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THE JELLY FRIENDS American blog
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Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett

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

Telephone Number
01736 753472

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 foundation 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

Top Marks for the Penpol Quiz!

“Superb evening!  Well done to Mr Pollard and Mr Stanlake for all their hard work.  Great evening, enjoyed by all.”

“Great family night, a few drinks and a lot of family fun.”

“Fab night, great fun.  Thanks for hosting a great quiz.”

“Thank you very much – even though we came last – we had great fun.  So lovely to be involved in a school-community event.  Our only criticism is that we came last!”

“I really enjoyed this thank you Mr Pollard, Mr Stanlake and Mr Woolcock.”

“Fantastic evening, extremely well put together and very well supported by the staff.  Many thanks.”

“Thank you for a fantastic quiz night, we all had a great time.  Do it again next year please.”

“Great evening – I think this should be a regular event – great way to bring people together and raise money to keep productions, events and entertainment at Penpol School.”

Thomas is an official Internet Legend!

A few weeks ago Thomas came to see me with some fantastic drawings that he’d done after the Google Be Internet Legends assembly.  He spent hours drawing and colouring his creations and put in so much effort that I thought it’d be nice to send a copy to the team who helped organise the assembly.

They were so impressed with his enthusiasm and knowledge of E-Safety that they asked him a few questions about what he’s been learning so that they could write a short blog post all about him and the other children here at Penpol.

A week later and a mysterious box arrives in the Mac Suite, with some very exciting goodies inside for Thomas, which we surprised him with in our Friday celebration assembly last week.  I think it’s safe to say he was very, very happy with what was inside!  It just goes to show how putting in a bit of effort and having a passion for something can often lead to unexpected and exciting things!

– Mr Woolcock

Inside the goodie bag Thomas found a Google T-Shirt, some really cool Google headphones, a notebook and pen, a handy hand pointer and a certificate to recognise his Internet Legends status.

Class 12 create their own E-Safety animation!

Over the last few weeks Class 12 have been building upon their knowledge learnt from their Online Safety lessons and have taken it upon themselves to share what they have learnt from the Be Internet Legends program with others.

In order to accomplish this they have worked in groups to create their own animation, based around the Be Internet Legends concept.  By writing their own dialogue and designing their own cartoon character, the children have created a short movie which you can enjoy below.  The animation itself has been created in a clever program called Adobe Character Animator, a piece of software which allowed the children to animate every aspect of their characters, from their eyes to their toes!

So, sit back, relax and enjoy Class 12 talking about how to become Internet Legends!

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As well as this lovely animation, the other Year 5 and 6 classes are also working on their own short films so check back soon to see those as well.

In the meantime here are some more stories about the children enjoying the Internet Legends program.

Internet Legends Assembly with Google

This afternoon we had a very special assembly from Jenny and Daniel who came to visit us from Google.  They came down to Cornwall to visit a couple of schools and Penpol were one of the lucky ones chosen.  

The assembly itself was linked to our recent work on how to stay safe online and in particular the Be Internet Legends program.  The assembly was a chance for the children to celebrate completing their lessons on e-safety and also a chance to experience the various characters and worlds from Interland come to life in the school hall.

Jenny and Daniel bought a whole host of exciting things with them for the assembly, including special hands for everybody to hold up and participate in the assembly with.  The hands were green on one side and red on the other, letting us answer yes or no to a number of tricky questions!  They also built a massive display in the hall to really get everyone in the mood to learn about e-safety.  Giant banners and flags lined every wall in the hall, surrounding us with the colourful characters from Interland.

Audience participation was very much key to this assembly and we all had a chance to get involved and shout out answers at the right times.  Daniel and Jenny guided us through the islands of Interland and this proved to be a fun and friendly look at some serious topics including cyberbullying, password hacking, identifying fake information online and sharing sensitive information on the internet.

Speaking to our visitors from Google before the assembly, it was clear that they were very impressed with our Computing lessons at Penpol – particularly the work we’ve all been doing recently on E-Safety.  Mr Woolcock and the special guests spoke at length about the animation project we’re working on with the Year 5s and 6s which links to Interland and they are both very excited to see the finished films in the next few weeks.

To complete an already fantastic afternoon, Jenny and Daniel also gave out certificates to every child to confirm that they are now Internet Legends!  

Thomas in Class 7 enjoyed the assembly so much he went straight home and created these lovely posters featuring characters from Interland.  Well done Thomas, they are lovely!

From the Computer Screen to the Real World

Over the past few weeks Taran has been helping run Computing Club along with some friends on a Thursday lunchtime.  Whilst there he’s been using his extra computing time to design and create a plastic storage unit for his tent on a program called Tinkercad.

