Art
I teach Class 3 on Thursday afternoons and this week they were learning to use charcoal as a medium in art lessons. We explored the idea of Chiaroscuro (light and dark) in art. Using different charcoals and techniques the class observed rocks and made these sketches: Isla (left) Oliver (right). The darkness and light created with different techniques has contributed to the overall effect.

Friendship Bench
Thank you to Sarah Marley, who successfully secured this free bench for our playground. Donated by the Lazy Susan Furniture Company, this has been introduced to the the children as a friendship bench. If they are looking for someone to play with at breaktime, they can sit on the bench and other children will see they need a buddy and invite them to play.




Meet The Teacher
Thank you to the parents and carers of all our new reception children who joined Abi Flashman and Tom Otterwell-Taylor for an information session this week. We hope you found it useful.

Staff Update
I am delighted to share the exciting news that through their outstanding practice, Tom Otterwell-Taylor and Abi Flashman have been appointed as early years subjects leaders across the 15 schools of Bridge MAT. Tom has also taken on the leadership of art across the Trust. In addition to this, Sam Watts is leading on Showbie, the app used across Trust schools to support children's learning. These appointments reflect the excellent work and level of expertise of these teachers.

We have had another productive week at school! The children have been amazing and have been fully immersed in all of their learning. We are becoming more familiar with our new classes, routines and teachers, and it has been lovely to see everyone settling in so well.

In Maths, we have continued our work on place value. We have been working with larger numbers, adding and subtracting different amounts, and exploring what happens to each digit when numbers change.

In English, we have been revisiting common and proper nouns and learning about different types of verbs. We have explored regular and irregular verbs, as well as verbs such as ‘to be’ and ‘to have’.

Our Science learning has focused on the differences between young and adult animals. We have been learning about the different names given to young animals and exploring how they look different from their adult counterparts.

In Computing, we have been learning about the different buttons found on various types of computers and what each button does. We then used our creativity to design our own robots and decided what each button on our robot could do. I was particularly impressed by the wonderfully creative ideas the children came up with!

In PE, we started our yoga unit. The children created their own sequences of yoga moves and thought carefully about how they could transition smoothly between different shapes and positions. They showed great creativity, concentration and control.

A huge well done to Evie, who was chosen as our Pupil of the Week! This week's value was being responsible, which Evie consistently demonstrates in the classroom, with her friends and around the school. Well done, Evie!

A big well done to Felix and Rosie, who were awarded their badges for the 99 Club this week. What a fantastic achievement!

Well done to everyone for working so hard and for continuing to follow our school values. We are incredibly proud of all the children and the positive attitudes they have shown this week. Keep up the fantastic work!

The children have settled really well into our nursery routines this week and are becoming increasingly confident and comfortable back in the class.

We have been exploring our topic ‘All About Me’, looking at our similarities and differences and talking about what makes each of us unique. The children enjoyed looking at their reflections in the mirror before creating their own self-portraits.

We have also been learning about different parts of our bodies through dancing and singing along to ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’, helping the children to identify and name different body parts while developing their listening and movement skills.

Our learning continued through a range of puzzles, matching games, and activities that supported problem-solving, concentration, turn-taking, and skill development through play.

The highlight of the week was drawing around one of our littlest members, then taking turns adding their features to our giant person. The children absolutely loved this activity and worked together brilliantly.

It has been lovely to see the children developing friendships, confidence and independence as they settle into life at Storytellers.

What a Wonderful week!

Dear Parents and Carers, just wanted to write to let you all know how wonderful your children are!
Our Nursery and Reception children have settled in beautifully and are accessing all the exciting learning opportunities that surround them.

I’ve seen children in all year groups enjoying their learning and socialising with their friends, it’s been a great start to the school year.
Thank you for all you’ve done in ensuring that your children have been ready and raring to go each morning. I have had a very busy, but very rewarding first couple of weeks at Copper Valley, thank you for continuing to make me feel so welcome.

