Back to School for a Bed Time Story!

What an exciting week it's been! The highlight of the week has been our Tregantle bedtime story. On Thursday the EYFS children were invited back to school in the evening all ready for bed! The children and teachers came dressed in their pyjamas and slippers ready to snuggle down for a story. There were many teddies who also came along to hear the stories. Not only did we listen to some great stories, but also were lucky to have a hot chocolate and biscuit treat! This has been another great way to foster a love of reading in our youngest children. 

This week, we have started to write our Hansel and Gretel stories; I have been flabbergasted by the wonderful use of vocabulary and punctuation. We are up to the part where they have been invited into the cheese house by the yeti. Next week will finish writing and we will find out how Hansel and Gretel will escape the yeti's evil clutches. Look at the fantastic handwriting!

In maths, we have been finding out about ratio and scale factors. The children have been learning new vocbaulary, such as, proportion and dimensions.

In PE, the children have been creating partner sequences in gymnastics. They had to include a jump and a roll along with partner balances - some of them in unison and some of them in cannon. I was proud of their wonderful teamwork and collaboration. 

In PSHE, we were thinking about our strengths and weaknesses. We decided that most of our weaknesses could also be positive depending on how you look at them. For example, being a perfectionist shows that you like attention to detail. 

Have a relaxing weekend!

Miss Burton

What a brilliant week it has been at Team Brunel. To keep up to date with the latest news, events and achievements from our incredible school, please enjoy browsing through 'The Brunel Bulletin.'

Talland Class continue improving their sewing skills

Another action packed week for Talland Class. The week has included investigating the countries linked to the Alps by using maps and atlases. The children's map skills are developing and they can now begin to talk about different climates; human and physical features of an environment and know that England and the Alps are both in Europe.

One of the highlights of this week was learning how to use a blanket stitch to facilitate the stitching of the children's stuffed toys. Every child put in 100% effort into this activity. They found it amazing, intriguing and most of all, fun!

We have continued with subtracting fractions this week. This began with simple fractions and then the children were challenged with mixed fractions, for example:




Although a huge challenge for the children, they all persevered and gained a greater understanding of how to subtract fractions.

During the English sessions, the children have continued to develop their version of Hansel and Gretel. Many children are now using the advanced skills of figurative language in their writing. One element, for example, was to write a character scene to show emotions without telling the reader the emotion. For instance, one child used:

Her eyes were puffy, and red-rimmed. Wet streaks ran down her face, leaving tiny rivers running down her cheeks. 

instead of

She was crying.

It's been wonderful reading the beginning of the children's stories.

Have a wonderful, well-deserved weekend. 

Best wishes, Mrs Swabey, Mr Parry, Mrs Walters, Mrs Payne and Miss Rowlands.

It was lovely to be able to visit St Anne's again after the Christmas break.

We took some of our library books to share with the residents which sparked lots of conversations about favourite stories.

The play dollies also enjoyed having a story read to them!

What a fun and busy week!

This week the children in Lantic class have been so busy!  We have been exploring characters feelings in English lessons, comparing schools from the past with now, understanding that Jesus is 'Good News' for Christian's by being forgiving AND making rabbit sliders in our DT lessons...  We've shared our favourite books and worked really hard on using sentence stems to support our oracy skills in EVERY lesson!  Thank goodness it's the weekend - we need a rest!  Remember to keep reading at home and don't forget to look at your Maths homework on Anton.

I wonder what we'll be doing next week...
  

Ready for Reading!

We've had another amazing week in Tregantle, full of new experiences, learning and fun! 
Our Year 1 children were super scientists at the beginning of the week when they began learning about animals and their habitats. It was so much fun collecting up all of our toy animals and sorting them into the right habitats. We continued the animal theme in P.E where we learnt a dance to the music 'The Pink Panther.' We all had to work hard to move in time to the music and combine fast and slow movements. The whole team have been blown away with Tregantle's maths skills this week. The Year 1 children have been superb at using a number line effectively including adding missing numbers and our EYFS children have been amazing at adding numbers to 5. We got very creative when we made pictures to go with our class story 'The Gruffalo's Child.' The children used different shades of cold colours to create a background and then added black silhouettes of characters from the story. They all look fabulous on our display board! We ended the week with an exciting trip to Saltash Library. This really helped to develop our love of reading as there were so many fantastic books on offer. They children really enjoyed browsing though the books and especially loved picking a book to take home for the week. There was much excitement when it was time to scan our books in the borrowing machine! Enjoy your books Tregantle Class! 

w/e 17.1.25

What a fantastic week it has been in Daymer! The children have been working hard, exploring new ideas, and having lots of fun along the way.