When I first opened my tent I saw a very handy hook right in the centre.  I thought “that could have a hanging basket on it” but instead of designing one hanging basket I designed four and had them 3D printed out in the same colour they were on the computer.  I’m going to use my invention for general storage in my tent and I think it will be very useful. – Taran, Y6

He has measured, designed and refined his digital model to the point where he was ready to get it 3D printed.  It took nearly 14 hours to print all four parts of the model, but now it’s finished he’s delighted with the result.  He now has his very own, unique, storage solution for his tent.  Well done Taran, an amazing project.

Penpol School are sharing their ‘Internet Legends’ status!

Here at Penpol we’ve been working really hard to learn all about staying safe online and how to look after each other in the digital world.  We’ve been one of the first schools to use the exciting and innovative Be Internet Legends program from Google and ParentZone, which has involved a series of five fun and immersive lessons for Key Stage 2.

We were contacted by ParentZone, the company who are helping Google introduce this program into schools in the UK and they were so impressed by what we’ve been doing here at Penpol that they’ve written a blog post about us for their website!  Not only that, but they emailed the story out to every school in the country, to share our best practice with e-safety.  The feedback from ParentZone on our implementation of the Be Internet Legends program has been overwhelmingly positive and hopefully we can help share these skills with other schools through this blog.

You can read the blog here.

We’re expecting a visit from Google next week to give a special assembly to our Key Stage 2 children, so keep an eye out for photos from that soon.

Mr Woolcock

Winners of the Penpol Times Easter Egg Hunt 2018

At the end of last term, a mysterious message appeared on the Penpol Times, along with a dozen hidden eggs!  Nearly fifty children managed to hunt down all twelve eggs in order to unscramble the secret message contained within.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the secret message was actually ‘Happy Easter!’

Well done to our winners, who were chosen at random earlier today.  They are James B from Class 3, Scott from Class 8 and Gabby from class 12.  Well done to all three of you and enjoy your prizes!

Class 9 are Internet Kind

For our forth and final trip to Interland the children at Penpol School have been learning about how important it is to be kind and considerate online.  This week, whilst learning how to Be Internet Kind we’ve been discussing a wide variety of topics including how positivity always beats negativity online and how a simple message can easily be mis-interpreted when you don’t understand the emotion it was sent with (i.e. try saying “whatever” in a happy voice, a sad voice, an angry voice and a joking voice – it has a totally different meaning!).

We also talked about how cyberbullies try to get other people to join in in order to strengthen their mean messages.  We decided that it was always best to speak up to a trusted adult whenever we saw somebody being treated unfairly online and also that the best course of action was always to use kindness to help people who may be feeling upset.

Here are some photos of Class 9 enjoying the Kind Kingdom island on Interland as well as some really good advice from some of the children.

“It’s important to be kind because if somebody has been bullied online and a bystander isn’t kind to them then they could end up making the problem even worse.  Without kindness we would end up with a world of mean people and nobody wants that!“ – Luke

“It’s not hard to be kind to others online and a quick message can make somebody feel much happier.” – Harrison

“Being kind is being nice to other people and yourself.  That’s really important online because if you are kind to other people then they will be kind to you!” – William

“It makes other people happy when you are kind, and it’s just nice to be kind.  If somebody was being cyberbullied you could send them a nice message to make them feel a little bit better and then you could tell an adult to get them some support” – Freya

All of the games that the children have been enjoying as part of the Internet Legends program are available to play at home for free on Interland here.

Year 6 Create an Animation for Mr Doyle

Today was a very special day at Penpol – a day where we got to celebrate Mr Doyle and his 19 years at school, as well as a chance to wish him well with the next chapter in his life.

All of the children and staff got together in the morning for a very special assembly, where every year group presented Mr Doyle with something special for him to remember them by.  

Below is the video that Year Six worked on with Mr Woolcock, set to the tune of 500 Miles.  Each child has spent several weeks designing their own character in Photoshop, using nearly 30 different layers to allow the cartoon to become animated.  By drawing the different elements on different layers they’ve managed to create some truly unique characters!  They then got to grip with an amazing new program called Adobe Character Animator which is where the real magic happened.  Stay tuned for lots more animations from our Year 5s and 6s after the Easter break!

 

Computing Speed Challenge: Musical Robots!

This week Class 8 had an unexpected Computing Speed Challenge with the Lego WeDo 2.0 robots.  Their task was to design, build and then code a moving robot which makes noises using just the Lego bricks.  No sound effects allowed!

To make this even harder, the children only had 45 minutes from start to finish, including tidying up time.  The race was on and the children were eager to make the noisiest robot they could.

Here we have Oskar and Henry showing off their robot:

 

And here are Finley and Lucy with their design:

 

Finally, here is the robot that Brodie and Patrick built: