Head's Blog

New Governor needed!

Wanted: Parent Governors for Pelynt and Polruan Primary Academies

We want a Parent Governor to join the Local Governing Body. Any parent who has a child at the school is eligible to apply. We have a joint Local Governing Body across both schools which has been in place since they were federated (before they became Academies in 2016).

Who are you looking for?

We are looking for parents who want to contribute to achieving the best possible outcomes for all our pupils. Being a governor is an exciting and fulfilling role and a wonderful way to contribute to the future of all the children in our care at the school.

You will join a team of local governors with a collective responsibility to support the school. You do not need any particular experience but very useful skills include being able to ask questions and when necessary challenge the school to make the most of opportunities and address any issues.

What is involved in being a governor?

It is important that you are able and willing to commit time to attend meetings (usually 3 a year), make regular visits to the school and complete induction and other training to help you become a more effective governor.

At meetings you will hear reports and updates on progress and plans for the future – and reading these in advance will help you prepare questions to ask. Visiting the school allows you to monitor how plans are progressing and hear directly from staff and pupils. Engaging with all our stakeholders – other parents and carers, staff and the wider community – is a key responsibility of governance.

How do I put myself forward to be a parent governor?

If you are interested in being a parent governor please contact our Head of School.

Summer Reading Challenge

The Reading Agency has today announced that the theme for this year's annual Summer Reading Challenge is 'Gadgeteers'. The Reading Agency is partnering with Science Museum Group to inspire children across the country to feed their imagination over the summer holiday, with a reading challenge focused on science and innovation.

Children will be able to join six fictional characters, the ‘Gadgeteers’. The characters use their curiosity and wonder to understand the science behind a whole range of interests from fashion and technology to cooking and music
How the Summer Reading Challenge works:
Children can complete the Challenge by reading whatever they like in their chosen format: • fiction • fact books • poetry • joke books • picture books • graphic novels • audio books • eBooks

Children sign up at their local library or online and read 6 library books of their choice to complete the challenge.

There are rewards to collect along the way and there's a certificate for everyone who completes the Challenge.

Click the link to find out more: Summer Reading Challenge

It would be lovely to have as many children as possible from Polruan joining this year's challenge.
Mrs Wills

National Marine Aquarium

We have reached the end of another busy week. We had a fantastic trip to the Aquarium on Wednesday, providing lots of super encounters with marine animals and enough to talk about for the remainder of the term. Please check your child’s class page for photos uploaded by teachers.

Next week, we have our transition day on Monday 4th July, where the children spend the day in class with their new classmates and for some, their new teacher. We are aware transition can be a worrying time and we know spending the day together on Monday will mitigate some of those worries. Please let your child’s teacher know, if you would like more information about next year.

The Year 6 children are trying out their new schools with visits to Fowey River Academy and Looe Community Academy on Monday and Tuesday respectively. We have also a trip to Camel creek Adventure Park planned for Thursday for the Year 6 children.

Teachers have finished writing their annual reports and these will be emailed out to parents/carers early next week, so please make sure you check your emails.

Finally, the parent survey is still live until 8th July, takes only a few minutes to fill in and can be accessed via this link: Bridge Schools Trust Summer 2022 Parent and Carer Survey

Have a lovely weekend,
Mrs Wills

Sports Day
We have made to the end of this busy week, only to be looking ahead to another! It was great to see so many of you at our Sports Day on Wednesday. Despite the warm sunshine, the children were up for the challenge of competing and we are very proud of the way they performed. Thank you for the lovely feedback about the day, it sounds like we will be having a shared picnic lunch again next year!

Bridge Schools Games
On Tuesday afternoon, the children competed in the inaugural Bridge Games and as always, their enthusiasm for anything sporty, was evident throughout. We will find out the results next week, but in the meantime, I have attached some photos of their efforts.

Barnados came in to work with our Year 2 and Year 6 children on Friday. The children were a real credit to our school; they contributed to the discussions and engaged with the learning and Morwenna, the Barnados trainer, commented on their positive energy and open-mindedness which made the workshops successful.

