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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.”

ITV News: “The Cornish school pupils heading to the USA hoping for Lego League glory”

Tonight the Pumpkins featured on ITV Westcountry news in a segment where they talk about the FIRST LEGO League as well as sharing how excited they are to be heading to Boston.

“There’s so much problem solving, creative thinking and fun involved. There’s trial and error, crashing into things, things falling off the table, robots smashing on the floor.  But at the end of it, you get this creation which they can then run around the board with and earn all these points because they put that work in. And it’s really rewarding to see that come to life because they’ve created that and made it happen.” – Jacob Woolcock

There’s a lovely write-up on the ITV website too – find it here.

Pumpkin Rock

We’ve heard from other teams who have been in International Finals that it’s quite common to bring a sweet treat from your country to share with all the other teams.  We really hope this is true (who wouldn’t want to try 80 different sweets?!) so the Pumpkins got to thinking about what a typical British sweet might be.

After some thought, they settled on the idea of pieces of Rock.  A lightbulb went off and we realised that perhaps we could even get our own, personal, rock made!  A few emails later and thanks to the incredibly kind Sue at Promotional Candy, the Pumpkins had commissioned their very own Union Jack coloured sweets!

Don’t they look absolutely awesome? And so cool to see them being made too.

TechConnect at Cornwall Council

The Pumpkins shared their Innovation Project presentation in front of 60 business owners at the Software Cornwall Tech Connect event in the Cornwall Council Chambers at New County Hall, Truro.  They stayed afterwards to get stuck into some coding at the Tech Jam where they explored Python and writing instructions to control LED lights and a rover robot.

Celtic Sea Power meet the Pumpkins

Today we had the pleasure of being joined by CEO Steve Jermy and some of his team from Celtic Sea Power, who are kindly sponsoring us in our bid to get to America. We learnt all about their plans to launch floating wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower into the ocean and in return we shared our presentations and Robot Games run through with them. Thank you so much for the support Celtic Sea Power, we’re incredibly grateful.

We’re going to America!

This is a message I really wasn’t expecting to write (especially after just two weeks!), but I’m delighted to say that we’ve reached our fundraising target!!  The £10,000 from GoFundMe along with the nearly £15,000 from companies sponsoring the Pumpkins means we’re going to go to America in two weeks time!

On behalf of myself, Penpol School and of course the Penpol Pumpkins themselves I want to say a massive thank you to each and every one of you for your support, generosity and kindness in the last two weeks.  We couldn’t do this without you and seeing our whole community rallying around these students has left us all feeling completely overwhelmed.

When we return from America we are hoping to share our experience with other schools in Cornwall and hopefully encourage them to take part in the FIRST LEGO League too.  To this end if we find ourselves in the situation where we have any leftover money, the Pumpkins would like to purchase some LEGO Robotics kits to share with other schools.  This will enable them to build on their success by creating a legacy of encouraging more children in Cornwall to take up STEM and Robotics in their schools.

Thank you once more for all the support and be sure to keep an eye on our school website to see how the Pumpkins get on when they arrive in America!

Jacob Woolcock