Here’s a little peek into what we’ve been learning this week:

English We’ve been focusing on using adverbials of time and place to make our writing more exciting and clear. The children have impressed us with sentences like “Later that morning, the boy met Om's family” and “Inside the spooky cave...”

We’ve also been developing our skills in characterisation. The class explored how to “show not tell” emotions by describing feelings like joy, anger, and surprise, and thinking about how a character might move, speak, or react in different situations.

Maths Times tables have taken center stage in Year 3 and 4 this week! Plus, the year 4s discovered what a 'perfect number' is - hence the puzzled faces in the photo above!

Art The children tried out some line drawings of animals as they furthered their work on prehistoric art. Don't they look great?

PE In PE, we’ve been continuing with our dance theme inspired by wind. This week, the children explored the technique of canon, where each dancer performs a movement one after the other. Their creativity shone as they worked together to choreograph a beautiful and flowing routine.

Science Our mini water cycles, which we set up in the classroom last week, have been fascinating to observe! Each day, the children have monitored and recorded changes, noticing condensation, evaporation, and precipitation in action. It’s been a great hands-on way to explore the water cycle. We have finished our work on States of Matter and are moving into our new unit, which is 'Light'. 

RE and PSHE In RE, we learned about the Holy Trinity and discussed how Christians understand God as completely Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The children had thoughtful questions and showed a lot of curiosity. In PSHE, we focused on setting personal goals for the term / year. The children thought carefully about what they want to achieve and how they can work towards their goals.

Thank you for your continued support. It’s wonderful to see how enthusiastic the children are about their learning. We can’t wait to see what the next week brings!

The children of Talland Class have had a magnificent introduction to their topic in reference to the Alps. They attended school in warm clothing to assimilate life in the Alps during the Winter. During the week, they learned how to geographically locate the Alps using maps and also identified the Continents of the World together with the countries bordering the mountains: Switzerland, France and Germany, for instance. The highlight for the children was toasting marshmallows to eat during the afternoon session. A quote from one 10 year old, 'It's hot but it's also delicious.'

The maths topic, fractions, has been a pleasant challenge for the children. They have been focusing on finding common denominators to enable the addition of 2 and 3 lots of fractions, for instance:
.

A great deal of perseverance was shown by all of the children during the maths sessions.


During English, the children have been creating their own character and setting in anticipation for writing their own version of Hansel and Gretel. The description many of the children have been using is amazing: eyes like emerald balls; the isolated, lonely mountains are barren rocks on the sea shore eroding away with each crash of a wave; and so on.

Best wishes, Mrs Swabey, Mr Parry, Mrs Walters, Mrs Payne and Miss Rowlands.

What a fantastic week it has been at Brunel Primary and Nursery Academy!

Our children have been immersed in a variety of wonderful learning experiences, making every day an exciting adventure of discovery and growth. It’s always a joy to see their enthusiasm and dedication shine through in everything they do. We’re thrilled to announce that our extra-curricular clubs have started again, offering even more opportunities for our children to explore their interests and talents. A huge thank you to our dedicated staff for going above and beyond to make these clubs possible. Their hard work and commitment mean so much to our school community, and we are incredibly grateful.

We’d also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all our parents and carers for your continued support with attendance. Thanks to you, our attendance over the last two weeks has been the highest of the academic year so far—a fantastic achievement! Let’s keep this momentum going as we work together to give our children the best possible start.

Don’t forget to stay up to date with all the latest happenings by regularly checking the events diary on our website. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and explore the Class Blogs for a closer look at the wonderful activities happening in school.

We hope you enjoy this week’s edition of the Brunel Bulletin, filled with all the latest news from our amazing school. Thank you for being such a vital part of our community, and we wish you all a wonderful weekend! 

We had a brilliant launch day for our topic: What is life like in the alps? The children came to school dressed in clothes for surviving on a mountain. 

In English, we looked at photos and videos of the Alps and used this to help us think of descriptive language to use in our Hansel and Gretel story. We were all amazed at how breathtaking some of the views are and I think we all have the Alps on our list of places to visit now. 

In geography, we recalled our sticky knowledge by completing a jigsaw of the countries the Alps pass through. Then we researched human and physical features of the different mountains. We found out that the tallest mountain was Mont Blanc, which means white mountain in French. During our research, we discovered all the different tourist attractions and activities that are available. Some thought the skiing and snowboarding looked particularly exciting; others preferred the idea of the wooden cabins and hot tubs. 

