what they would be god of, what they would look like and whether there would be any particular symbol or object, which would represent their god.

In our PSHE lesson this week, we looked at creating our own positive quotes. We tried creating these in different forms, some children used the computer to paint, whilst others used watercolours; all children tried to paint these in the style of the illustrations from the book, ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’.

In our PE lesson, the children continued their dance topic with our sports partner, Arena; they have been mastering some street dance moves and have all gained confidence with these. The session even introduced a chair to incorporate into their dance!

As a school, we completed some physical activities for Sports Relief as well as having assemblies to inform our children. It was great to see how much the children already knew and how they showed an understanding of those less fortunate than themselves. Thank you to everybody who made a donation to Sports Relief.
*Class 4 parent consultations will take place on Tuesday 17th and Thursday 19th March.
Please sign up using the book opposite the office.

**Please note that there will not be any after school clubs on these days
** Things to remember for next week:
*Forest school clothes need to be in school for Monday afternoon
*P.E kits will be needed for Tuesday afternoon
*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates

We had a fabulous end to term, where we presented our recent learning to the other classes. The other classes thoroughly enjoyed our performances and gave us great feedback.

During our English lessons this week, the children learnt about speaking to audiences. They discussed what a good performance would sound and look like; they then practised these ideals and gave each other feedback on how they could improve- ready for sharing in front of the other classes. I was extremely proud of every single member of Class 4 as they all shared to the other classes.


During our computing lessons, we learnt how to retrieve and record information from the internet and how to present it. We learnt about search engines, how reliable the information is and how the information is ranked. We used this research to aid our presentations to the rest of the school. 

During maths this week, the children learnt about the properties of shape. They learnt about angles including the angles within a triangle. The children improved their ability to use a protractor, which they used to measure and draw accurate angles. They then used their understanding to draw particular shapes with particular properties. These maths lessons linked with an art lesson focusing on Kandinsky’s artwork; the children created they own interpretation of ‘Composition VIII’. They used their understanding of shape to try and incorporate particular properties into their picture.

In our science lessons this week, the children continued to learn about how exercise and diet effects them.
For our final P.E session this half term, we put our netball skills and understanding of the rules to the test and played mini games of netball. These were officiated by the children and demonstrated how far their understanding has come in the last few weeks.

*World Book Day- Thursday 5th March. This year our theme is ‘Snuggle up with a Story’. The children can come to school in their pyjamas or onesies and bring a book to share with others.

*Class 4 parent consultations will take place on Tuesday 17th and Thursday 19th March. A letter will be sent out after half term with further information.

Things to remember for the first week back:
*P. E will be on a Tuesday afternoon until the Easter break so please ensure PE kits are in school for Tuesday

*Forest School will be on a Monday afternoon until the Easter break

*Landrake run letters to be returned to the office if you are participating

In our English lessons, the children have been learning to edit and improve written work; they focused on trying to spot different types of errors. The children managed to notice punctuation errors including, missing brackets, commas, full stops and missing capital letters for proper nouns. They also noticed grammatical and spelling errors including the wrong ‘their’ and misspelt contractions. In fact, they also noticed that contractions were used when they should not be included in formal writing. They then used this understanding to improve your work and other children’s work. In our handwriting lessons, the children have been focusing on joining letters accurately- paying particular attention to double letters, ‘m’s and ‘s’s.

In our maths learning this week, the children improved their understanding of percentages. They learnt different ways of finding a percentage of an amount- from noticing the fraction equivalent and dividing to find the fraction of the amount to working out 10 and 1% by dividing by 10 and 100 and subsequently finding differing percentages from that information. The children all feel a lot more confident with working our percentages of amounts now and will put this understanding to good use solving problems next week.

This week in our P.E lesson, we continued to learn netball skills including how to create space. We played small-sided games to work on these skills. We are excited to see how our netball team get on this week as they play their first game of the year.

During our science and topic lessons, the children continued to learn about a balanced diet - in groups they discussed and planned three balanced meals. They thought about the health benefits of the meals and what affect making certain food choices would have on our bodies. They made sure to include all the food groups and used food labels to help inform their decisions- trying to keep to the recommended amounts for the day- including keeping hydrated.

