March 2018 Archives

Year 6 Create an Animation for Mr Doyle

24th May 201829th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

Today was a very special day at Penpol – a day where we got to celebrate Mr Doyle and his 19 years at school, as well as a chance to wish him well with the next chapter in his life.

All of the children and staff got together in the morning for a very special assembly, where every year group presented Mr Doyle with something special for him to remember them by.

Below is the video that Year Six worked on with Mr Woolcock, set to the tune of 500 Miles. Each child has spent several weeks designing their own character in Photoshop, using nearly 30 different layers to allow the cartoon to become animated. By drawing the different elements on different layers they’ve managed to create some truly unique characters! They then got to grip with an amazing new program called Adobe Character Animator which is where the real magic happened. Stay tuned for lots more animations from our Year 5s and 6s after the Easter break!

Around the World in 80 Grooves

29th March 2018 by Amanda Aspden

Classes 1 and 2 have danced themselves around the world with some amazing dances from India, Mexico, Russia, Hawaii, England and Ireland.

The dance show started with a song to welcome parents in different languages then started with Class1’s graceful Bollywood dance.

I liked the Bollywood dance best. It’s from India. You say hello by saying Nemaste. I liked the changing the lightbulbs bit – Enya

Next we went to Hawaii with Class 2.

I liked doing the Hawaii dance. I liked the beginning where we put our arms in the air. I loved wearing the grass skirts – Poppy

The fabulous dancers hulaed beautifully and some brave dancers came to the front and danced in a duo for the parents.

Class 1 then lept their way to visit Russia and do a sensational Cossack Dance.

I liked the Russian dance best because I liked going into the middle and doing my dance – Layla

The strong and athletic cossacks remembered all the dance moves amazingly well and really enjoyed shouting hey when they leapt into the air.

I liked the jumping bit and twirling bit with your partner. Dobrey dyen is hello- Isaac

Next Class 2 jetted of to Mexico.

With their own class made shakers, they shimmied and shook all the way around the hall to La Bamba.

I liked doing the Mexican dancing. I liked shaking my shaker – Scarlett-Jada

After Mexico, Class 1 came back home to do some English folk dancing in the form of an amazing morris dance.

I liked the Morris dance because it was really good. I like dancing in a circle and waving the hankies – Ruby

The girls skipped happily around waving their hankies in time to the music and the boys marched merrily shaking their bells.

I liked shaking the bells best. I liked dancing in a circle around Will my partner – Mason

Finally, to finish off the show, Class 2 stayed fairly close to home and did some brilliant Irish dancing with great stamps and cuts throughout.

I loved skipping forwards and back. I did a solo with Kieran and did some cuts – Tilly

The children have loved learning about different cultures and have throughly enjoyed learning some new dances. They shone in their performances and remembered all the dance moves like professionals.

We love Maths In Class 1

24th May 201828th March 2018 by Amanda Aspden

In class 1 we really love our Maths. Everyday we enjoy practising our counting with our monster numbers. We try to really understand what numbers are and have a go at representing them in different ways.

A sixteen is a ten and a six, a seventeen is a ten and a seven, an eighteen is a ten and an eight – Layla

Whether we are learning addition, subtraction, sharing, doubling, shapes, measuring, time or money etc we see it as a fun and fabulous challenge that that we can all succeed in.

It’s 3 O’Clock – Isaac

In Class 1 we recognise the importance of reasoning in maths and that it helps children to be able to explain their thinking, therefore making it easier for them to understand what is happening in the maths they are doing. It helps them to think about how to solve a problem, explain how they solved it and to think about what they could do differently.

I like adding numbers. I also like measuring in centimetres and meters – Derora

We use a mixture of board games, cards, shapes, bubbles, building materials, junk modelling, slime and gloop, swamp monsters, teddies, competitions, skittles, numicon, role play, computers, stop watches and measuring tapes to name a fraction of the ways we teach numbers and shape to the children.

