Students at St Stephen’s Community Academy in Launceston have been very busy this week with a variety of trips, lessons and events.

Headteacher Maura Furber explained: “Enriching our pupils’ life experiences and prioritising their Cultural Capital is a key priority at St Stephens. We have certainly been out and about in our community and inviting our community in to enhance our curriculum offer and are so grateful for the amazing support we are given by different stakeholders. Here are just a few examples of what we’ve been up to.

“Ms. Gilbert runs a World Music Group for all family members. This is a free opportunity and fun creative way to explore the world around us and develop a greater global understanding through practical activities. This is a wonderful way to meet new people, make friends, play music, dance, paint and taste food inspired by different countries. This is open to all families in our community (not just those that attend St Stephens) and sessions run from 10-12 on a Saturday morning. This has been very kindly funded by Launceston Rotary Club.”

Exploring the locality

As well as enjoying music, students have been exploring the local area, Maura explained: “Our Foundation children love exploring the local area -young Geographers in action! Here is a recount of one of those adventures:

“We caught the local public bus that stops right outside school and travelled around Launceston town drawing pictures of what we could see along the way. We got off the bus by the duck pond, walked across the bridge and back up the hill to school.

“Once back at school, we looked at some maps of the town to see if we could spot places that we saw on our journey. We then wrote about it and created our own map of Launceston, using different construction toys to represent buildings we saw along the way. We will continue to add to this map as the week goes on.”

“In our Foundation curriculum we aim to be “Exceptional Explorers” who show curiosity about the world around us, read and draw simple maps and understand how places can be different. We think they are doing a great job!”

Woodlands Skills Centre Eco Learning in Action

“Year 2 thoroughly enjoyed an exciting, fun packed day of learning! They played the Bumble Bee Game, pretending to pollinate the flowers, carried out an experiment with vinegar and eggs to demonstrate what is happening in our oceans and learnt about the Greenhouse Effect and how it is warming up our planet. They also made their own Terrariums, collecting moss, soil and leaves to create a micro rainforest climate in a jam-jar.

“In the afternoon, they made delicious bread and cooked it over the bonfire and helped to sort out the vegetable beds, using trowels to dig up the weeds, so that more vegetables seeds could be planted. They also made plant pots from newspaper and planted either a flower or a runner bean seed in them. What a great day! The children demonstrated our school values brilliantly and their Learning Powers were well and truly being used.”

Newquay Zoo visit

“Year 4 had a fantastic day trip to the zoo in Newquay. This visit consolidated their Science and English learning in class. They found all of the animals they had written their animal profiles about and handed their learning over to the Head zoo keeper, Mark. This really gave the children’s writing a real purpose and audience. We hope the profiles will be informative to others visiting the zoo in the future.

“We worked so hard on our research and are proud of our outcomes being displayed for the public. The children learnt about animals that live in the Savannah and asked lots of great questions. They had fun spotting the lynx and red panda and were also really lucky to be one of the last groups to see the lions before they move to another zoo.”