It has been another wonderful week at Brunel and the children have been thoroughly enjoying delving into their learning adventures.

It is always a joy to see their curiosity and enthusiasm shining through in every classroom. This week also saw the launch of our very first Two Tyre Tuesday for KS2, which was a huge success! The children embraced the challenge brilliantly, and we are already looking forward to building on this momentum in the weeks ahead.

A gentle reminder that our Harvest Festival will be taking place on Monday. Every child in school will have a part to play, and we would love our families to join us for this special celebration. The service will begin at 1:15pm, and we are delighted that Rev. Parkman will be joining us for the occasion.

Looking ahead to next week, on Friday we will be marking World Mental Health Day. To raise awareness and show our support, the children are invited to come to school wearing something yellow - whether that's a t-shirt, a badge, a bow, a hairband, or even just a splash of colour somewhere in their outfit. As always, thank you for your continued support.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend, and I hope you enjoy browsing through this week's edition of the Brunel Bulletin.

Duckpool Diary...

Welcome to another busy week in Duckpool class!

We've been finishing the final drafts of our stories in English and as it was National Poetry Day on Thursday, we've written some Harvest Haiku, really focusing upon making each word count.

In our oracy work this week, we have concentrated on using our physical oracy skills; using our voice, body language and aiming to engage our audience effectively. We combined this with speaking like a geographer to demonstrate our knowledge about the water cycle.

This week's science centred on an investigation into the thermal insulating properties of various materials. So we considered the best design to keep a teacher's coffee warm on the playground with some surprising results. Please ask your child which material proved to be the best.

Tuesday saw our very first Two Tyre Tuesday in KS2, which was an opportunity for children to bring scooters (plus helmets of course) to school have some playtime fun. This was a huge success, many thanks to Mrs Williamson for organising.

Also, as promised here are some of our fabulous self-portraits, how many of our class  do you recognise?

Next Monday will be our Harvest assembly, each class has been working on their contribution. Thank you for all your generous contributions to the Saltash foodbank.

Have a great weekend.

This week, Year 6 have been exploring prime numbers, factors and multiples, using their reasoning skills to spot patterns and solve problems. Year 5 have been rounding large numbers to the nearest 10,000 and 100,000, and have shown great confidence with place value. In Science, we've been investigating shadows and discovered that moving an opaque object closer to a light source makes the shadow larger. In English, we've started a new unit on non-chronological reports and are beginning to understand the features. It's been a great week of learning!

The spellings for this week are different suffixes: appreciate, appreciating, appreciation, creating, creation, cycling, faded, fading, famous, grimy

Here are the KIRFs for this week:

Rocksteady
Today, Zak from Rocksteady Music did an assembly for the whole school and then led junior and infant workshops. Please ask your child about this experience as they will be far better placed to describe their enjoyment of it than I can say through a few words - it was brilliant! We have sent out a leaflet about Rocksteady and lessons they can provide. However, they will need to secure enough children to make it viable.


Morning Maths


We have changed our morning routine this term. On arrival, Year 1 to Year 6 children do their daily maths warm-up tasks. This involves practicing their Key Instant Recall Facts, some daily arithmetic questions and some flashback tasks (revisiting an area of maths outside of their current unit of work). This morning maths is separate to their daily maths lesson. It is an important opportunity to rehearse skills and secure knowledge that will help children in their daily maths lessons. As the children are doing these tasks, the teacher will work with a small pre-teach group. This is for those children who may need some additional input before their daily maths lesson to ensure they can access their learning with minimal support. 
For this system to benefit all children, they need to be on time for school. If children arrive for 8.40am, the time we open the doors to let them in, they will benefit the most. Children arriving at 8.50am, will have less time to complete these task and children arriving late will miss out altogether. Please make every effort to ensure your child benefits from this morning maths by arriving punctually for school. We plan to open our doors to parent carers soon for you to join your children for one of these morning maths sessions, so you can participate with them to see how it works.

