Unfortunately we are having trouble with our phone system this morning. If you need to reach the school please use our backup number of 01736 756915. Thank you.

THE JELLY FRIENDS American blog
penpol_school_logo_for_website_white-slimline copy
Can you help the Jelly Friends?
  • Contact Us

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.”
Home
Information
Curriculum
Parents

The Penpol Times

Behind the Scenes of Maths Mania in Scratch

Scratch is a great program that lets us build our own games, animations and tools.  Using brightly coloured blocks of code we can control individual objects (called Sprites) as well as being able to combine multiple elements into more complex programs.  However my favourite thing about Scratch is that you can make just about anything you like if you use your imagination.

That’s exactly what happened last week when I heard this…

“Mr Woolcock, can I show you this game I’ve been making at home?”

Below is a video of that particular game, complete with play-by-play commentary!

I can’t overstate how much creativity, problem solving and complex logical thinking are involved in bringing a project like this to life – it’s absolutely ace.

If you’d like to have a play of this game (or the prequel – Grammar Castle) you can use the buttons below.

Play Grammar Castle
Play Maths Mania

Netball Festival at Hayle Academy

On Thursday, twenty Year 6’s went up to Hayle Academy to participate in a Netball Festival against several other local schools. Penpol’s teams both played their hearts out and really enjoyed their afternoon up at the academy.

Everyone showed great sportsmanship, respect and integrity throughout, cheering the other team at the end of each game and congratulating each team in the tournament. Well done Year Sixes you represented the school brilliantly!

Celebrating the European Day of Languages at Penpol

Wednesday 5th October marked a special day where Penpol celebrated European Day of Languages.  To mark the occasion at Penpol, children came to school dressed in the colours of their favourite flag and were excited to share their knowledge of languages from all over the world.  From Polish to French, Lithuanian to Portuguese, it was especially important to give all languages the recognition they duly deserve.

In the morning, KS2 students were invited to sample a French breakfast in Class 9 with Mr Emery and his year 4 group. Each class enjoyed singing in French and were then able to order from KS2 students, learning the basics such as ‘Bonjour’, ‘s’il vous plaît’ and ‘merci.’

Following this, each KS2 class demonstrated their knowledge of French by serving their KS1 reading buddies pastries and teaching their younger peers how to order in French, which generated huge waves of excitement in each year group. In addition, Atene, Emilija and Hana all taught key phrases in Lithuanian and Polish and were fantastic language ambassadors throughout the day. 

Finally, at the end of the day, Mr Jones and Mr Emery led a European singalong which culminated in a whopping 7 languages being sung in one song, all of which have been heard in the corridors at Penpol from our own multicultural students.  This rounded off a fantastic day which marked an important day in the school calendar. 

“Today has been the best day ever!” Isla, Class 9

A huge thank you to everyone who made the day such a great success! Check out the photos from the day, showcasing the multitude of colours and students and staff speaking in different languages.

Andrew Clover reminds us that Reading and Writing is Magic!

We’ve had a very exciting day at Penpol today, kicking off our Reading and Writing is Magic Festival with a visit from the famous author, Andrew Clover!  Andrew has written lots of books as part of the Rory Branagan Detective series.

The children in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 were both treated to an inspirational assembly this morning, where Mr Clover shared the Seven Secrets of Storytelling.  Along the way he showed the children how important it is to have fun with writing and to let our imaginations run wild!

After this some of the classes went to do some hands-on workshops to learn even more about storytelling with our special guest.

At the end of the day we all came back together again in the hall to share the stories we’d written and to celebrate everything that makes reading and writing so wonderful.  There were even free books for some of the stories!

It’s been such an exciting start to the Reading and Writing is Magic Festival – we can’t wait to see what the rest of the week brings!

Daya Visits Penpol School

Class 6 loved our workshop with Daya, in which we looked at the life of someone who follows the religion of Islam, including the Five Pillars of Islam, Islamic prayer practices and the role of a mosque in Islamic culture. Daya taught us how Muslims pray and that they pray 5 times a day, in the direction of Mecca. All pupils then had the chance to dress in some traditional Indian clothing and learn some wonderful Indian dance!

