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Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett

Email the Office
secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

Telephone Number
01736 753472

Follow us on Twitter
@PenpolSchool

Our Address
2 St George’s Road, Hayle,
Cornwall, TR27 4AH

“Penpol pupils are curious, creative and courageous learners. Our school community believes in authenticity as the foundations of deep-rooted learning. Through our rich and relevant curriculum, we nurture community-minded, forward-facing international citizens of the future.”

School Council Set To Work

As we enter the second half term of the academic year, the school council have been elected and met for the first time. During this first meeting the children discussed the expectations of a school councillor as well as assigning themselves roles.

Some slight changes to the structure this year mean we welcome fourteen members to the committee including two children representing the infants in Key Stage 1. To aid the effectiveness of the overall council, we have also doubled the representatives from Year 5 and 6, as their experience of school life is greatly valued.

First on the agenda for this academic year was the expectations and vision for this elected group of councillors. After much discussion the children settled on the below vision statement.

Our vision is, for all children at Penpol School to be able to have a voice and contribute towards the continuous improvement of our school community.

The aim of the school council is to involve ALL students in helping to create and implement school policies and procedures that will benefit everyone in the school community. This will address the following areas:

  • To make changes in our school and school community.
  • To give pupils the opportunity to let adults know their feelings and opinions about things that affect them.
  • Pupils should also be able to have a say in decisions and to play an active role in making their school a better place for all.
  •  Serve as the voice for the pupils of Penpol within the school and within the community.

We as a school council will do this by:

  • Talking to our classmates to gain ideas and suggestions.
  • Making sure that everyone’s views and opinions are valued.
  • Having regular meetings to share our ideas.

As part of the School Council all members have been elected into particular roles. This level of responsibility has been trusted to the council members after they were voted in by their peers, as people who are trustworthy, approachable, fair and honest to name but a few of the attributes required.

The following positions have been filled.

  • Chairperson- Will (Class 14)
  • Vice-Chair- Ines (Class 14)
  • Secretary- Juliette (Class 13)
  • Vice-Secretary- Miranda (Class 12)
  • Treasurer- Jude (Class 13)
  • Alerting team- Grace (Class 10), Rocky (Class 9), Thomas (Class 8) & Tess (Class 7)
  • Voting members (All KS2)
  • Committee members (All)
  • News Officers- Lily and Ethan (Both Class 11)
  • Teacher Support (Non-voting members) Mr Stanlake & Miss Simpson

 

What’s that noise coming from the Mac Suite?

Since the beginning of November I’ve been asked the same question time and time again: “What’s that noise coming from the Mac Suite, Mr Woolcock?”

It’s a very valid question as there has indeed been a pretty irritating noise coming from the Mac Suite for the last few weeks.  The machine making the annoying noise isn’t finished yet though, in fact it’s likely to be making that same, annoying noise for a few more weeks yet.

So what is it doing??

Well, the machine is our Makerbot 3D Printer and it’s currently undertaking the biggest print-run of its life – printing out 200 unique and individual winter decorations which have been designed by the children in Key Stage 2.

 

Each child in the Juniors has been using an online program called Tinkercad to imagine, design and construct their own decoration, based on any theme they wish.

To get their creative juices flowing I showed each child how they could make a unique and beautiful Snowflake design, which a lot of children actually ended up choosing as their final decoration.  However, each child could also design their own decoration with their own choice of colours too.

Since then, myself and Paul have been busy making sure that all 200 decorations get printed.  It might seem like a simple task, but in reality it’s far from it!  Each 3D model takes around 50 minutes to print and as they all use two colours we also have to stop the printer to change the coloured plastic mid-way through each print.  Sometimes it’s a little easier, for example when five children have all chosen a red base and a white top layer, as all five can be printed at once during a morning.  But for the most part it’s been a case of setting countless alarms, reminding teachers to pause the printers, scrambling under the table to find the next colour plastic and hoping that the 3D printer doesn’t jam after 4 hours of printing (thus ruining the prints!).


Plenty of late nights and early mornings have been spent coming back into the Mac Suite to set more prints off in the dark, but we’re finally getting towards the end.  We’ve now printed over 120 decorations and they are looking INCREDIBLE.

When all the decorations are printed we’ll be giving the children a chance to bring in a small donation of 50p to cover the cost of the plastic filament in return for taking their decoration home to keep forever.  The children are already excited about this!

As to what the decorations actually look like?  Well, you’ll just have to wait until December to find out.  It’d ruin the surprise to share all the photos of them now, but as soon as we’ve got all 200 ready to go we’ll update the Penpol Times so you can see how great they look!

In the meantime, back to the printer for me!

– Mr Woolcock

Year 5 Celebrate Being Different!

In line with National Bullying Awareness week, our year 5 children have been paying particular attention to ‘What makes me, me?’

From discussing favourite fruits to individual interests, the children had a very good awareness of individuality and regularly display mutual respect for each others individuality.

On Wednesday, the children conducted a social experiment in school by wearing odd socks without explaining the reasoning behind it.

The enjoyment, laughter and novelty of wearing odd socks was great to see. However, what was more pleasing was watching the children in the playground replying to questions such as, “Why have you got odd socks on?”… With answers like,”…because I have and their different, just like you and me.”

Penpol School- Champions of Cornwall!

Our talented football team travelled to St Austell to take part in the England Schools County Cup. After sealing their qualification with a final penalty defeat to Parc Egos only two weeks previous, the boys set their sights on the top prize.

Drawn in a group with Carclaze, St Mewan and St Breock the competition started well for the boys in black. A nervous 1-0 against St Austell based Carclaze allowed the boys to settle and trust their style of football. By the time their second match came about the free flowing Penpol had passed themselves into an early 3-0 lead before finishing the game 5-0 winners against St Brock (Wadebridge). This was followed by another strong performance against St Mewan, again St Austell based, controlling the game at 1-0 a late goal from St Mewan made the final minutes tense. Before an even later winner ensured the Penpol team progressed from the group with maximum points.

Group 2
Penpol 1-0 Carclaze
St Breock 0-5 Penpol
Penpol 2-1 St Mewan

As the competition moved into the knockout stages the boys began to practise their penalties, after defeat in the previous competition robbed them of the trophy. But they were not required in the semi-final as the ‘Boys in Black’ beat local rivals Alverton 4-0 and secured their place in the final.

Semi-Final
Penpol 4-0 Alverton

In the final the boys came up against a familiar team, St Breock, who they had beaten 5-0 earlier that afternoon. The final turned out to be a much more competitive game that its predecessor. However, two very well worked team goals allowed the Penpol School football team to lift the trophy for the first time in many years.

Final
Penpol 2-0 St Breock

Victory is one thing, however it is the manner in which it took place that is really impressive. I couldn’t be prouder! – Mr Stanlake

I’m really happy, it was a great day and a brilliant performance from all the team… and now its time to go home and sleep! – Dylan, Captain – Class 14

The quality of football was exceptional drawing applause from many teachers and spectators. Playing in what is perceived as ‘the right way’ with the ball on the floor and smiles on their faces. Next up- the regional competition in Bristol in the Spring!

What an absolutely amazing bunch of talented, respectful and wonderful young gentlemen. They played like true professionals, trusting each other with every precision pass. Each goal was a collaborative effort and the overall way they behaved showed real strength both as a supportive and connected team. To say I’m proud is an understatement. They are an absolute credit to themselves and the school. Well done! – Mr Doyle

 

Aidan races ahead with car design!

After an inspiring trip to see the BloodHound SSC in Newquay, Aidan from Class 14 took it upon himself to design his own supercar! He made it out of K’Nex, which is a plastic material which can click together to make structures and models, so the possibilities for what you can build are endless. We think that he did a great job – well done Aidan!

The hardest part was to connect the back of the car to the front and joining the top half to the bottom half. It broke a few times but I am really happy with the end result. – Aidan

Year 5 and 6 begin writing their own Websites

This week the Year 5s and 6s and begun to learn how to write and code their own websites using the programming languages HTML and CSS.

We started out by looking at how a HTML page is structured using <> and </> tags and how we can then change the style of these through a CSS file.  Learning two new languages is certainly challenging, but as always our superstar pupils lived up to our expectations and have made great progress already.  In the first lesson the children made a simple website with information about themselves followed by an interactive birthday/Christmas card.  Some of these Christmas cards have even been entered into a Code Club competition!

Autumn and Freya with their Christmas Card Website  

If you’d like to create another website using this Trinket template at home you can use this link to get to the Code Club project page.

Poppy with her Christmas Card Website

After this, some classes are moving onto creating their own ‘comic-strip’ style website with different <div> frames, <p> and <img> tags and correct CSS styling to create their own joke or short story.  The children were given free reign to create any joke or short story they felt like with the images provided, so long as their webpage was coded correctly.  As you can see, some of their stories are certainly interesting!

The children have been using a website called Trinket to create their code and view their website in real time.  We can even share and embed Trinket websites on the Penpol Times!

