Polperro 2024-2025
Polperro Primary School was one of two schools that received Orwell Society School Awards for 2024-2025*. Headteacher Anthea Hillman, her academy colleague Dani May, and their talented team decided to use the award for a project which focussed on Orwell’s profound love of nature.
Orwell spent childhood holidays in Polperro and discovered his enthusiasm for animals and flowers amidst Cornwall’s rich and fascinating natural environment. Inspired by Orwell’s example, the Polperro Primary team brought into play a huge variety of nature-related educational experiences for the children.
They used their link with Bodmin airfield to explore and study the dazzling array of wildflowers that carpet its acres of grassland. Experts on nature preservation from the National Trust and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust came in to tell the children about the incredible natural places just a few miles from their school. These included (amazingly) a small temperate rainforest, a precious remnant of those which once covered much of Cornwall. The children didn’t just hear about these places. They have enjoyed a trip to Bodmin airfield and walks out into Cornwall’s countryside and coastline in Orwell’s footsteps. A trip to the temperate rainforest is planned, along with tree planting with the National Trust.
All of the children, from years 4 to 6, have been working with local artist Sean Hewitt, on an ingenious project to produce an art book full of nature notes and drawings of the insects, flowers and animals that can be seen all along the south Cornish cliffs and in the local temperate rainforest. But this is not any art book. The idea is that it is a sketch and notebook made by Orwell on his cliff rambles long ago and which has now been “found” by the children. So the children’s drawings and writings will be collected together into this “abandoned” book which will be artificially aged, by a combination of low-tech tea bags and high-tech Apps, to look like something produced in the early 1900s.
Listening to talks from the experts has equipped the pupils with a rich and varied vocabulary – including Latin names – that has enabled them not only to speak knowledgeably about nature and sustainability, but also to think more deeply about these topics. By developing this language, the children have gained the tools to understand the natural world better and, crucially, to consider how they might care for and protect it. They have been using their newly acquired vocabulary to write vivid, descriptive pieces about the local natural environment. Anthea and Dani, both passionate about English and nature, led writing workshops through which the children developed thoughtful pieces that now serve as notes in Orwell’s “found” sketchbook. The children have also crafted expressive cinquains (five-line unrhymed poems) using their newly, enriched vocabulary under the guidance of the talented poet Sally Crabtree.
This overall concept has created space for a brilliant range of learning experiences: working in pairs to draw half a page of insects and flowers each (making sure that the final pages match and fit together), scaling up the drawings so that they are the right size for the notebook, team working and IT skills and, perhaps most importantly, just having the sheer fun of creating something interesting and beautiful. Some of the children’s drawings and other work appears below.
Your trustees are very proud of the Orwell-related work Polperro Primary have done and of our connection with them. Follow this link to find out more about Polperro’s Orwell Project.
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* The other being Trinity Academy St. Edward’s, Barnsley. Members can hear more about their great work when Amy Minney, the teacher in charge of their Orwell Project, gives her George Talk (which will also be followed by a website update).
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This report by Bruce Dear, Orwell Society Trustee responsible for schools and education liaison, and Anthea Hillman, Head of Polperro Primary Academy.