Parent Carer Engagement Framework
We are currently working with Cornwall Council to deliver a programme called the Parent Carer Engagement Framework. Shortly, I will be seeking contributions from parent carers on aspects of our work to see how we can improve what we do together with our families. The two principles from the framework that we have identified are Principle 4: Support for Learning and Principle 6: Raising and Realising Aspiration. For more information, I have sent an overview of this programme to everyone. Under the Raising and Realising Aspiration principle, we hope to expand our children's horizons and inspire them so they start to think about their future learning and world of work. Although this work is only at an embryonic stage, I want to signpost everyone to a brilliant opportunity on Saturday 11th October. Futures2025 are holding a Voyage of Discovery event at the University of Plymouth. This free event for families, enables children to explore the world of research, innovation and science and technology through hands-on, interactive activities in areas such as ocean health to robotics. Feedback from last years event was that it was amazing, so I would encourage you all to try and get along. Scan the QR code or use the web address from the leaflet below for more info and to book a ticket (it's free!). There are a few copies of the leaflet in the school office too.

Hello Everyone,

We enjoyed a lovely lesson outside in science this week. Reception were busy collecting objects for our Autumn display, while year 1 were finding living and non-living things. Year 2 were working together to categorise objects that were alive, used to be alive, and never been alive. They were excellent at giving reasons as to why they had chosen their particular categories.

In art this week, the children each created their own colour wheel, which used the 3 primary colours to mix purple, green and orange. They enjoyed adding more of certain primary colours, and watching the effects.

We have been particularly pleased with Year 1 this week, as they have really made an effort to become more independent in their writing. We have written some lovely descriptions of story settings and have innovated the Mr Benn stories by David McKee.

Well done to Reception this week, for working hard in maths to compare weight and to sort objects in different ways.

Have a lovely weekend.

From The Penhallow Team

The children had a truly immersive trip to Morwellham Quay. We started the day by dressing up in Victorian clothes and walking through the town. We learnt that manners were important and you had to say 'good day' to anyone you saw, with the girls curtsying and the boys dipping their hats. We then went to look at the cottage of a rich Victorian family and a poor Victorian family. We learnt about how they got water as they didn't have taps or toilets. After lunch we had a lesson in the Victorian school room. We had a go at writing on slates. We also learnt about what happened to children that didn't follow the rules. We finished off by trying some different playground games. All the children had a great day and learnt a lot. 

Welcome one and all. Next week, we will be having 2 Harvest festival assemblies. EYFS and KS1 will take place at 9am whilst KS2 will take place from 2pm. Please feel free to come in and join us.
Contributions for the FOOD BANK will be gratefully received.

This week we have been supporting the Save a Heart campaign and learning how to use CPR if we ever needed to. The children practised thier skills using teddies, cushions and jumpers. We looked at the DR ABC approach - Danger, Response, Airways, Breathing, CPR.
If you want to explore this further at home or for yourself do take a look at: https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes 

We've had a busy and exciting start to the school year! In English, we've been diving into Stig of the Dump by Clive King. The children have loved exploring the adventures of Stig and Barney and even wrote their own creative chapters about a brand-new adventure the two characters might have. In Maths, we've been sharpening our place value skills and stretching our understanding of numbers up to 1000. It's been great to see everyone's confidence growing! Our History focus has been the big question: How did we survive before metal? We've travelled back in time to the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, learning about early homes, tools, weapons, and how people used nature to live. The children really enjoyed creating their own triorama Stone Age homes. In RE, we've been learning how Christians follow God through stories and messages in the Old Testament. In French, we've started with the basics-greeting each other with a friendly "Bonjour!" PE has been all about football, developing our control, teamwork, and ball skills. And in DT, we looked at seasonal foods, then rolled up our sleeves to bake delicious treats for our Bake Sale! It's been a great month-well done, everyone!

Preschool is taught by Natalie and Sam along with Teighan our Nursery Apprentice.

What are the aims of our Pre-School?

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage** (EYFS) Principles from birth to age five.

In doing this we aim:

• To have happy, fulfilled and motivated children.

• To provide a stimulating environment for children to explore with their play and to learn from their experiences.

• Supporting Learning

• Transition to School

• Play and Exploration

What is the Early Years Foundation Stage? This is how the Government and Early Years professionals describe the time in your child's life between birth and age 5. This very important stage in your child's development helps them get ready for school, as well as preparing them for their future learning and successes. 

From when your child is born up until the age of 5, their early years' experience should be happy, active, exciting, fun and secure and support their development, care and learning needs

You can download a copy of the Parents' Guide to the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework at

https://foundationyears.org.uk/2021/09/updated-guidance-to-support-the-eyfs/

Our school council are organising a community event to raise money for one of our chosen charities this year, the RSPCA.

We want families to create their own scarecrow and all scarecrows will be placed throughout Widegates. This is the perfect chance to do something creative and fun as a family whilst raising money for an amazing cause!

Deadline for entries: 20th October.

We have 8 new EYFS children join our Trenode family and they have settled wonderfully. The focus over the first few weeks is establishing routines and building relationships with their new peers. 

In maths, we are focusing on place value and understanding each number's worth.

Our curriculum learning is "Why didn't Paddington come to Looe?" so the children have been busy in the role play bakery. They have been learning and performing the story of Paddington and we even went on the same adventure tasting food from the bakery, writing our name on mirrors and drawing a map in Peru in shaving foam. We are currently learning about eating healthy in DT and will be preparing a healthy meal for our teddy bear's picnic.

We have also started with a weekly forest school session each week with Kelly. She has been looking at team building in different outdoor games and the children have loved exploring our amazing grounds. A reminder to parents that children require old clothes every Friday during this half term.

You may have seen us in the news and this is because Looe Shedders kindly created a playhouse for our outdoor learning area. The playhouse has been a hit with the children enjoying imaginative and creative play to support language development. We love that we have a space outside to take part in role play.

We have launched Showbie (our online learning platform) to EYFS parents. Please make sure you have signed up to see what your child gets up to with their learning. For Year 1 and 2 parents, you will be receiving the codes for Showbie in the next couple of weeks.

Key date: Wednesday 1st October-We are inviting family members in to have a teddy bear's picnic to taste the healthy food we are making in DT.

A welcome back to our pre-school blog!

The children have all settled back into pre-school well for the start of autumn term.  We have also welcomed some new little faces to the pre-school, and it has been lovely to start to get to know them.  We have also welcomed Mrs Barrett as a Pre-School TA on a Friday, Mrs Barrett is an experienced TA who also works at Duloe Pre-School and is a wonderful addition to our team.

This half term our enquiry question, "Who am I?" leads us to lots of wonderful ways to learn about ourselves and each other.  From self-portraits to all about me collages, family pictures and talks about siblings or pets at home. Lots of Grand Conversations happen with the children to build up their self-identity and understanding of who they are.

We have also been discovering changes to the season with stories and songs about Autumn and what we can see around us.  The children will be bringing home a special bag to collect some autumn items to bring into pre-school.  We will build up a display table to let the children explore and learn about these items.  So, any crunchy colourful leaves, acorns, conkers and pinecones or any other natural autumn object the children would like to bring in.

The children have been enjoying joining in with some of Lantic's afternoon activities such as music with Mrs Butlin and PE.  They are showing great listening skills and follow instructions from the teachers.

Next week on Wednesday 8^th October at 2pm we will be joining the whole school for their harvest festival celebration in St Nun Church.  If you would like to bring any donations of tinned or dried foods that we can add to the collection for Liskeard and Looe food bank , that would be very much appreciated.

We will be enjoying some baking next week with the children so do make sure we are up to date with any known allergies.

Below are some pictures of our first few weeks back at pre-school, also attached is the most recent pre-school newsletter incase you have not received one. 

The Pre-School Team.