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
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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…
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!
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:
And here are the short films made by Class 14:
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…
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.
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.
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)
