Jacob Woolcock

Class 8 have made an Elephant inspired by Art from India

14th May 201914th May 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

Class 8 have been learning about India for the last couple of weeks, including looking at some of the beautiful vibrant artwork that has been inspired by Indian culture over the years.

Having considered lots of examples and discussed the colours and shapes that make them stand out, we set to work designing our own colour scheme and patterns in Keynote.

Everyone created their own motif based on this theme and then we put them all together in one document to create that beautiful elephant you can see above. Finally we used some of the animation tools in Keynote to make each design rotate slowly, creating the mesmerising colourful effect for our whole-class artwork.

Well done Class 8, it looks great!

Year 6s bring their classrooms to life using Stop Motion

16th May 201910th May 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This week the Year 6’s have been exploring film making by looking at Stop Motion Animation. Using the iPads and a huge amount of their own imagination, they have come up with some incredible short films which they have filmed and directed themselves.

This is a showreel of the films made by Class 13:

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And here are the short films made by Class 14:

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Penpol Pupils extend Be Internet Legends with their own ideas

11th February 202022nd April 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This half term we’ve been revisiting our learning on E-Safety and reminding ourselves how to stay safe online using the five sections of the Google Be Internet Legends scheme. We’ve dived into each of these five areas, had some fascinating and honest conversations and we’ve managed to ensure we all know how to stay safe when using the internet.

But towards the end of the sessions lots of children started asking about other elements of Online Safety – areas which perhaps weren’t covered in the Google program. This got us thinking…

“What would we add to Be Internet Legends if we were Google?”

We explored this question and quickly realised that we could enhance the Be Internet Legends program by adding even more valuable and important information of our own. Each child made a plan of what they’d like to include along with an idea for the Inter-Naughty (baddie!) who would play against the character of Legend in the game.

Using Keynote and the shapes tool, the pupils then created their own Inter-Naughty characters using triangles and clever colour shading to try to mimic the unique style of the other characters.

With an idea and a fabulous character in hand, the children then set about using a Keynote template to create their own poster, designed to fit into the current set of five made by Google. They considered colours, key words, messages and style and ended up creating these absolutely stunning posters which wouldn’t look out of place next to the real things.

It’s been a really enjoyable project learning about being safe online this half term, made even more so by the children taking their imagination and creativity to new heights by making their own posters and lessons for others. Many even designed the level of the Interland game along with sketches of the island itself.

It’s been great to see so many brilliant ideas and terrifying Inter-Naughty characters and these new posters will remain on display in the Mac Suite for the whole school to see.

Penpol Pupil auditions for the Royal Shakespeare Company

11th February 20209th April 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

A couple of weeks ago one of our Year 6’s went up to London to audition for the lead role of ‘Dennis’ in the new stage adaptation of ‘The Boy in the Dress’. The auditions were with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, held at Toynbee Studios.

After a tense fifteen minute wait to be called in, Ethan performed his audition piece and he felt it went really well.

“When I sang ‘We Are The Champions’ and everyone clapped for me I felt really proud of myself because I’d practiced for so long on it and before going in I had so many nerves, so it really bought my mood up when I got to sing.”

Ethan thinks that about 8 other people were at the audition, but excitingly he was chosen for a call back!

We’re all keeping our fingers crossed for you Ethan.

Announcing Music in the Marquee 2019

11th February 202019th March 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

The last four years have seen sell out performances at our annual Music In The Marquee concerts from Little Chix, Yellow and last year’s return performer Bradley Johnson.

I’m delighted to say that this summer we will be hosting our fifth concert in the marquee, on Saturday 20th July 2019. Each year we ask the children which music they are enjoying and what sort of act they’d like to see play in our marquee at the end of the Summer term. This year one name kept coming up in each class we spoke to and that was the one and only Ariana Grande.

So, with great excitement, I’d love to introduce you to The Ariana Grande Experience performed by the incredibly talented singer Leanne Kyte. Leanne is a singer/dancer from North London who studied musical theatre for two years in California. Since coming back to the UK she’s been on tours around the country, has performed in the US and Canada and has received rave reviews for both her singing and dancing.

Leanne will be playing two sets of live music on the night, the first being a hit-filled and family-friendly Ariana Grande tribute set including tunes both new and old including ‘Problem’, ‘No Tears Left to Cry’, ‘Into You’ and ‘One Last Time’, followed by a later set which will include other popular covers. As always with Music in the Marquee her two sets will be accompanied by local support acts to round off the whole evening’s entertainment. We’re delighted to confirm that this years support acts will include a return for the fantastic DJ Flo Selecta, a debut performance from acoustic singer Hannigan and also an incredibly exciting set from the local band Saltwater Cure – featuring our very own Mr Emery!

Just like in previous years the event will raise money for the Penpol Friends Association and will also feature a fully licensed bar, BBQ, soft drinks, and food for everyone to enjoy. I hope you’ll agree that Music in the Marquee 2019 is already shaping up to be a phenomenal night of entertainment.

We are opening this event to the whole community, but want to give our Penpol parents the first chance to get tickets. For this reason we’re offering you a special pre-sale of tickets, starting TODAY! Tickets are priced at £9 for adults and £6 for children. Please note that all children must be accompanied by an adult.

Please return this slip and money to the office to secure your tickets. Music in the Marquee has been a sell out for the past four years and tickets will be on a first come first served basis.

What Makes a Super Strong Password?

11th February 202016th March 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

For our third week of E-Safety lessons this year we’ve been looking at what makes a strong and secure password. Each class in Key Stage 2 has had discussions about what passwords are, why they are important and how they can protect our digital stuff.

It's very important to make sure passwords are strong, otherwise anybody can get into our accounts.

Toby, Year 4

We’ve explored a great website called Dinopass which helps us find secure passwords, but they aren’t always the easiest to remember.

Instead, we’ve taken the formula that Dinopass uses to create strong passwords and have used it ourselves by breaking it down into a four step guide.

Below are some of the year sixes explaining how the four-step process works. (Click on an image to view it full size)

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

frog

flyingfrog

flyingfrog43

flyingFr0g43

What is our Online Persona?

11th February 20201st March 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

We are spending this half term focusing on the internet and how we can keep ourselves safe whilst online. Over the next six weeks we’ll be looking at online safety from a variety of different aspects, starting with looking at the information we choose to share online.

We’re basing our work on the Be Internet Legends project from Google, which builds on the lessons the children had last year.

To begin with we are looking at our ‘Online Persona’. This is how you appear online to other people, based on the information we have chosen to share. We’ve talked about the risks of over sharing our personal data and also the way other people might see what we’ve shared and draw conclusions about us.

This learning has been very thought provoking for the children and has seen us address lots of really interesting topics in whole-class discussions. A particularly interesting activity has been to ‘create a persona’ for a made up person, by giving them loads of personal information and then choosing what should and shouldn’t be shared online with the world.

Below are several of the characters that have been created this week, along with lots and lots of personal information. This information could range from general facts like their favourite colour right down to specific details like their date of birth and their phone password.

The children have then used the highlighter tool to mark green any information which they would feel safe sharing online with the world, or red for any information which they think should stay private. We talked about how information can be changed from red to green later on, but can never be changed back from green to red as when it exists on the internet, it can never really be deleted.

“You should never share really personal information online, even with just your friends. Always tell a responsible adult at home if somebody is asking for personal information that you don’t want to share.” – Zara

“I have learnt that sometimes when you post something other people can get sad or upset if I’m not careful. So in the future if there is a photo I want to share I will go to the people in it and make sure they are all right with me sharing it.” – Ethan

“I have learnt about keeping myself safe on the internet and learnt to always tell your parents or teachers or family about it if something silly comes up on Youtube.” – Poppy

Penpol School attend the BETT Show 2019

1st March 201915th February 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

A couple of weeks ago myself, Mr Chislett and Paul all went up to London to visit the BETT show. This massive educational technology show involves thousands of companies, hundreds of workshops and some fascinating presentations from industry and educational leaders. This year we were also lucky enough to attend an evening event hosted by Apple at the Design Museum which focused on creativity and self-expression, particularly through the innovative use of Garageband in the classroom. We’ve all come back full of fantastic ideas and we can’t wait to start sharing them with the pupils at Penpol. – Mr Woolcock

Etch-A-Scratch with Year 4

29th January 201929th January 2019 by Jacob Woolcock

This term the Year 4 pupils are learning all about robots and their uses in the world. They’ve been taking this learning into Computing as well and this week we’ve written programs to help us draw our very own robotic creations.

Using Scratch 3.0 the children have worked together to make a program which mimics a traditional Etch-A-Sketch, moving the pen up, down, left and right by using the correct blocks of code.

Here’s a few pictures of what their programs looked like, followed by a gallery of the Class 9 robots and the Class 10 robots.

To make their programs even better the children used the MicroBit as a remote controller, adding in pen up, pen down and clear screen functionality into their coding.

Class 9 Robot Drawings

Class 10 Robot Drawings

Penpol School make their own 3D Winter Ornaments on our 3D Printer!

4th February 201917th December 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This year, for the for the third time, we gave every child in Key Stage 2 the opportunity to design and refine their own 3D models on the computer, which we then printed out using our state-of-the-art Makerbot 3D printer.

This year the children had greater design freedom than ever before thanks to the fantastic new ‘Scribble’ tool on Tinkercad which lets the children draw their very own designs on screen, alongside their library of 3D shapes which the pupils have used previously. This tool was hugely popular and has resulted in us creating some really personal and unique decorations.

We’ve made a short video below to show the process of making our decorations, followed by a very large gallery underneath of every single decoration we printed this year!

This year we printed two hundred and twenty different decorations, which took a very very long time! You can see all of these decorations in the gallery below – see if you can spot yours…

This year there have been so many lovely designs and each one is completely unique. They’re all brilliant, but are there any that you particularly like?