During our French lesson, we have started to ask and reply to questions in French. The children refreshed their understanding of numbers, colours and animals in French and then learnt how to ask and answer questions relating to these topics. Next week we hope to hold longer conversations that are more detailed.

Things to remember for next week:
*FOPS ‘Bag2School’ collection from Pelynt Pre-School on Wednesday 12th February at 9am. Please bag up any unwanted items of clean clothes/soft toys and drop off to the Pre-School. Please note no school or work uniforms are accepted. FOPS will then receive payment depending on the weight of the bags. Many thanks for your help in raising money for Pelynt Academy.
*Forest school clothes need to be in school for Tuesday afternoon
*P.E kits will be needed for Friday afternoon
*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates

It feels like we’ve had an extremely busy week.
On Monday, Mrs Riley took a boxercise session for us. She worked us really hard- 'our hearts were beating really fast.' She explained the benefits of raising our heart rate in order to improve our fitness levels and to keep us healthy. We all had such a great time.

This week, in our science lessons, we started to learn about a balanced diet. We learnt about the main food groups and their benefits on our body. We then focused on sugar content. The children made predictions about which foods and drinks had the most in and then we learnt about food labelling to work out whether we they were right or not. The children used the labels to work out the sugar content in different items in 100g and per serving size. They then measured the amount of sugar into clear bags to put on a display to remind them and other children to make healthy choices.

During our English lessons, the children wrote a non-chronological report based on their own creature. They learnt about different sentence structures and then tried to include these within their writing to help improve their sentence structure. The children also worked particularly hard to use interesting vocabulary.

In maths, we continued with our fraction learning. We learnt to find fractions of amounts, with some children learning to find unit fractions of amounts and others finding non-unit fractions of amounts. All children then learnt to solve problems using their understanding. The children also took an arithmetic assessment to see where they feel confident and where they feel they need to improve. This week, we also learnt about circles. The children used a compass to draw their own circles and labelled the circumference, radius and diameter. They found the relationship between the radius and diameter.

During our art lesson, we focused on Kandinsky, a famous abstract artist. We particularly focused on his concentric circles painting, which we linked to our maths lesson. The children learnt about mixing colour and experimented with mixing different colours from primary and secondary colours to use in their picture. 

Things to remember for next week:
*Forest school clothes need to be in school for Tuesday afternoon
*P.E kits will be needed for Friday afternoon
*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates

*PE kits needed on Monday for a topic linked exercise session with Mrs Riley*

This week a group from our class took part in a singing event with other Bridge schools. The children sang the song, which we wrote about climate change. It was a great opportunity to perform it front of a large audience. They sang beautifully!

During our English lessons, the children started learning about non-chronological reports; they started to plan their own report based on ‘Nian’, a creature from Chinese culture. They all designed their own creature by mixing a few animals together and they used the internet to research information about those animals to support their plan. We started looking at sentence structure and how we can vary the structure of our sentences to improve how our writing sounds.

In our maths lessons, the children reminded themselves of all four operations- thinking about which one(s) they need to focus on to improve. We also started learning about finding fractions and percentages of amounts. We will continue this learning next week.

During our reading lessons, the children tried a SATs style paper; they practised working and thinking independently. They then reflected on their answers and discussed how they got them.

During our science lessons, the children continued learning about how the heart pumps blood around the body. In partners, they created a picture to represent the circulatory system- some used colour string to represent the oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood.
This week the children also learnt more about classification; they learnt how living things are classified into vertebrates and invertebrates. They then learnt about other ways living things are classified and the features, which go alongside these classifications. This learning then helped inform their English writing too. Because it is Chinese New Year this weekend, we also had a Chinese themed science experiment. Firstly, we learnt the story behind how the years were chosen for the animals for the Chinese zodiac. We also carried out a science investigation this week; the children made predictions, planned and recorded the results. Then they used their results to check whether their predictions were accurate. Because it is Chinese New Year this weekend, the investigation had a Chinese element to it. During the investigation, all children had a go at using chopsticks- with some increasingly slimy substances.

