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Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett

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

Telephone Number
01736 753472

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@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.”

Purging Pollution with our Scratch Games

Our Year 5’s have been learning all about conservation, pollution and looking after Planet Earth this term.  As part of this exciting project they’ve been designing and coding their own pollution-busting games in Scratch.

Starting with character development, each student used a fun drawing tool called Make 8-Bit Art to create a selection of fish, some polluting objects like carrier bags and drinks cans and their own underwater scene for their background.

After this the coding began in Scratch with the first session focussed around getting the fish to swim across the screen.  The students explored using random generators to change the starting position, size and colour of the fish and how often they appeared. 

We then used this same idea to add our polluting objects, this time falling from the surface to the bottom of the ocean.  Once this was working we decided to add a variable to keep score of how many pieces of pollution were clicked on by the player.

This variable quickly led into another – this time creating a timer to keep track of the length of their game and create an element of competitiveness to see how many points could be earned in a short amount of time.

After these basics were created the children all had different ideas of where their games should go next.  To help them explore, test and create these extra features they all had two weeks to design and code anything they wanted in their game.  We had power-ups that gave extra time,  lives that were lost if you clicked a fish by accident, game over screens, high score boards and so, so many more ideas!  The children really ran with their games and created some absolutely fantastic projects.  You can explore all the games from Class 11 here and those from Class 12 here.

“In my game I have lives which I’m quite impressed about since it looks complicated but actually when you think about it it’s pretty simple.  What I did is when I was trying to figure out the lives I broke it into different stages – first of all doing the variable code to make it work and then if something else wasn’t working because of it I would figure out why and improve it by fixing the bugs.”

“I’ve added a score too, when you’ve finished the game it’ll come up with your score at the end”.

Luke (red-fish-235)

“In my game I’m proud that I could make it work at all!  I’ve never thought of myself as being particularly good at coding but I really pushed myself and I’m so proud that I managed to get it working. I loved exploring the other games from people in my class to get ideas – they were all just so good! I think if we combined everyones ideas into one we could make a game that would go viral!”

Isla (red-fish-227)

“I’m really proud of my game because I didn’t know if I’d be able to manage all of the coding but I did in the end and I’m really happy with what I’ve done!  We’ve spent four weeks doing this coding of the game and it’s already starting to look really good!”

Evangeline (red-fish-251)

“Throughout my time doing Computing at school its really inspired me to push past my limits and start doing it at home too.  Inside of me it’s really sparked an interest for coding!

Inside my game I am most proud of my lives system (which mimic the variable Health) which means that I have five lives which link to five hearts on screen.  Every time Health goes down a heart disappears until there are none left at which point it’s game over.

At home I also added a shop which I’m really happy with.  It’s not finished yet, but it’s basically a way to use the points gathered by collecting rubbish to spend in the shop.  You can buy extra time, plastic per second (which means you get more plastic to fall) and an upgrade which gives you even more boosters.”

Ned (red-fish-220)

The Dragons and the Six Super Stars both come back from Culdrose with Trophies!

Last week our Year 6 and Year 5 Lego Teams (the Six Super Stars and the Dragons respectively) took part in the Cornwall finals of the FIRST Lego League.

With thirty other teams taking part each day it was wonderful to see the event getting bigger and better every year in Cornwall.  But of course more teams also means more competition for our own Penpol pupils!  They completely rose to the occasion though with both groups sharing two excellent presentations and each taking part in three brilliant Robot Games runs.

This is the story of how our students got on at RNAS Culdrose…

Part 1: Robot Games

The Robot games is a fun challenge where the children have to design, build and code their very own robot to complete different missions. There is a maximum of 550 points on offer this year and a score of anything over 200 is considered exceptionally good – especially for primary teams!

The Dragons

Never under-estimate how much pressure it takes to be a Robot Games Engineer.  Not only are you lining up your robot and ensuring your code works perfectly, but you have a whole world of excitement, pressure and expectation building around you.  Those two and a half minutes determine a huge part of your whole teams score in the competition – so it’s a lot of pressure!

Not that you’d know if from watching the Dragons though.  They stayed cool under pressure, re-ran missions that didn’t work quite right and communicated throughout to ensure they got the very best score possible in each game.  And all that hard work paid off on the third and final run as, to much cheering and support from their fellow team members, the robot managed to achieve it’s best run and got a score of 265 points when it mattered the most – catapulting the team to second place on the Robot Games scoreboard.

245

Round 1

230

Round 2

265

Round 3

The Six Super Stars

In the Robot Games you are given three opportunities to get your best score possible – but the Six Super Stars did theirs on the very first run!  To much cheering and excitement their robot pulled off the perfect run, completing all the missions they had planned and scooped up a brilliant score of 265 points.  This took the pressure off the other two runs, allowing the students a chance to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the moment.  This was a real team success as every member had the opportunity to launch at least one mission in the two and half minute timeframe.

They even engaged in some friendly banter with the the Year 7 team from Hayle Academy, which included some team-members from last years Penpol Pumpkins.  This caught the attention of BBC Spotlight who sent their reporter Johnny Rutherford who featured the team on his report in the evening news!