 

“Jimmy the Dinosaur” by Will

 

“Knock Knock Cheese” by Jake

It doesn’t make any sense but at least it’s about Bob – Jake, Y6

 

“Dr Who?”

Over the next few weeks the Year 5’s and 6’s will continue to learn about the basics of Web Development and discover how they can display information in creative and engaging ways.  At the rate these classes are learning it wouldn’t surprise me if we have quite a few future web developers in our midst!

Ada tumbles into 2nd place for her Gymnastic club

Ada was selected to take part in the Amigo’s Tumbling Competition for her Gymnastic club, Phoenix in Camborne. Her gymnastic club Phoenix competed against the Zero Gravity gymnastics squad who travelled down from Saltash to compete.

Ada completed three solo tumble track runs and came an amazing 2nd place for her age category. This was Ada’s first official competition and she was delighted to come away with a silver medal. She is looking forward to many more competitions to come.

I love gymnastics because you can do really cool things. I can do a one-handed cartwheel and the splits – Ada – Class 3 – Year 1

 

 

The fabled ’99 Club’ welcomes it’s first members.

 

The children in Year 6 have been working towards entering the prestigious ’99 club’ all year and, this week, 3 children managed to enter it.

To achieve this feat, the children must answer 99 questions, based on addition, subtraction, multiplication, adding or subtracting fractions and finding fractions or percentages of a number. All of that, and they only get 5 minutes to do it in (which equates to just 3 seconds per answer!).
However, this did not faze Ben, Ben T or Freya, as they answered all the questions correctly in the allotted time, with Freya, who was the first to finish, completing all of the questions in an incredible 3 minutes and 10 seconds (under 2 seconds per question!).

 

A huge congratulations to the 3 of them and hopefully they will be joined by other members soon.

 

I practiced a lot at home and I managed to beat my best time on the day! – Freya

 

Think you’ve got what it takes? Feel free to have a practice on the sheet below!

 

Hablas Español?

This week, Year 6 students had the opportunity of learning Spanish and enjoyed their first Spanish taster session with Mr Emery. With Spain being the third most popular country to visit in the World, lots of students were very enthusiastic to learn more about Spain and also learn some basic Spanish.

Classes 13 & 14 were given a short presentation by Inès from Class 13 on her experience being in a Spanish primary school in Gran Canaria. Students were amazed to hear that in Spain and the Canary islands, the school day finishes at lunch time, where school kids go back home for la comida (lunch) and, of course, la siesta!

After a cultural quiz on Spain, students then got to grips with the Spanish language by learning different types of food on the website Linguascope. Within 20 minutes, some students had already mastered the 40 different items of food, ranging from breakfast foods to vegetables and fruits!

The students were then tested on how many different types of food they could remember by playing a whole class quiz on Kahoot.com. Students are given a time-limit to answer each question and are competing against each other for the top score.

After 30 questions, the winners from each class had been established. From class 13, Ben was the overall winner, with Inès second and Peter third.

It’s really cool to try a different language and learn about Spain. Spanish is now my new favourite language! Ben, Class 13, Year 6

From Class 14, Alfie won a very close battle between himself, Juliette and Finn. All three were the only students in class 14 to score 30/30, but Alfie’s faster reaction times saw him eventually come out on top.

Learning Spanish is much easier when you already know some French!  That helped me win today!  Alfie, Class 14, Year 6

Currently, only one third of Britons are now able to hold a conversation in another language. Yet with the budding enthusiasm shown by Penpols’ language stars, there’s a feeling that the tide is turning!

The overall winners from class 13

Jake scores 100% on Linguascope!

Super Science in Class 2

Class 2 were very excited this week to welcome a special visitor Mollie into our classroom to do some science experiments. Mollie showed the class lots of experiments all to do with colours.

The first experiment involved some skittles and warm water. A couple of children carefully arranged the skittles on a plate to make a circle, making sure that none of the same colour were touching. Then we added warm water and waited to see what would happen.

It was amazing! The skittles made a rainbow! – Jessica

Next we had a go at making some lava lamps. We put some water and oil into a bottle and then Mollie added some food colouring to each one. Some children also added some glitter to make the lamps sparkle!

I liked putting the glitter in. I chose silver sparkly glitter – Lola

In our final experiment, we had some special filter paper which we dyed with red cabbage to turn purple. When the paper had dried we had great fun using lemon juice, vinegar and bicarbonate paste to paint on the paper. The children were amazed to see how the paper changed colour when they painted it (lemon and vinegar turned the paper pink, while the bicarbonate turned it blue!)

We had great fun with our science experiments and would like to say a big thank you to Mollie for visiting us in Class 2!