During our P.E lesson, we learnt the positions and rules for netball. We learnt the rules well-enough, that we were able to play a large sided game- with everyone remembering which areas they were and were not allowed inside of. On Monday, we look forward to an exercise session with Mrs Riley : )

Things to remember for next week:
*Forest school clothes need to be in school for Tuesday afternoon
*P.E kits will be needed for Monday afternoon
*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates

*Please return singing consent forms- if you are going on the singing trip*

*Forest School clothing not required on Tuesday due to singing trip*

*Residential deposit due this week*

In our maths learning this week, the children finished off their statistics learning- focusing on line and pie graphs, they will need this understanding for topic work during the rest of this half term. The children then moved on to learning about fraction, decimal and percent equivalents.

During our English lessons, the children finished drafting their poems, edited, and improved them- making sure word choices were ambitious and not repeated. They then wrote their improved versions up in their best handwriting. During this, the children reflected on their handwriting and they now know how they need to improve their handwriting further. They have also been thinking about what makes a good performance when sharing their work; some children shared their poems with the class.

During our science lesson, we learnt about the circulation system. We learnt about the different parts of the heart and how oxygen is pumped around the body. We were intrigued by oxygenated and deoxygenated blood and will continue our learning about this next week!
In our R.E lesson this week, the children learnt about the story of ‘Nian’, which is a story from Chinese culture about the origins of Chinese New Year. The children designed their own creature based on this story, which will actually link to our next English writing topic. 
This week in our music lesson, the children finished writing their ‘Climate Change’ song, which some children will be sharing in front of other BridgeMat children and staff on Tuesday.
During our Forest School lesson, the children planned walks around Pelynt and local areas; they learnt about maps in more detail including contour lines and symbols. They then used string to help measure the distance of their walk- thinking about the scale.

Thank you to Mrs Goddard for coming in to Class 4 to give us a talk on handwashing; we all REALLY enjoyed using the ‘glo germ’ to see our hands under the UV light! We got to see which parts of our hands we have been missing when washing them. This linked perfectly with our topic and hopefully the demonstration will help us all stay a little healthier this year!
For our topic we have also been learning basic yoga poses; we have been trying to use this as a time for quiet, self reflection. Our poses are currently a work in progress!!! 

On Friday, we welcomed two visitors from the NSPCC into our class; they gave us an interesting workshop about staying safe and gave us ideas of what to do if we do not feel safe. The visitors were extremely impressed with our focus and our level of understanding already.

Things to remember for next week:

*Singing trip on Tuesday
*Residential deposit 
*P.E kits will be needed for Friday afternoon
*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning

*Please read the events diary on this website for dates

Happy New Year to you all.

It has been great to welcome everyone back this week into our new topic, ‘Health and Wellbeing.’ We started the week looking into our topic question, ‘What does it mean to be healthy?’ The children created their own questions from this to help guide the topic in the direction of their interests.

We have a new reading area in class, called, ‘Read and Ride’, where the children can cycle on an exercise bike whilst another child is reading to them. We have a hotly contested competition- seeing who can travel the furthest in 2 minutes. I am currently not winning the competition- but watch this space : )

In guided reading this week, we have been focusing on understanding different genres. The children worked in groups to sort a range of books into the correct genre. They were also specifically looking at the genres you can have within fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts, which caused some fantastic debate and discussion within class. The children also designed a library card, which will be used when they visit the library to know where they got their book from so it can be returned to the correct place. The card will also act as a record of books the children have personally read and has a column for the children to record the genre of book too. The hope is for children to be reading texts from different genre; there is a competition in class to see who can read 16 different genres first!

In our English lessons, the children have been reminding themselves about the different word classes. They have also learnt about prepositional and expanded noun phrases. The children have used this understanding to start planning a poem based on sport stars, which uses specific grammar features in a set structure. To help their planning, they have also been learning about similes, metaphors, and imagery within poetry.

During our maths lessons, the children have been learning about statistics; they have interpreted data from pictograms, bar and line graphs and solved problems; they will be moving on to pie charts next. The children have also gathered and recorded their own data from the other classes to assess their understanding of what it means to be healthy. They have done this because after Class 4 have learnt about health and wellbeing, they will then be teaching the other children in school about being healthy. They will then reassess the understanding of the other classes and see whether their input has had any effect.


Things to remember for next week:
*Forest school clothes need to be in school for Tuesday
*P.E kits will be needed for Friday afternoon
*Reading books and reading records - please initial and comment in your child’s reading record so we can sign off their karate bands 4*Homework books to be handed in on Thursday morning
*Please read the events diary on this website for dates