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“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.”
The reception classes had a great time when Police Officer Mike visited us today.
He brought loads of equipment which we tried on and found out all about the different roles that the police do, including search and rescue, first aid and lots of different things to help us and keep us safe.
Police look after people -Cora
We got to see what is inside the police car and had a go with the lights and sirens.
If someone takes a bike the police take them to jail – Charlotte
I want to be a policeman when I grow up – Isaac
Class 1 and 2 would like to thank Mike for spending the time to share his exciting and interesting career with us.
This half term our Year 3’s have been learning how to use Tinkercad to create 3D models and objects on their computers. This clever program lets you create anything you like in three dimensions, which can then be sent to a 3D printer to turn digital designs into real world objects.
To start with our students were introduced to the basics of Tinkercad (including how to resize, rotate, recolour and arrange 3D shapes). They then applied this learning to a series of fun (and slightly bizarre!) challenges – including building a Giraffe in 8 blocks, a favourite food item in 6 blocks, a spaceship with 4 blocks and a self portrait with 2 blocks (and the awesome Scribble tool!). To make it even harder then only had a few minutes for each challenge!
These fun and low-stake challenges helped the children explore the program and encouraged them to create multiple designs very quickly, rather than spending hours on each project. That meant when we came onto designing our Winter Ornaments the children were able to rapidly prototype different ideas before choosing their favourite.
But rather than me telling you about that here’s a video from some of our Year 3’s talking about the project…
DESIGN, REFINE AND PRINT
Once the children had designed a few different winter ornaments it was then time to refine those designs to ensure they looked as great as possible (and that they would print out nicely on our printer).
Part of this process involved checking the dimensions to ensure they all fit inside a 60mm box and also the tricky task of choosing which colour combination they’d like to use!
Lastly, we added a hole to the top to ensure our decorations could be hung up if desired.
After that all that was left was to print them out. An easy task you might think? Well, given we had 113 to print and each one takes nearly an hour it was touch and go whether or not we’d get them all done by the end of term!
Thankfully we managed it and below you can see a gallery of every single decoration designed by our Year 3’s and Year 6’s this year.
This half term we’ve been building Pyramids in Minecraft Edu in our Computing lessons. Mr Woolcock and Paul have created a shared world where we were all able to work together and build pyramids for our Egyptian Pharaohs. We researched what would be inside a pyramid and learnt about the traps and secret rooms designed to stop thieves and included these in our designs. We even created secret chambers full of canopic jars, golden treasures and scrolls of knowledge for the mummies to take with them into the afterlife.
Welcome to our Pyramids!
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Here are some more photos of all of our pyramids, along with some extra information about each one.
Class 7
Xander, George and Maverick
This is a maze which is to trick the people that try and break in and take all the gold.There are pressure plates on the floor and when you step on one they open up a trap door and you fall down!At the centre of the maze there is lots of treasure which was buried with the god Osiris.
Sorrel, luna and noah
Our pyramid is for Thoth.We made a patten in the wall which was meant to be a hieroglyphic.We’ve added lots of gold and treasures inside our pyramid along with a red carpet which feels very royal.We put some chests in there too with lots of important things in them like precious gems and golden objects.
Koby, Lili, Daisy, Xanthe, Lowenna and Frankie
We’ve built secret tunnels under the pyramid so if people try to get in they’ll come straight out the other side!There are some other traps too that are supposed to catch people trying to break in.
Lexi, Alice and Alice
We put two chambers into our pyramid one is full of treasures and is where the sarcophagus is placed.The pharaoh would have been buried with all of their treasure.There are secret tunnels to get into the chambers to stop anyone naughty coming in.It’s designed to be really scary in the tunnels!
Bobby, Daisy and Casey
This is where the mummy would be placed in the pyramid.We have put gold inside for him so he can take it with him to the afterlife.We put torches inside so it’s not completely dark and so he can see the gold in the afterlife.
Fred, Poppy, Charlie and Darcey
We’ve got a staircase inside the pyramid which takes you up to a large maze where people might think the treasure chests are hidden, but it’s a trap!They’re actually hidden under the pyramid.This traps thieves inside the pyramid.We’re really proud of the fact it has two levels and the fact we’ve added ancient books to give the pharaoh lots of knowledge in the afterlife.
Edwin, Logan and Arthur
It was designed so explorers who come in through the entrance will fall into a trap.There’s an empty chest filled with really rubbish items which will trap the robbers into a chamber.We’ve made it really confusing so nobody can get into steal the mummy or the treasure!It’s full of traps and surprises!
Class 8
Grace, Izzy, Merryn and amelia
This is a hidden part of our pyramid where there’s lots of gold and things inside.There are false lights in a fake corridor to distract people trying to break in!The gold is hidden in a secret place behind a trap.
Rory, Darcey, Noah and Charlie
We made an upstairs in the pyramid, but didn’t quite finish it off yet.But there’s also a dungeon room below the main room where there are spider webs, creepy things and stuff like that.Our pharaoh was the god of the underworld so we made his dungeon look like the underworld.
Massimo and Jack
We really enjoyed making the pyramid!We thought “what would an ancient Egyptian think about when the pyramids was created?”We thought the answer would be glory, cool secret stuff and valuable treasure.On the top of our building there’s loads of gold and I made the Egyptian symbol of life out of gold!We also really enjoyed making the secret entrances behind the hieroglyphics.
Maddison, Nevaeh and Lucy
I liked creating the portals for each Egyptian God because I could figure out blocks would best show off the different gods.We also really liked making the secret rooms which were so important in the pyramids to store things safely for the afterlife.
Zak, Pearl, Isaiah and Ethan
The trap in our pyramid has a little hole in the middle of it, so if anyone is silly enough to walk in the middle they’ll fall through!Our little room is really important because you can only fit really special things inside it.There is a secret treasure chest hiding under our bridge!
Sam and Logan
When you first go in through the passageway there’s a real sense of Ra’s power.We used glowstone to represent the sun.I liked the front of our pyramid a lot because it’s so three dimensional and it looks absolutely massive – but still smaller than a real pyramid!
Noah, Dexter, Bailey and Koen
The room in the back corner is a secret space where we’ve hidden some gold treasure.Another room has other important things in it like a backdoor, a desk and lots of ancient Egyptian scrolls.We’ve also added some exploding traps to stop anyone coming in!
Evie, Freya, Alayah and Everly
In this room the Egyptians could practice their mummifications!They need to be perfect so that people they were mummifying could get into the underworld.We also put in a trap door in the so we can get down into the secret room where the mummification happens.
The reception classes had a great time at Heyl gym.
Louise, our personal trainer, taught us how to do proper squats and we did some bear, frog and duck walking. We also learnt how to swing the kettlebell properly so that it worked on our full body strength.
The children had fun going into competition with each other and practised their endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility and balance.
The reception classes would like to thank Louise and everyone at Heyl gym. We had a great time.