Assembly Invitation
As you’ll probably know, your children attend a Celebration/Achievement assembly each Friday. This is an opportunity for us, as a school, to recognise some of the excellent learning, that has been happening throughout the week and also let us congratulate those children (of which there are many) that show the Trust and school values in school each day.
We’d like to invite you into our Celebration Assemblies as of next week. Therefore, if your child will be receiving a certificate on Friday your child’s class teacher will let you know via Seesaw, or email on Wednesday evening. The Celebration assembly is held in the hall at the Infants site at 9am on a Friday morning and will finish by approximately 9:20am. You can enter school through the main door in the morning. At the Junior site our celebration assembly starts at 2:30 in the hall and ends at approximately 2:50pm. It would be lovely to see as many of you as possible.

ECO Council
Congratulations to our Eco council for securing the Green Flag award.

After all their hard work last academic year Copper Valley Academies have been awarded the Green flag Award. We managed to obtain this through showing our green credentials including, litter picking, establishing gardening clubs, creating bug hotels, buying and installing bird feeders and collaborating with Tavi Task force who tided and cleaned up our pond area. We also attended an Eco Summit at another Bridge Trust school and ensured through assemblies that the rest of the school knew about the benefits of being ecofriendly. Well done to everyone involved and huge thanks to Mrs Wright for supporting and overseeing this project.

Eco council elections will be taking place in the coming days, with our first meeting of the school year on Monday 5th October.

School Meal Menu and introducing our new chef!
If you’d like to view the menu choices for this term, there are copies of the school menus in the reception area of both sites and it is available on the school website. Just click information and school meals. Unhelpfully, it is still titled Spring/Summer menu, however the dates down the side do refer to this term. Also, I wanted to let you know that Katy Upton, our new school chef, joined us at the beginning of this term, it’s been great to welcome her to the team.

Hope you all have a great weekend, and we look forward to seeing you back at Copper Valley on Monday. Mr Arnold and the Copper Valley Team.

It's been lovely welcoming all the children to Reception. They have all settled in brilliantly and are enjoying exploring their new environment and making new friends. I've been so impressed with how well they listen and follow instructions. We've been learning what it means to be kind and they are all trying hard to share and take turns. It's been such a lovely start to the year!

Year Group Newsletters
To see what learning has been happening in classes, and what’s coming up, please take a look at the Year Group Newsletters emailed home today. Copies can also be found on the class pages of our website.

Macmillan Coffee Morning – Friday 25th September 08:45-10:00
Everyone is welcome to join us for the Macmillan Coffee Morning hosted by Year 6 next Friday morning. If parking at school for the coffee morning, in the first instance, we will guide you to the staff car park (to double park) to help the morning drop off routine. Please also consider parking off site and walking if you are able to.

Year 2 Times Table Rock Stars (TTRS)
Today, Year 2 ‘rocked’ their times tables with their official launch of Times Tables Rock Stars (TTRS), an online platform used throughout the school to develop accuracy and fluency in recall of multiplication and division facts. The children learnt to use the ‘Garage’ function which contains their personal ‘heat map’. This tracks their progress enabling children to identify which facts they need to work on next. Later in the year, we will set up tournaments whereby the children can work together to improve their scores. We will keep you posted! We would like to say a special thank you to you for helping the children look and feel the part – the costumes were amazing and really helped to make the day a special event.
From Year 2

FOWPA News
A big thank you to The Red Lion, St Kew Highway, who raised £200 for FOWPA over the summer through their weekly quiz nights — we really appreciate their ongoing support!

Our next FOWPA Quiz Night is on Friday 9th October at 7pm in the Town Hall — £20 per table (max 6 people). It's a great evening for a good cause, so grab your friends and family and come along to support the school. Please use the link in the email sent home today to book tickets.

Next week, children will bring home their Christmas artwork for cards and gifts.

Please remember the three steps:
1. Artwork is created at school and taken home
2. Orders placed at home
3. Artwork returned to school by 29th September

More details on both the quiz and the Christmas cards will be shared in the coming days!
From FOWPA

Year 1-6 Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs) – Registration closes this Sunday 18:00

Home School Agreement and Permissions – Action needed
Have your contact details changed (we must have two contacts for your child)? Does your child now walk home from school on their own? Do you give permission for your child’s photo to go on social media? All permissions need to be updated annually via your Arbor account. If you need any support updating this information, please see Claire or Caroline in the office; they will be more than happy to help.