I like doing 3 minute Maths because its easy. I do it with my brother. It’s his sheet. I do 3 + 3= 6, or 8+8=16, or 10 + 10= 20, or 100+100=200. I know half of 6 is 3, half of 10 is 5, half of 8 is 4 each. I play snakes and ladders and Daddy tried to catch me up but I winned – Joseph

I have made a hexagon prism out of the magnets. I know its a hexagon because it has 6 sides – Evan

We also recognise the importance of teaching problem solving. It allows children to use their maths skills in lots of contexts and in situations that are new to them. It allows them to seek solutions, spot patterns and think about the best way to do things rather than just following maths procedures.

I like adding and learning numbers. I like learning my bunny ears numbers. I know that double 2 is 4, double 3 is 6 and double 4 is 8 – Derora

In class 1 we explain the purpose of what they’re learning to constantly show them how math is useful in real life. We get involved in activities like cooking and baking, telling time, checking temperature and using money in role play situations.

I love Maths because I always count. I like them because I am learning them. We need to learn everything about them so our Mummy’s will be very very proud – Hana

Spelling Bee 2018

27th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

Tuesday brought around the much anticipated Year 5 & 6 Spelling Bee final. Our upper KS2 children have been meticulously going over their spelling words for the last couple of weeks before taking part in a class-based sub competition. It has proved a huge success as it has in previous years. Each class provided 4 finalists, between them spelling over 200 words to book their place in the final.

The final brings around a different challenge with the children standing and delivering many correct spellings including treachery, pronunciation, catastrophe, alleviating and extraordinarily.

Finalists

Class 11- Zara, Emma, Lily and Issy.

Class 12- Piran, Ella, Gabby and Freya

Class 13- Lola, Jake, Ben and Taran

Class 14- Jack, Luca, Finley and Jude

It was a very close competition with the difficulty of words making even the teachers sweat. But the eventual winner came from Class 13 after a very closely fought battle with Jack, Class 14. Well done Lola, this years Spelling Bee Champion.

Year 5 Girls Swim Team Heading To School Games

27th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

After a super successful swimming gala Zara, Emma, Miranda and Freya have qualified for the Cornwall School Games in June, our first competitors for more than 3 years!

They tasted both individual and team success at the gala where they won 2 individual silvers and 1 bronze and also a silver in the team relay.

Well done girls, were all super proud! Good Luck!

Computing Speed Challenge: Musical Robots!

27th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week Class 8 had an unexpected Computing Speed Challenge with the Lego WeDo 2.0 robots. Their task was to design, build and then code a moving robot which makes noises using just the Lego bricks. No sound effects allowed!

To make this even harder, the children only had 45 minutes from start to finish, including tidying up time. The race was on and the children were eager to make the noisiest robot they could.

Here we have Oskar and Henry showing off their robot:

And here are Finley and Lucy with their design:

Finally, here is the robot that Brodie and Patrick built:

Huge Medal Haul For Our Super Swimmers

26th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

Over the last couple of weeks our swim teams have been competing in the Penwith Swimming Gala’s at both Year 3 & 4 and Year 5 & 6. As always, it was a pleasure to travel with these children to represent the school alongside 18 others from the area. All children took part in their individual events including, front crawl, back stroke, breaststroke and butterfly (Yr 5 & 6), as well as the relay events. Many of our children placed 1st or 2nd in their heat and qualified for the finals.

Penpol School were very well represented in the finals, present in 23 of the 36 finals collecting many medals in the process.

Year 3 & 4 results

Both Joe and Ronnie picked up Bronze medals for the boys in the front and backstroke with Amber collecting Bronze in the Yr4 girls front crawl.

Out of the 18 teams present our Year 3 girls and Year 4 boys both finished 3rd in the team competition.

Year 5 & 6 results

I returned from the year 5 & 6 gala with a pockets bursting with Penpol winning 14 medals.