265

Round 1

225

Round 2

205

Round 3

Part 2: Innovation Project

The Innovation Project is a chance for the children to identify a problem linked to the annual theme (Creativity and Hobbies for this season) before researching, creating, refining and presenting their own innovative solution. This takes the form of a five minute presentation to the judges and a ten minute question and answer session afterwards.

The Dragons

For their Innovation Project the Year 5’s conducted a survey all about art and found that 80% of children in school loved to draw.  The only problem was that three quarters of those children often didn’t draw because they didn’t have any good ideas of inspiration of what to create.

The Dragons set about fixing this by creating a Scratch project called the DrawingRandomiser which gives people an idea of what to draw – often with some very funny results!

They shared this project with the judges in a short comedy sketch that they’d written together and gave the judges a chance to try their project for themselves.

For this presentation there was nowhere to hide and the team all had to be really brave in their confidence – something they truly excelled at in the run up to the competition.  On the day they were able to speak confidently and proudly to the judges (in fact one of the organisers told us it was hard for the judges to get a word in because the team were so confidently explaining everything they’d been doing!).

31 points

out of a total of 40

The judges praised their “unique idea to encourage creativity for all people” and thought they “adapted to failing technology very well” when their laptop couldn’t get onto the internet.

The Six Super Stars

The Year 6 Innovation Project also revolved around the theme of art, but with a slightly different focus.

After lots of planning meetings and discussions, the team identified the problem that quite often people struggle to draw because they don’t know how to.  To help with this problem they decided to create a book that students can use to learn how to draw different things with friendly, step-by-step instructions.  They chose popular things to draw such as animals and using iPad they created illustrations and instructions to help even the most beginner artist create some beautiful pictures.

Having made this book the team then created a presentation to share with the judges which featured lots of comedy and some great acting too.  They also had a printed copy of their book to demonstrate what the finished product would look like in the future.

They were full of confidence in the judging room and ensured that each team member had the opportunity to talk and reflect on the journey they’ve been on over the course of the competition.

19 points

out of a total of 40

The judges enjoyed their “unique, acted presentation” and said their “excellent, enthusiastic teamwork” was evident throughout whilst describing and solving their “novel problem”.

Part 3: Robot Design Presentation

The last part of the competition was the Robot Design Presentation. This name is slightly deceptive as it isn’t just about the robot that the teams have built. Yes it is largely about this, but it is also a chance to share the story that the children have been on since starting their journey in the competition. This is a chance to share their learnings, their new skills, their strategies, plans and anything else that they want to with the judges.

The Dragons

When it came time to share their Robot Design presentation the Year 5’s decided on an ‘interview-style’ approach where they took it in turns to ask questions for each other to answer about the robot, coding, mission strategy and testing they’d done.

This fun approach meant the children were able to talk naturally without having to learn a script beforehand and gave them plenty of opportunities to highlight their coding and strategy for their missions.

29 points

out of a total of 40

The judges shared that it was “well presented” and that the team “explained thoroughly what could go wrong and the how to avoid mistakes during the missions.” 

The Six Super Stars

For their Robot Design presentation the Year 6’s created and shared A1 posters which featured their code, photos of the robot and attachments and important information about their robot.  This meant they were able to clearly articulate the journey they’d been on with their coding, including the decision making strategy behind changing their robot design from the standard ‘Advanced Driving Base’ to a more unusual ‘Coop Bot‘ which they found after doing lots of online research into effective robot designs. 

They took this starting point and adapted the robot for their own mission strategy by creating an assortment of interesting attachments to help them earn points.

30 points

out of a total of 40

The judges said their presentations were “novel, funny and charming” as well as their “detailed explanation of design, issues and solutions”.

Part 4: Core Values

The final of the four areas that teams are marked on is called the Core Values. These values include Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. Throughout their presentations, their robot games and the day itself the teams are being judged on these six areas.

The Dragons

As a team, the Dragons really embodied their Core Values over the course of the day.  They supported each other throughout, from cheering during the Robot Games matches to supporting each other in the presentations if they stumbled on any lines.

They demonstrated the impact they’ve had through their project and shared all the discoveries they’d made as they learnt to build and code their Lego robot.

20 points

out of a total of 24

The judges were really impressed with how the team “supported each other and the most confident always encouraged the least confident” and said that “when asked about teamwork they all discussed how they organised as a team and how the team has supported each other learning new skills”.

The Six Super Stars

The Six Super Stars did a fantastic job sharing their Core Values during the competition – from supporting each other and exploring the STEM exhibitors together to being kind and courteous to adults and other teams. 

The judges picked up on their team spirit and gave them a rare Exceeding score of 4 points for both their Teamwork and Fun.  For every other score they got a 3 which shows that Discovery, Innovation, Impact and Inclusion were “consistently observed across the team“.

20 points

out of a total of 24

The judges praised their “excellent teamwork”, the fact they “worked out improvements and simplified their designs” and the fact that during their presentation there were “great answers by all members to questions”.