Allergies/Health Care Plans
Should your child have any allergies that we haven’t been made aware of already or they require a Health Care Plan (or an updated plan is needed), please contact the school office for further information.

School Meals – Food Allergies and Intolerances
Our school meals are provided by Caterlink. It is essential that if your child is having a school meal, you complete Caterlink’s new dietary requirements/food allergies form, if not done so already. If school is aware your child has an allergy but Caterlink’s form hasn’t been completed, your child will only be allowed the ‘safe option’ until the form is completed. Thank you for your cooperation.

House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Choughs. Overall, Puffins are in the lead:

Puffins – 618
Choughs – 562
Swans – 490
Cormorants – 460

Wishing you a fantastic weekend.
Best wishes,
Chris Wathern

Friday 18th September

We had another wonderful week in Rame Class.

Some of this week’s learning:

Phonics:

This week in phonics we learnt the sounds (phoneme) s/a/t/p. The parent phonics sheet was sent home this morning to continue the children’s wonderful phonic knowledge.

 

Our big question is: Who Am I?

So, this week the children have made faces with different 2d shapes, we have looked in mirrors and filled a head template in with our faces and looked at different eye colours. We have explored who is special to us and drawn lovely pictures of them, and we had templates of girls and boys, and we used our creation station to decorate them.

During outdoor learning we used natural resources to make faces, and we also explored different ingredients and made face pizzas!

There has also been so much more exploration from the children during COOL (choose Our Own Learning) time and a favourite this week was bucket time.

Next week we start formal math’s lessons!

 Have a lovely weekend

Rame Class

Our second week back at school has been a very busy one. We have been following our topic of This is Me by creating faces from natural resources and salt dough, making collage versions of ourselves and learning the song Heads, Shoulders Knees and Toes!
We have also introduced our new Talking Tots Toolkit which is created by the Cornwall Council Early Years Speech and Language Team and aimed at getting two- and three-year-olds to build on their language skills. This week's circle time activity was "what's in the bag?"  we each in turn have to pull an object from the bag and talk about what we see. We are having lots of fun, and the children look forward to this activity every day.
So far, the term has got off to a fantastic start, and our children are keen to learn, they are picking up on routines and are developing positive friendships. 

This week we continued to talk about ourselves and our families by making faces of them and naming different members. 
The children talked about different features of their families like eye colour and hair colour and talked about the jobs they do.

They have been busy making themselves on a spoon and traced over their names in different colours.

At story time we have enjoyed the books “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and “My Hair”.

In phonics this week the children have played a game of “Family Footsteps” where they had to create different footstep sounds for different family members.
They have played a game of sound bingo.

In maths we have continued to compare groups of objects and have been sorting according to amounts and colour..

Have a great weekend.

Julie and Sarah

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Another Great Week of Learning in Marazion Class

Marazion Class have had another fantastic week, with lots of exciting learning taking place across the curriculum!

History – How Far Back Does Human History Go?

Our history learning really helped us to understand just how far back human history stretches. We used a timeline to explore the earliest evidence of human life in Britain, discovering that this dates back an incredible 900,000 years! To help us visualise this enormous length of time, we used toilet rolls to represent the timeline – and we would have needed to unravel three whole loo rolls to show the distance!

We also explored the evidence for more modern humans, dating back around 300,000 years. It certainly helped us to appreciate just how ancient some of the evidence we are studying really is!

PE – Football

We enjoyed our first football lesson this week. We began developing our ball skills and learnt how to dribble the ball, practising keeping the ball close to our feet while moving around the space. There was lots of enthusiasm as we began developing our football skills.

Computing – What Is Inside a Laptop?

In computing, we became computer detectives! We explored the different components and elements found inside a laptop, beginning to understand what each part does and how the different components work together to make a computer function.

English – Exploring Our Key Texts

We have been enjoying getting to know our key texts in English. We explored the texts carefully, identifying their important features and considering how they are structured. We then began mapping the stories onto a story pathway, helping us to understand the sequence of events and how stories are developed.

Maths – Place Value

In maths, we have continued developing our understanding of place value and this week we were introduced to thousands. We have been exploring how numbers are built using thousands, hundreds, tens and ones and applying this understanding to different numbers and problems.

