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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.”

Year 6 children gather for evacuation!

On Thursday 24th November, the Year 6’s of Penpol School donned their 1940’s attire and were transported back in time. On arrival, their labels were checked and destinations confirmed. Roll call was taken and they were escorted into the school building to await further instruction. Whilst waiting, they were given the opportunity to meet their fellow evacuees, discuss their destination and make sure they had the government stipulated items in their suitcases, sharing these with their peers.

Upon inspection and arrival at their destination, the evacuees had the opportunity to write back to their loved ones at home to let them know they’d safely arrived and how they were doing. The evacuees then spent the rest of the morning creating model spitfires; learning of their importance in the war, playing some 1940s children’s games and cooking up a storm with our lovely land girls and their authentic rations dessert recipe. Blackout procedures were followed to a ‘T’, throughout the day, when the air raid sirens sounded and all evacuees were safely accounted for thereafter.

During the afternoon the cooking continued and the pupils explored the Blitz through some beautiful artwork. Parents were then invited in for the evacuees to share their ‘Wartime Britain’ work from the past term with some 1940’s music to set the scene and the rations dessert sampled.

 

Year 2 Explore Christianity and Islam

This term, Year 2 pupils have been learning about Islam and Christianity through their enquiry questions…

Who is Muslim and how do they live?

Why does Christmas matter to Christians?

In order to learn from religious experts and make connections between these different religions, Year 2 embarked on an all-day outing to Truro Cathedral and the Carnon Downs Islamic Community Centre.

The festive season started early in Truro Cathedral, which was decorated with a truly magnificent Christmas tree, stood some 20ft tall!

The children enjoyed a Christmas workshop, which involved collaging angel Christmas cards. Each pupil was then given a decorative star, on which they wrote the name of a person who is special to them. These stars were later hung upon the cathedral’s Christmas tree.

 

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We were then taken on a magical tour of the building, learning and acting out the Nativity of Jesus along the way. Children were enthralled by the story, which developed their understanding of why Christmas is important to Christians.

   

After enjoying our lunch in the Cathedrals choir vestry, we continued our religious journey to the Carnon Downs Islamic Community Centre. This is the only masjid (another word for mosque) in Cornwall. One of the centre’s aims is to educate Muslims and Non-Muslims, both young and old, about the true teachings of Islam; “Peace”.

One of the masjid’s Imams, Mohammad, gave us a warm welcome into the beautiful building. Children demonstrated their respect for others’ beliefs and practices by taking off their shoes before entering the centre. Mohammad then enlightened us with an introductory presentation on Islam; he explained the Five Pillars of Islam, demonstrated passages of the Quran in Arabic and answered some very insightful questions from our pupils about their beliefs and practices.

“Why do Muslims pray?”
“Do Muslims celebrate Christmas?”
“Do you believe in Jesus?”

We were then taken on a tour of the masjid by one of their volunteers, Abdul-Bari, who showed us the washroom and prayer rooms. Our visit was wonderfully concluded with an Adhan (an Islamic call to public prayer). The children watched with wonder and fascination as Mohammad and Abdul-Bari demonstrated their daily prayer, facing east in the direction of Mecca.

Following this trip, Year 2 pupils wrote some wonderfully detailed recounts of the visits to these religious buildings, demonstrating the impacts of the experience.  They have continued the pursuit of their enquiry questions in English lessons, in which pupils have been making connections between Islam and Christianity by discussing and writing about the similarities and differences of their beliefs and practices.

Exploring Energy and Innovating Ideas

Today our Year 5 and Year 6 LEGO League teams were fortunate enough to have not one but two very special guests around to help mentor and support them with their competition preparation.

Our team mentor, Chelsea from RNAS Culdrose, has kindly agreed to visit every Thursday to help coach both teams.  She’s a familiar face at Penpol now having worked closely with our teams last year as well – in fact she asked if she could come back this year!

Alongside Chelsea we also had another very special visitor – somebody who has travelled slightly further than Culdrose to join us…

Alejandro Buitrago is an engineering student from the University of Technology and Engineering Careers (UTEC) in Lima, Peru.  He is currently travelling around Europe and through a happy coincidence ran into Mr Woolcock.  Upon chatting, Mr Woolcock discovered that Alejandro is in the middle of a degree in Renewable Energy Engineering – which just so happens to be the exact theme for this years LEGO League competition!  

Alejandro very kindly agreed to spend an afternoon with us and spent time working with our Year 6’s over lunchtime and our Year 5’s this afternoon.

Y6's took time out from Evacuee Day to learn about Energy
A lot of Energy-themed prototyping and idea development with the Y5's

During this time Alejandro kindly answered questions, shared a wealth of knowledge and inspired the children to pursue and develop their innovative ideas for the Innovation Project.  By the end of the day the library was covered in hand-drawn sketches, coloured paper, glue sticks, cardboard boxes turned into prototypes and assorted LEGO constructions.  All the signs of a good afternoon!

A massive thanks to both Chelsea and Alejandro for their support.

Year 6 Photos

Year 3 Have a Pharaoh Time At Truro Museum

Last Tuesday (8th November) saw Class 7 and 8 head off to Truro to visit Royal Cornwall Museum as part of their ‘Ancient Egypt’ topic.

Once we had (eventually) gotten the train from Hayle to Truro, we marched down to the museum.

When we arrived, we were able to have some free time to wander around the museum and find out lots of interesting facts about the different exhibits.

However, afterwards, it was then time to explore the ancient Egypt area…

 

One of the tour guides from the museum told us all about (and showed) their different Egyptian artefacts, a sarcophagus and a real mummy! We even got the chance to draw on some papyrus paper!

          

Finally, we got to watch (and some of us help) an Egyptian mummification (on a dummy). We pulled out the mummy’s brains, scooped out their intestines, but kept the heart safe inside. All of the organs were placed into canopic jars for safe keeping.

After our time at the museum had concluded, we walked back up to the train station and faced another train conundrum…

Remembrance Service 2022

On Sunday 13th November, six Y6 pupils represented Penpol School at the Hayle Remembrance Service. The first part of the service took part in St. Elwyns Church before we paraded down to the war memorial. After listening to the names of all the local people who had fallen, we heard the last post and stood in silence to remember them. We laid a wreath on behalf of Penpol School.

 

The service was particularly significant to the Y6 pupils as we have been learning about the impact of WWI and WWII in our Wartime Britain topic. We have also been making our own poppies and wreaths and writing poems based on Flander’s Fields. The local community praised the respect and maturity of our Y6 pupils. It was also nice to see so many other past and present Penpol pupils representing their local clubs at the service who were equally respectful and role-models for our school and community.

 

 

Fantastic Fireworks in Year 1

This week Year 1 have been learning all about fireworks by writing poetry and creating digital art.

The children started on Tuesday by getting used to drawing on the iPads with the Logitech Crayons. They used Keynote to draw some colourful, bright fireworks using lots of small mark making around a central point.

These fireworks were then all put together into one large image (with the help of our Year 6’s!) to create the lovely animation you can see above.

In their English lessons the children were learning about verbs to describe movement and the -ing and -ed suffixes.  They considered which of these words would best describe fireworks and then used them to help with their pattern poetry.

You can see their wonderful verbs and poems by clicking on the pictures below.