The children of Key Stage Two were visited by two lifeguards from the RNLI. The children learned about the different flags used on beaches, how rescues take place, how to care for themselves in an emergency and what to do if they get into danger.

For more information please use this link.

https://rnli.org/what-we-do/lifeguards-and-beaches

It was an absolute honour to see children across Key Stage Two performing at Torbay Music Festival on Friday 1^st March. From songs about Haytor View to songs about Watermelons, every performance was a joy to watch and listen to, feeling very personal to our community school.

We wish to thank all parents and carers who were able to attend the event and share in the wonderful experiences.

As a school, we use a learning scheme called Jigsaw Education to support us in delivering the PSHE curriculum. This half term, each class has focussed on Going for Goals in line with our assembly focus. Here are some examples of learning across the school this half-term:

JIGSAW FAMILY LEARNING

To support your child to reflect on the learning that has taken place over this half term, try asking them some questions about the Goals they have considered in class:

• What goals have you set at school? • What goal would you like to set for home? • What do you need to do to achieve your goal?

To extend their thinking a little, try asking:

• How do you feel when something is difficult? • How do you feel when you have achieved a goal?

In December, Year 5 took part in Newton Abbot’s annual Lantern Parade celebration led by Karol Da Silva and the team from  ‘Creation Myths Puppets’.

Firstly, we attended a workshop run by Karol and the Creation Myths Puppets team in order to create our lanterns for the parade. This year’s theme was ‘The Wild Creatures Are Coming to Town’ and we were the gnomes. Alongside another local school, we spent the day crafting with willow to create our gnome frame and structure before decorating it with tissue paper. We worked together as a team to ensure that everyone was successful- it was amazing seeing the children supporting one another and as always the adults got stuck in too!

Then, on the evening of Wednesday 13th December we all joined together with other schools across Newton Abbot to take part in the Lantern Parade itself. We spent some time at Bearnes Primary School getting organised and handing out lanterns. Our school was the final school in the procession and we walked behind a giant fox! We had an absolutely amazing time walking through town as part of the parade and thoroughly enjoyed the story and music at the end of the procession…even if we were a bit TOO close to the speakers! Everyone got to take their gnomes home with them after the parade. A huge thank you to everyone who could attend and made it an amazing night! Keep an eye on YouTube as footage from the parade may be uploaded.

The talented artists from the Tunnel of Love project came in on 9th November to help us make poppies for our Remembrance Day event on Friday. These poppies will be “planted” on our courtyard before being moved to Penn Inn roundabout ready for Remembrance Day itself.

Year 5 appreciated the opportunity to craft their own unique poppies and remember those who have fought for our freedom and our own loved ones who are no longer with us.

Wow! What a fantastic trip we had. It was amazing seeing the children work hard, collaborate on unusual and physical tasks. Perhaps most importantly it would heart-warming to see them support one another both in our activities and during the sleepover.

On Day 1 we enjoyed river scrambling and tree climbing in two teams before tucking into a jacket potato. In the evening, we got into our smaller teams for the adventure race and made our team flags. We then got our bags ready for the next day and had some free time on the field.

The children slept peacefully- or at least were lovely and quiet until morning. We enjoyed a sausage sandwich before commencing our adventure race which included abseiling, zip lining and river crossing. After a pizza lunch we set off back for school. What a busy 36 hours!

Back in the summer term, Year 5 and 3 celebrated National Writing Day together. With support from Miss Shopland and Mrs Russell, both classes mixed themselves up to work with people from each class. During the afternoon, children played a game of ‘consequences’ creating a series of different and unusual stories as a result of children contributing a sentence each. Children also spent some time looking at famous characters from books thinking about their qualities (if known) and using adjectives to describe their appearance. Both classes enjoyed their time together and worked hard. Well done Year 3 and 5!

TIME FOR AN UPDATE!

So far in Spring and Summer term we have had some crafting fun.

In March, we followed our instructional text ‘How to Make a Bum Sandwich’ as part of our Incredible Edibles writing sequence. In order to truly understand the instructions in front of us we had a go at making a bum sandwich ourselves. On the whole, it tasted a LOT better than it sounds!

Then, at the end of the Spring term we put this instructional writing knowledge to good practice and wrote a set of instructions explaining ‘How to make a spinning planet project.’ We had a go at making our own spinning planet projects before we wrote our final draft of instructions. We loved decorating our boxes and creating our own weird and wonderful planets… including Planet Capybara! Our projects were mostly successful, with only a few planets not spinning as we had hoped.

Before May half term, we had two whole days of crafting. Thursday saw us channeling our inner ‘Alberto Giacommeti’s’ and creating statues that showed movement. We used crafting write to keep our structures strong. Some of us found that we had to adapt our original designs to make the statue work better. Most importantly though, we had a great time. Check out our creations!

On the final Friday we completed another D&T project, making a phone case. We made sure that we added a seam allowance onto a template of our devices or chosen size… this was to make sure the device would actually fit afterwards! We then spent the rest of the day working together to perfect a blanket stitch or running stitch to keep our phone cases together. There was some frustrating with thread coming loose or becoming knotted but we worked well together as a team to get the job done. It was a real pleasure to see the master sewers in action supporting their classmates. Well done Year 5.