Art – Colour and Meaning

Our art learning has been particularly colourful this week! We explored the colour wheel and investigated warm and cool colours. We also looked closely at the work of artist Romare Bearden, exploring how he uses colour in his collages to help convey meaning and create different effects.

It has been another busy and enjoyable week in Marazion, and we are very proud of the enthusiasm and curiosity the children are showing as they settle into their new learning.

Outdoor learning and lots of counting! 

We’ve had a great second week in Heligan class.

This week we have been looking at ‘Jeans for Genes day’ and we have all come to school on Friday in our jeans to raise money for this cause. We explored this in outdoor learning by making our own jeans out of natural materials. We gathered all the materials we needed and worked as a team to make our jeans.

In maths, we have been representing objects on a ten frame. We were given an amount and then we had to show that number on our ten frame. We have also begun our counting in 2s, 5s and 10s at the start of our maths lessons which we are really enjoying! Next week we will start our Mastering Number unit which helps children with their quick recall of number facts.

Our science unit this half term is focusing on everyday materials. We have explored different materials such as wood, plastic, fabric and metal. We have then talked about the properties of these materials by saying what they feel like.

Well done Heligan class, another great week!

What a wonderful week it has been in EYFS! The children continue to settle beautifully each day and are growing in confidence all the time. They are becoming increasingly familiar with their new classroom, the adults around them and all the exciting learning opportunities it has to offer.

It has been lovely to see friendships beginning to develop and the children becoming more independent as they explore their environment. This week, we have started our first phonics lessons. The children have been introduced to sounds and are learning to recognise the picture that matches each sound. They have been fantastic at joining in and are beginning to develop their listening skills.

We have also started our daily maths time. The children have been practising counting accurately and have been introduced to subitising to 5. We have been having lots of fun recognising small amounts without needing to count each object!

During circle time, we have been learning each other's names and talking about what makes a kind friend. The children have been practising saying kind and positive things to one another, helping us to build a caring and supportive classroom community.

Our Wild Tribe session was great fun! The children enjoyed exploring outdoors and gathering all sorts of natural objects to add to our mud kitchen. There was lots of imagination and creativity as the children used their discoveries in their play.

PE was another real highlight of the week. The children explored ball control and practised rolling and passing the ball to one another. These activities helped them to develop their hand-eye coordination, control and awareness of others, while also encouraging them to work together and take turns.

We are incredibly proud of how well our Tregantle children are settling into school. They have had another busy and exciting week, and we are looking forward to seeing what next week brings!

This week, we have continued learning all about houses and homes. In maths, we explored how many windows and doors our houses have and compared our findings. We also created pictures of houses using different 2D shapes, helping us to recognise and talk about their properties. In Understanding the World, we discussed the different jobs people do to help build a house, such as builders, plumbers, electricians and decorators. In Literacy, we have been retelling We're Going on a Bear Hunt using our magic story cloaks. The children have enjoyed acting out the story, joining in with repeated phrases and developing their storytelling skills and confidence.

The children have had a fantastic first week back and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the new classroom environment. They settled into their routines well and showed confidence when engaging with the different areas of provision. This week, we introduced our new topic, Houses and Homes. The children enjoyed talking about their own homes and sharing their experiences with their friends. As part of our learning, the children painted pictures of their houses and practised drawing houses using simple shapes such as squares, rectangles, and triangles. This helped to develop both their creativity and early drawing skills. We are very proud of how well the children have returned to school and look forward to continuing our learning about houses and homes over the coming weeks.

Fun in the community

This week has been extremely busy. 

In English, we have started our unit of writing based on the book 'Letters from the Lighthouse' by Emma Carroll. The children will be writing a short consequence story about some evacuee children who find themselves in danger when they do not listen to a warning. We looked at some example texts and explored the plot of the story.

In maths, we continued our unit on place value. We have been focusing on numbers up to a million. We have been looking at the value of each digit and learning how to correctly say and write longer numbers. 

On Monday, Treyarnon were able to visit St. Anne's Residential Home as part of the Archie Project. They thoroughly enjoyed their time playing games, reading books and eating biscuits with the elderly residents. I was extremely proud of them. 

Miss Burton