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Chris Coyle-Chislett

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secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

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01736 753472

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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.”
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Jacob Woolcock

Year 5 Space Spectacul-‘AR’

This half term our year 5 pupils have been learning about Space and the Solar System.  As part of this exciting topic, the children have been using their knowledge of our Solar System to create some video documentaries on the iPads.

However, obviously getting video footage of the actual planets is quite tricky.  So instead the children have carefully re-created each planet using their own artwork and Augmented Reality.

They’ve then put these AR planets together in the video app Clips and added their own voiceovers, titles and special effects.

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The children have worked phenomenally hard on this project and the videos below are testament to this.  Please do jump right in and watch a few to get a flavour of our out-of-this-world Space Documentaries!

Class 12 Space Documentaries

Class 11 Space Documentaries

Year 4 build LEGO robots to help save a stranded astronaut!

In a very dramatic turn of events, Year 4 pupils arrived into the Mac Suite this morning to discover that a situation had arisen overnight.  An intrepid LEGO astronaut had got himself into a spot of bother on the surface of the moon.

He’d unpacked his suitcase and was enjoying a warm drink in the Moon Base when he realised he’d left his Moon Rover back on Earth. Oh dear!  

To make matters even worse, ahead in the distance he could see two massive pieces of Moon Treasure that were too far away to reach on foot.

Thankfully, Classes 9 and 10 were on hand to help.  When faced with a challenge, these classes can always built a robot to help out!  So over the morning, both classes built, tested, refined and polished their Moon Rovers to help Astronaut Alan reach the treasure.  We had a variety of designs, a huge array of different programming styles and a lot of trips back and forth testing their creations.

But at the end of the morning, I’m delighted to say that Astronaut Alan reached the Moon Treasure and safely returned to his base – safe in the knowledge that the treasure was actually just two foam cubes with patterns on.

Mission complete!

Year 3 Create their own Winter Ornaments

This term children in Year 3 have been learning how to use the 3D design program Tinkercad.

They’ve learnt how to rotate, resize and combine objects into creative and imaginative shapes.

As well as this they’ve completed a series of mini-challenges to really test their digital building skills by creating 3D models of various objects using a very limited number of building blocks.

After these challenges the children set about creating their own design for a 3D Winter Ornament.  They were allowed to use two colours and used examples from last year as inspiration.

Everyone got the chance to create several different designs before choosing their favourite one to be printed.

Check out all of the amazing designs below, aren’t they great?

Don’t worry if that’s a little too fast for you – here’s a gallery with all of the decorations in.  Click on a picture to view it bigger.

Bringing a little digital snow to Penpol

This week we’ve been having some Festive Fun with the iPads and our Computing lessons by spending time learning how to use the Green Screen tool in iMovie.

The children have learnt how to use this great effect to create their own Snowglobe videos using this technique.  

You can learn how to do this (and perhaps even create your own Snowglobe video as well!) by following the instructions in the video Mr Woolcock has made.

Play Video

Class 13 Snowglobe Video

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Class 10 Snowglobe Video

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Painting with Sphero Robots

This week the children in Year 6 have been creating some quite unusual artwork involving robots…

These paintings may look colourful and vibrant, but the way they were made is perhaps even more exciting.  By writing code and controlling Sphero robots, the children were able to create stunning works of art by driving through blobs of paint and mixing colours in unusual ways.

We were inspired by the works of Jackson Pollock and each team of children tried to replicate one of his artworks by using their Sphero robots.

Artistic Adjectives

Just before half term we finished an exciting and creative project which involved creating artwork on our iPads.  We spent several lessons learning different techniques and building our drawing skills, which was put to good use in the final lesson where everyone created their own Artistic Adjective.

The goal was simple, pick an adjective and create a piece of Word Art which showed that word illustrated as if it were describing itself.  So ‘chilly’ had to look really cold, ‘sleepy’ had to look really tired and ‘boring’ had to look really, well, boring!

The children had great fun creating these pieces of art. Keep an eye out around the school for a big Word Art display popping up soon…

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A lovely morning for some Bingo!

Welcome back to the new term at Penpol School!

As a fun starter for this year, Mr Woolcock and his classes played a game of ‘Summer Holiday Bingo’ using the new Outdoor Classroom area and our iPads.

This game proved quite the hit with the pupils, who spent a good half an hour trying to fill their game cards before everyone else could.

The game itself was very simple – each child had to take a selfie with another child who had taken part in a particular activity over the summer holidays.  For example, “rode a bike’, ‘went on an aeroplane’ or ‘watched an amazing film’.

The only catch was that they couldn’t get a photograph with the same child twice!  This didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but soon proved quite tricky…

It quickly became apparent that some of the bingo squares were harder to find that others and that only a couple of children had completed some of the activities.  This led to some rather hasty rearranging of selfies to ensure every box was filled.

This activity was a great chance to get outdoors with the iPads, but also to get to know our new classes and catch up with old friends.

Music in the Marquee 2019 – The Movie!

This year we had our fifth Music in the Marquee concert here at Penpol School, this year featuring the amazing Leanne Kyte as The Ariana Grande Experience.  As is fast becoming a tradition, we’ve made a very special short film of the evening to bring back all of those amazing memories!

As always, these events are held to help raise money for the Penpol Friends Association (PFA) and this year I’m thrilled to say that we’ve raised nearly four and a half thousand pounds – all of which will go to supporting Penpol School in the years to come.  

Thank you all so much for supporting our school through events like these.

Year 5 have been learning about the Ancient Greeks

This term both Year 5 classes have been learning about the Ancient Greeks.  As part of this learning they have built their very own Greek Temples using Keynote on computer and have created these gorgeous animations for you to enjoy.

Each child took a different Greek figure and designed a temple just for them.  They then did some research online to create a short fact card for each person.

So sit back, relax and enjoy learning about famous Greek figures whilst marvelling at some stunning animations.  Well done Year 5.

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Teamwork and Cooperation help Class 8 race to success with LEGO Race Cars

Year 3s have started using LEGO WeDo 2.0 robotics sets for the first time this week!  After much excitement and anticipation, Class 8 have been building race cars for their first project.  From building with LEGO bricks to writing the code on screen, the children have demonstrated fantastic teamwork and perseverance to overcome obstacles, locate missing pieces and connect the robots to their iMacs.

The key to success here was good teamwork and cooperation, something which Class 8 realised from the start.  Working in pairs they set about co-ordinating their approach so one had the instructions on screen whilst the other built the model, often switching roles as the process went on.  

In forty minutes we all had race cars built, but then it was time for the biggest challenge of all – getting the cars connected to the computers and moving by themselves!

Of course we had to have a race to finish the lesson, check out the breathtakingly fast action on the video below…

Our Penpol School Vision: “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.”

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Chris Coyle-Chislett

secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

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2 St George's Road, Hayle, Cornwall, TR27 4AH

01736 753472