Both Year 5 classes had the opportunity to work with Daya. She introduced our key question, ‘What is it like to be a Muslim in Britain today?’

The children had the chance to discus different faiths and how they differ from each other. There was a particular focus on the pillars of Islam, before having the chance to dress in traditional muslim attire and have a go at some Indian dancing.

Gorsedh Kernow at Penpol School

As a part of the Gorsedh Kernow celebrations, we were joined by Go Cornish’s Will Coleman during the summer holidays to help us get to grips with the Cornish language.

Children, parents and visitors alike had a great time learning some key words and phrases. We look forward to continuing our journey with Go Cornish this year.

You can practise some Cornish at home too by following the links below:

Go Cornish

Golden Tree Cornwall on YouTube

Proud to be Penpol

Many children grow up wondering where they fit in the world. This is especially the case for those subjected to misunderstanding or prejudice because of who they are. During our Free To Be Me day, the children of Penpol did something amazing in celebrating the uniqueness in all of us. Every child has the right to grow up feeling proud of who they are and who their family is and our pupils demonstrated this today by creating a humungous rainbow on the school field, sharing songs, flying flags about themselves and enjoying some activities on the theme in class.

We are very grateful to be joined by Eliot and Eliot from Cornwall Pride who talked about the work they do in supporting everyone in Cornwall to be proud of who they are. What an incredible day – well done and thank you to all involved! 

Surf’s Up

The reception class spent a glorious summers day on the Bluff beach in Hayle.

Ben taught us all about beach safety in the Surf Life Saving Club. We learnt where to swim and surf safely, what the different coloured flags mean, what to do if we find ourselves in trouble in the sea and what kit the lifeguards have to help them do their job.

We went to the lifeguard hut next to catch up with some lifeguards on duty. They showed us some of their kit and told us some interesting stories about rescues they’ve had to do this summer.

We were also really lucky and excited to sit on the lifeguards jet ski and quad bike.

After lunch and more suncream, we played a few beach games then the surf was up.

The conditions were perfect and the children loved surfing. Lots of waves were caught. We had a few attempts at standing up and a couple of wipe outs.

We would like to say a massive thank you to Ben and the lifeguards for giving us such a fun day out at the beach.

 

Coding Underwater Adventure Games in Scratch

Our Year 5 students have been exploring Scratch this term and learning lots about coding along the way.  From small beginnings, the children have quickly developed a really exciting and creative understanding of just what’s possible in Scratch.

This learning has all come together in the last few weeks with a massive game building project, based on their class topic of a ‘Conservation Conversation‘.  This project started out as a simple ‘falling objects’ type game where they were trying to collect pollution before it hit the bottom of the ocean.  However this quickly developed into something far more interesting thanks to some incredible ideas from the children.  First they wanted to make the game more random, with objects falling at different times in different places.  Then several of them explored the idea of ‘power ups’ that would make the game easier or harder.  The natural next step was to add a variable to hold a Score and after that we decided it would be fun to add a time limit variable to add to the pressure!

But they didn’t stop there – the children then developed even more elements in their games.  Time limited boosters, sneaky tricks to get extra points, objects that immediately ended the game when caught.  The list was endless!

Finally we all came together and explored how a micro:bit could be used as a game controller for these games.  We used buttons as an input, before Rio came up with some quite brilliant code to use the motion sensor too!

This has been a hugely fun project and the children have been problem solving, debugging and creating new code with incredible skill and precision.  They’ve even got into the habit of labelling their code as they go to make it easy to pick up and edit in the future!

Below you can see some of the code they’ve been constructing, as well as some of their games for you to play and enjoy!

For this game you need to use the Arrow Keys to move the paddle along the bottom of the screen.

Catch the pollution but beware of bad power-ups!

Press the Green Flag to start.

"It was really fun, I loved making the games with Mr Woolcock. It was hard work, but fun because we kept adding more to make our games more fun. There was a time when we tried to get the micro:bits to move and I just couldn’t get the right pieces of code to make it move properly, when I figured it out I was so excited that I just kept playing the game for ages!"
Oliver
"It was fun with the micro:bits because it was so cool watching it come to life and play the game with our own controllers. I also liked testing each others games out on Scratch because it was a great way to get more ideas for our own games."
Imogen
Cool Code in these Games

Randomising Game Elements

We quickly discovered that the games would be a lot more fun if we didn't know where or when objects would be falling from. The children explore Random blocks to create rules for the game to follow, but rules which would create an unpredictable outcome.