To finish the day off, we toasted some marshmallows which were delicious!

A Busy First Week Back!

This week, Talland have been developing their oracy skills within lessons. This is to enable them to speak and communicate clearly and confidently.

In science, we have started a new topic 'Living Things and their Habitats'. We were introduced to the classification of living things. We practised creating classification keys using liquorice allsorts, then had a go at classifying some Alpine animals (linking in to our new Big Question). I would like to say that no liquorice allsorts were harmed during this lesson...but I cannot!

In English, we have begun studying the traditional tale of Hansel and Gretel. After story-mapping it and analysing the features of traditional tales, the children were tasked with getting into the role of some of the main characters. During our 'hot seating' lesson they had to put themselves into their character's shoes and answer questions, that the rest of the class made up, in role. The children really got into the challenge and spoke with great thought and clarity. There are definitely some future theatre stars within Talland class!

w/e 10.1.25

Welcome back, Daymer class! We were thrilled to try some cave art to introduce our topic (see last blog post) and were 'wowed' by our toilet roll timeline to demonstrate prehistory and how long ago this was!

We have started our new English sequence of learning around 'Stone Age Boy' and the children can retell the story really well whilst using tier 2 vocabulary from the book.

Year 3 have started to work with multiplication and division and Year 4 continue to do so.

In PE, we started our dance unit with the theme of weather. We did our wind section and the children were wonderfully creative with their ideas and performances.

In science, we learned about the water cycle and have made mini ‘worlds’ to watch the process in action! 


Homework:
New maths homework is now on Anton.

Reading 5x a week and Reading Records to be signed each time as we give out rewards and take note for our KS2-wide book trail.

Please rehearse times tables weekly. 

Terrific Tregantle 

What an exciting start to the spring term we’ve had! It has been absolutely wonderful to welcome the children back into school and see them settle back into routines so quickly. Our EYFS children are getting stuck into their learning about cold weather. They have done a brilliant job learning an extract from the story, ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ and adding their own actions to tell the story. We have all embraced the colder weather and enjoyed investigating the ice that has formed in our garden. The children were brilliant scientists when trying to find ways to melt the ice or try and keep the ice. Our new ‘clothes shop’ role play area has been a massive hit. It has been great to see the children using their maths and phonics skills in here: counting out the correct number of items for each area and making and signs and receipts for the shop floor!
The Year 1 children have been very enthused by their new topic – ‘What was school like in the past?’ They have been finding out about the many differences between how school is now and how it was at different points in history. They have decided that they are very lucky to be going to school now and not a long time ago! The new Year 1 English story is ‘Harry and the Bucket Full of dinosaurs.’ Tregantle Class absolutely loved using our story sack to find out more about the story and use real objects to explore the characters’ feelings. We are all developing our speaking and listening skills with our whole school oracy focus. The children are getting used to standing and speaking ‘loud and proud’ during class discussions. A great start to 2025!

This week the children were introduced to a new story in English - Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs.  I thought a cleaner had left a bag of rubbish in the class but it was clues to the story...

In Science, the class sorted living, dead and never alive objects - this led to lots of interesting discussion about how 'never alive' some items were.  We are trying to improve out oracy skills as a school so this was a great chance to use some sentence stems to support our discussions.

This has been a fantastic week in Seaton for oracy. We started off by using our story maps of Hansel and Gretel to practise retelling the story. We used sentence stems to help structure our sentences. Please ask your child to retell the story at home.

Following this, we worked in groups to practise asking and answering questions from other students based on the characters from the story. This helped us when we were put into the hotseat and pretended to be the actual characters. The masks helped us get into character and we found the lesson a lot of fun. 

Next week we will be starting to write our own versions of the story but with a twist...it will be set in the alps with a house made of cheese and a yeti instead of a witch. 

In maths, we have been learning about percentages and how they link to decimals and fractions. 

In DT, we have started to design stuffed toys based on animals that can be found in the Alps.I was impressed with the sketches and templates I have seen so far. Next week, we will be learning blanket stitch which will help us to sew the fabric together and assemble to toy. 

In PE, we started our gymnastics unit by creating a sequence of partner balances using apparatus. The children enjoyed filming their sequences on the IPads to help them improve their tension and timing. 

What a busy week we have had, enjoy the weekend!

Miss Burton