Parent Questionnaire
The annual parent questionnaire is now open and will close in a fortnight at 4pm on Friday 8th July and we would love to have your views as we value your input. Please click on this link to complete it: Bridge Schools Trust Summer 2022 Parent and Carer Survey

Next Week
Monday, Reverend Allen is joining us for assembly.
Wednesday, whole school trip to Plymouth Marine Aquarium. Please make sure you have completed and returned the consent form to your child’s teacher. All children to have a packed lunch, drink and a snack.

Mrs Wills

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Jubilee Week

What a busy Jubilee week we have had. The school has been positively buzzing with activity in all corners of the building. As usual, the children have been magnificent in their enthusiasm and application to the tasks in hand and as a result, we now have our Jubilee scarecrow on the gate ready for the forthcoming village celebrations. The suggestion box revealed lots of fabulous ideas, but the recurring idea of the queen walking one of her corgis seemed appropriate. All the children have contributed with items one way or another so this truly is a collaborative piece of work which we hope will spread joy in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday, we were joined by the fabulous ARENA team for our Health and Wellbeing Day. Again this proved to be a special day, despite the weather, with lots of smiles and laughter mixed with determination and resilience in trying new activities. You can see from the pictures below just what I mean!

We finished the week with our Cream Tea Jubilee Party on Friday afternoon. The children came into school wearing red, blue and white with a donation of £1 towards our allotment fruit tree fund, so the day was off to a colourful start. As always, the school is well supported by our local community so the playground was teeming with chatter, excitement and smiles. The children entertained singing the Queen's Jubilee song and waving their home made flags before tucking into the cakes provided by FOPA. Among the raffle prizes donated, we had Miss Taylor's mum's beautifully crocheted teddies, her grandad's hand-carved wooden boxes and fruit stand and Mrs Charlesworth's hand painted water colour greeting cards. Needless to say, we yet again managed to raise an amazing amount of money £131, to be precise, which I know FOPA will put to good use for the children.

After the half term break, the busy schedule will continue so please keep an eye on your emails and the school calendar. We are back in school on Monday 6th June for a short week as Friday 10th June is INSET, for teacher training.
Have a lovely break.
Mrs W

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Week 16th May

This week, we have noticed a writing bug sweeping through the school. By far the most welcome and friendly bug this year, it has resulted in lots of fantastic writing in the classroom but also independent writing at home and in the playground. I was able to share some lovely poems written by Imogen and Antonia in our celebration assembly on Friday and I have added them to the "wall of fame" in my office. I was also able to share the fantastic news that two children from our school had their poems awarded commended and highly commended by the Fowey Festival Young Writer's panel. Huge congratulations to Hallie in Year 5 and Tegan in Year 3 - we are all very proud of your achievement.

We are looking ahead to a busy final week of this half term:
Monday - photographer is here to take new photos for our website
Tuesday - Tregeagle Class are swimming
Wednesday - Health and Wellbeing day for all. Please make sure your child comes to school wearing their PE kit
Thursday - Scare crow making
Friday - Jubilee Cream Tea party at 2:30 and unveiling of this year's scarecrow.

We have come to the end of SATs week – phew!
The Year 6 children have shown incredible resilience, determination and great maturity. Their learning journey over the past two years has been characterised by turbulence however they have persevered and this week we noticed a real sense of ambition and desire to achieve emanating from all of them – hats off from all the staff!

Next week, we continue with swimming lessons for Tregeagle class and Canute class will take their turn to tend the allotment. With the generous time and help from Mr Sandy, we now have a raised strawberry bed and over the coming weeks, he will be making more raised beds and covering the ground with chipped bark to help save weeding time. Mrs Sandy has again this week donated lots of plants from her garden, so we have been able to plant Cosmos, Morning Glory and Sweet Peas too. We clearly have some budding gardeners as interest and efforts are high among the children, so we should end up with a lovely space where we can all learn and explore growing and the natural world.

I have attached a link to our website taking you to a page from the campaign Tackle Child Abuse – An England wide campaign to help you recognise the signs of child abuse and neglect. Please have a look and let others know so e can work together to tackle this.
https://www.polruanprimary.co.uk/Keeping_Safe/Parent_Downloads

Looking ahead to the last day of term, we are planning a cream tea party to celebrate the Platinum jubilee in collaboration with FOPA. Children can come to school dressed in blue, red and white for a voluntary donation of £1 which we will use to purchase fruit trees for the allotment. More information to follow, please check your emails for updates.

Have a lovely weekend,
Mrs W

Summer Week 2

Another busy week across the school. Learning is in full swing again and school is reverberating with purpose, determination and tenacity. This week, it was the turn of Canute class to tend to the allotment. They returned to school following a very productive afternoon of weeding, watering and planting. We still have lots of work to do, but are confident we can create a productive and welcoming space for us all to spend time learning about growing and the natural world. We will take turns to go to the allotment, with the classes alternating weekly. Your child's teacher will remind you to send in wellies and a change of clothes.

The weather is now warming up so our attention turns to staying safe in the sun. Please make sure your child has a sunhat, brings in sun lotion to apply before playing outside or has sun lotion applied before coming to school and importantly, they have a re-fillable water bottle.

We have almost completed our programme of events for the summer term. I know Mrs Sandy has been populating the school calendar with the confirmed events so far, so please make sure you keep checking regularly.

Thank you to all of you you completed the parent questionnaires. We have received some very useful feedback and some lovely comments about the school. I will create a document with all the results and share these with you shortly.

We look forward to seeing the Year 6 children a little earlier than usual on Monday morning for their SATs breakfast.

Have a lovely weekend,
Mrs Wills

Easter Everywhere

We have reached the end of a very turbulent and fairly hectic term and our last week was jam packed with lots of Easter themed activities.

On Wednesday afternoon, we welcomed our lovely Open the Book team back for an afternoon of Easter crafts and sharing of the Easter story. They were also tasked with choosing and announcing the winners of the FOPA's Easter Egg competition. The winner from Canute class was Antonia and Tregeagle class winner was Mischa-Joyce. Both the children received Book Vouchers.

Friday was our Ukraine ShelterBox fundraiser. This is the first time in two years we have been able to invite parents and members of the community into school for an event. We had a fantastic afternoon with the older children selling a variety of Ukranian inspired foods and crafts. Easter is an important event in the Ukranian calendar, and our Ukranian family has been helping us to design and make crafts to reflect this special time. We made spin-off Pysankas, beautifully decorated eggs, and even had some authentic eggs decorated using plants for patterns. The event was well attended and with private donations from staff, The Russell Inn and benefactors from the village, we managed to raise £767.50. This will be added to the funds raised from other Bridge Trust schools and donated to the Cornish charity ShelterBox to support Ukranian families displaced by the war.

The children all went home clutching their FOPA Easter eggs, earned from hunting the school grounds for their personal egg, and an Easter bag filled with goodies donated by a kind local benefactor.

Have a restful break and enjoy friends, family and chocolate
Mrs Wills

Another busy week

ALLOTMENT

The warm sunny weather we have enjoyed over the last week allowed us to finally visit our allotment. On the first visit, Tregeagle class went up to survey the site, gather inspiration and make some initial plans for planting. The children had lots of fabulous ideas and we have been able to pull all of those together in the plan attached. We have had good discussions about which fruit, vegetables and flowers might be best suited to the soil, weather and our gardening abilities and we should be in a position to start planting straight after Easter.

GEOGRAPHICAL FIELDWORK
The children in Canute class have been on an outing too. They went to survey the area around the play park as part of their geography lesson. Their task was to use fieldwork skills and knowledge to complete a map of the area plotting landmarks using a bird's eye perspective, super sophisticated skills for our youngest children. Their maps are brilliant and they are looking forward to sharing these in assembly next week.

UKRAINE FUNDRAISER

Join us at school on Friday afternoon from 2pm for our Ukraine fundraiser. The children will be selling crafts, cakes and Ukraine inspired Easter Eggs. All the money raised will go towards the Bridge schools ShelterBox donation.

Have a lovely weekend
Mrs Wills