Variables: Timer, Score and More

Adding a Score and Timer was a great chance to spend more time exploring Variables. These clever bits of code can change their value at any time, making them perfect for adding five points or taking away a second on the timer. Some children even used the Score variable to trigger new levels starting!

Boosters

As well as pollution falling into the ocean, the children wanted to add other objects which would affect the gameplay in one way or another. Cue objects that add or remove time from the timer, ones which give you bonus points and even ones which make your paddle bigger or smaller. Bonuses, both good and bad, added a whole new dimension to the gameplay.

Micro:Bit Controllers

The last part of the project involved connecting our micro:bits to Scratch over Bluetooth to use them as an external gamepad. The children experimented with using the buttons too move left and right before Rio made a breakthrough (with the code above!) to make the tilt sensor work flawlessly. The micro:bits also came in handy for displaying the score and time remaining.

"I’ve really enjoyed this project, it was challenging but it was totally worth it. Trying to figure out where the bugs in my game were was tricky, but eventually I figured it out by using trial and error which helped because it showed me that my timer wasn’t working properly. When I fixed that the game was perfect!"
Maisie
"My favourite thing was exploring the new blocks which I haven’t used before in Scratch, like the micro:bit blocks to control the game. I made lots of choices in my game to make it fun, including where things would go and how quickly they moved!"
Tacita
"My favourite part of making our games was designing the code - especially working with the variables like the timer and the score. These parts make the game a lot more fun because they make it really competitive to play - they were challenging to get working but my friend was able how to make it work a little better."
Lylie

For this game you need to use the Arrow Keys to move the paddle along the bottom of the screen.

Catch the pollution but beware of bad power-ups!

Press the Green Flag to start.

"It was amazing because you got to make a game and play it at school! It was challenging because sometimes getting the right code was tricky, but what I did was (when I calmed down!) I had another look for the blocks I needed and I always managed to find it in the end."
Alex
"My favourite bit of the project was doing the challenges in the code where Mr Woolcock would give us a starting point and it was up to us to make the game elements work."
Caitlyn

Class 11

View all of the games made by
Class 11 on the Scratch Website.

Class 12

View all of the games made by
Class 12 on the Scratch Website.

Year 4 create their own Map of Africa

This half term our Year 4’s have been studying ‘Which Way to Africa?’ as their topic.  Part of this exciting learning has involved creating Digital Art on the iPads.  

The children started learning all about the the tools available in our chosen drawing app (Sketches School) and then began to research an individual country in Africa.  We learnt about each country including landmarks, food, art, culture and geographic features.  The children then used this information to inspire them in their digital artwork.

"When I was doing my work I Googled a picture of what my country looks like and it was a burst of colour.  This inspired me to add lots and lots of colours to my picture.  I also searched for patterns from my country which I used in my drawing as well."
Sophia (C9)
South Africa

"This was an amazing project to work on and I wish I could do it over and over again with different countries! I learnt that Angola has amazing famous sculptures and building and many famous birds and beautiful patterns.  I think that the map itself looks amazing now it's all put together!"
Faith (C9)
Angola

To aide their artwork, each child created a ‘mood board’ of imagery from their chosen country.  We then used Adobe Colour on the iPads to extract the key colours from the images.  This meant each child had a custom palette of colours for their country – helping them all stand out and look unique.

"When Mr Woolcock first sent me my country I felt a bit nervous because I didn't know much about my country or what I could fit into the map, but at the end it turned out to be something that I'm really proud of.  My favourite part of the picture was doing the bubble writing, I really like doing the writing on the iPads!"
Violet (C9)
Malawi

Finally the children bought everything together to fill in the outline of their country with themed text, imagery, the countries flag and other graphical elements which they felt best represented their chosen country.  

As well as combining these into the map above, you can also explore each individual country below.

Individual Countries

You can click on a country to view it full size!