The Final Scores

As you can see from each of the four areas above, both teams did really well and embraced each and every aspect of the competition. I’m thrilled to say that they both returned to Penpol with a trophy to recognise their hard word.

Year 5 Team

The Dragons came second overall in the Robot Performance category with a score of 265 points, as well as taking home the Breakthrough Award which "celebrates a team that made significant progress in their confidence and capability in both the Robot Game and Innovation Project and are a shining example of excellent Core Values."

Year 6 Team

The Six Super Stars came top of the charts in the Robot Games section, beating over 30 other teams with their incredible score of 265 points.

Because of this excellent score they take home the Robot Performance Trophy.

Codeblocks at Christmas

This term the students in Years 3 and 6 have been creating their own 3D Winter Ornaments using the Tinkercad program.

The Year 3’s have been learning all about 3D modelling and how to adjust, combine and create using different 3D shapes, while the Year 6’s have been putting their coding skills to the test by creating their own 3D decorations using nothing but blocks of code!

This week, as one hundred and twenty 3D decorations go home, we wanted to share some of the behind-the-scenes of how these wintery treats were made…

Year 6

Isaac

Class: 14

I used three spheres for the body.  I used the move block and changed the z axis.  I then squashed a cynlinder for the base and I used the text block for my name and the size block to change the size.

For the hat I used a torus shape and a cynlinder, which I moved using the Z axis.

Verity

Class: 14

For my Christmas decoration I made a gingerbread man, it was very fun to make! At first I was quite confused, but then I got the hang of it and created this!

Hana

Class: 14

Rosie

Class 13

I used hearts instead of triangles to make the tree segments unique. I also did a green gradient. Then we were told that our designs are going to be printed in white and that we would haft to paint it.  For the tinsel I used dashes in text because there was no shape that would mimic tinsel very well.

This is where I got stuck on how to flip it upwards. This is where Harry told me I just needed to place a ‘select all’ block at the bottom.

I used two squares and moved it by the z axis (up) to create the pot top and I used a semicircle to make the tree stump. 

Jowan

Class: 13

Blue blocks make the shapes – if we didn’t have these we wouldn’t have anything on this page.

Purple blocks are vital if you want the objects to be in the right place to make something cool or cute.

Top tip: If you open the Blue blocks you can change the size of each block individually.

Lola

Class: 13

To make my snow monkey,I first had to place the body by using spheres all lined up on top of each other.  Next I did the ears to do that I used cones and adjusted the sizes.   Then I started doing the mouth because I want my monkey to be happy.  After that, I started doing the eyes with two spheres again it was quite hard at the start but then it got a bit easier.

On the next part of my code, I tried doing a tail it was really hard to do because you cant make it curve since we are coding it. I managed to do it by mixing up all the numbers and then it just turned out to look like a tail.

I think it’s safe to say the Year 6’s have truly outdone themselves this year, each taking home a beautiful and unique 3D winter ornament.

Year 3

Our Year 3’s have also been exploring the world of 3D designing in Tinkercad whilst creating their own two-tone winter ornament.

They’ve learnt how to master the different tools and iterated on their designs to make each one the very best it can be before they got printed.  How good do these look?!

A Very Special Visit from Biffa

Last week we had a very special visit from Biffa and their brand new Food Waste Recycling Truck.

Okay, you might be asking what’s so special about that?  Well the Penpol Pumpkins have been spreading the word about the upcoming Cornwall Council Food Waste Collection all year as part of their award-winning FIRST LEGO League Innovation Project and as a special reward for all their hard work they’re actually the first people outside of Biffa to ever see this brand new vehicle in real life!

Not only that, but they also got to see the truck in action and even sit in the cab and use the horn!  They learnt lots about the vehicle and asked plenty of interesting questions about the upcoming Food Waste collection.

After a tour of the truck the Pumpkins took great pride in sharing their Innovation Project Presentation with the team from Biffa in a real ‘full-circle’ moment.  Nearly 10 months after originally coming up with the idea of promoting Food Waste Recycling they were able to share their learnings in front of the actual vehicle that will be used and with part of the team responsible for rolling it out right across Cornwall – amazing!

But Biffa were also here for another reason…

Thanks to an incredibly generous donation from the company, the Penpol Pumpkins have been able to buy 10 LEGO Robotics Kits to donate to other schools to enable them to take part in FIRST LEGO League too!  These sets, offered as a gift from the Penpol Pumpkins and Biffa, will have a huge impact on hundreds of children in Cornwall who would not otherwise have been able to experience the powerful STEM learning experiences that this competition has to offer.

Talk about having a lasting legacy in Cornwall!  Well done Pumpkins – and thank you Biffa!

Welcome Home Penpol Pumpkins!

We’ve made it safely back to Penpol School!

I’m sure in the days to come the children will be eager to share some reflections and memories of the last week, but for now we all need a good nights sleep and a bit of a rest!

Thank you all for the support and for following our journey via the live blog, it’s lovely to see just how much support the Pumpkins have had!