Miranda and Zara both won silver medals for their front crawl and backstroke whilst Freya won bronze in the breaststroke. Emma was not to be left out either following up her 4th place in the butterfly with her part in a silver medal relay performance bringing the year 5 girls total to 7.

The year 6’s collected 3 individual bronze’s through Jude, Finn and Eva before the Year 6 boys collected a bronze medal each for the relay.

Overall our Year 6 boys came third for their age group and the Year 5 girls came second and qualifying for the Cornwall School Games in June.

The results of the combined competition proved how success the gala had been for Penpol School as we came in 3rd behind the very competitive teams from St Ives and St Uny. However, 3rd placed out of 18 teams is an outstanding achievement.

Well done everyone, and good luck to the Year 5 Girls team at the school games!

Penpol Languages Survey- We Value Your Feedback

11th February 202026th March 2018 by Jack Emery

With the final term at Penpol School almost upon us, it’s the perfect time to reflect and evaluate on the year so far.

All students here at Penpol have one hour a week of French, as well as the opportunity of attending after school language club on Thursdays. Year 6 are currently involved in an email exchange with Octave Cazauvieilh, a primary school situated on the outskirts of Bordeaux in the South-West of France. We also celebrate students achievement in languages by awarding a Star of the Week badge in both Infants and Juniors.

As a way of evaluating languages at Penpol, please would you be so helpful and spare a moment to complete this short questionnaire below.

Click Here

Your opinion is very valuable and you can be assured that your completed questionnaire will be totally anonymous.

Many thanks,

Mr Emery (Penpol Languages Co-ordinator)

The overall winners from class 13

Class 7 are Internet Strong

23rd March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week we’ve been looking at how to be Internet Strong in our E-Safety lessons. The key idea here is that our passwords need to be as strong as possible to protect our accounts and keep our things safe. We’ve talked with each class about some top tips for making strong passwords and have explored a website called DinoPass which is a fantastic and free way to create some super-strong passwords!

Here are some of the tips we’ve learnt this week:

Passwords should be strong so that hackers can’t get into our things. You could put an exclamation mark in your password to make it even safer! – Samuel

You should put capital letters and symbols into your password so that nobody can guess them. It’ll take them ages to work it out! – Aimee

You should never tell anyone your password, apart from an adult you trust who can keep it safe for you in case you forget it – Kiki

They should be quite long, maybe with two random words put together. It’s really important that you can remember your password! – Tilly

Of course we also got to explore a new island on Interland too, this time is was the Tower of Treasure where the children had to collect letters to build the strongest password they could.

Fantastic Fun at Newquay Zoo

20th March 2018 by Penpol School

On Friday 9th March, Class 4 had a fantastic time at Newquay Zoo. The children have been learning about animals in their science lessons at school and discovering which animals have backbones and which do not. We went to the zoo to learn more about vertebrates and invertebrates, and to learn more about the classification of animals.

When we got to the zoo, we were met by Pippa who gave us a really interesting lesson about classification. The first thing Pippa showed us was a cockroach. She explained that they have holes down their sides which allows them to make a hissing sound.

When the coach roaches get scared, they all get together and make a hissing sound that sounds like a snake. It tricks the predator that wants to eat them! Ada

Some animals do not have backbones, like insects. They are called invertebrates. Insects have 6 legs. Oliver

The next thing Pippa showed us was the skin of a royal python. It was very long and smooth. Flora and Amelie helped Pippa and held the snake skin. Everybody got a chance to touch the skin.

After that, we had to be very quiet because Pippa got out a real snake. His name is spot. Everybody got a chance to touch him if they wanted but we had to do it with the back of our hand.

I like the snake. I’m not scared of him. He’s quite cold. – Ptolemy

I know all about snakes because I’ve got one at home and he’s called Monty. Snakes are cold blooded animals. – Alfie

After a really interesting talk, we got to explore the zoo. Although it was raining and we got quite wet, we all had a fantastic time. Here are some of the photos…