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
As part of this terms Geography topic, ‘Coasts and Oceans’, year 2 spent a lovely day at North Quay beach.
After walking to the beach, in the lovely sunshine, the children spent the day sketching the beautiful scenery, recording physical and human features and also creating a selection of sand sculptures.
Take a look at the scenery photographs, can you name any physical or human features?
Last term, as part of our Space topic, the children were inspired by the landing of Perseverance on Mars and so created their own versions of a Mars rover, complete with a motor so that it could move forward and, most impressively a lever system to enable it to pick up ‘space rock’ to study. The children had a great time making and designing their own rover and, who knows, maybe this activity will have inspired our next rover designers of the future.
After they’d made their rovers, the children used the iPads and iMovie to virtually transport their creations to the surface of Mars with some Green Screen magic.
You can enjoy some of these videos below:
Children in Key Stage 2 have recently taken home their very own Internet Legend trophy to celebrate their ongoing learning into online safety and how to become responsible online citizens.
It’s safe to say that these trophies have generated quite a buzz amongst our pupils and I’m sure they will be appearing on desks, bedside tables and shelves all over the place very soon!
The children have been encouraged to build their trophies with a grown up at home as part of the process involves answering a series of questions about being safe online in order to unlock the instructions step-by-step. These questions also serve as great conversation starters and will hopefully help open up lots of productive conversations about being safe online.
The reward for their efforts are these awesome 3D trophies which will remind them that they really are Internet Legends.
We’ve been sent in lots of photos of these trophies in their new homes through Showbie and this post will be updated as more photos come in so watch this space!
Class 2 have done some great learning as part of STEM week and enjoyed becoming scientists, engineers and mathematicians for the week.
On Monday, after listening to the story of The Three Billy Goat’s Gruff, the children were set the challenge of building a bridge for the goats to cross, using only spaghetti, masking tape and teamwork! Once built, the class tested their bridges to see which was the strongest and came up with ideas to improve their bridges next time.
On Tuesday, we took part in an experiment using skittles and watched what would happen as water was added. After waiting a few seconds, the children loved seeing the patterns that emerged and looking at how different the other patterns around the class were.
On Wednesday came one of the children’s favourite activities of the week – making volcanoes! In small groups, the children were challenged to build a volcano using whatever they could find around the classroom, making sure they left a space for the volcano to erupt. Once the volcanoes had been constructed, it was time for them to be filled with lava (a mixture of baking soda, vinegar and red food colouring) and to erupt!
The children put their maths and engineering skills to the test on Thursday by creating ramps for cars and measuring how far each car travelled. They predicted how far each car would travel and then tried raising and lowering the ramp to see if that would make a difference. After recording our results, we then talked about what might have affected how far the cars travel as a group.
Finally, on Friday we created some artwork using a swinging bottle/bucket and watched the different patterns it created when the children pushed harder or gentler on the bottle. We’re really pleased with how the artwork came out and hope to have it up on display in our outdoor area for you all to see soon!
Well done Class 2 on some great STEM learning, it was brilliant to see you enjoy becoming scientists/mathematicians/engineers and artists!
Year 2 had a great morning today den building. Both class 5 and 6 worked together to show how sharing ideas and team work can help you to achieve an amazing outcome! As you can see, from the great photographs, all children had a fabulous time.
What an exciting first day it has been in year two for both children and teachers. All children have had a great first day back and from the smiles on their faces you could tell that they were all thrilled to be back at school playing and interacting with their friends.
The children were also very delighted with the new play equipment and refurbished fire pit.
These past few weeks, Year 4 have taking amazingly well to the activities set for remote learning. Their perseverance and creativity has been awe-inspiring and it’s been wonderful to see the exceptional work being shared on Showbie.
Having completed the book ‘Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes, this week, we have been focussing on the RSPB’s ‘The Big Birdwatch.’ From creating alluring bird feeders full to the brim of nutritional food to entice birds into their gardens, to keeping a tally of all of the birds that pay a visit to their gardens and then drawing their favourite birds. The children have blown us away with their ingenuity and clear fascination for the wild outdoors. This has been shared by the children through their photos, sketches, collages and models of their favourite birds (as shown below).
In addition, Year 4 have complete a weekly summary quiz of the topics they are studying and this has proven a clear favourite time of the week on Google Meet. Students definitely proved this week that they were up to speed with their Cornish wildlife!
It’s been a great few weeks of learning and it’s clear Year 4 have really enjoyed the taking part in the ‘Big Birdwatch’ – well done Year 4!
To coincide with their history topic, Castles, Kings and Queens, year 2 planned and participated in a very Royal Kings and Queens dressing up day. On this day, all of the children from class 5 and 6 arrived at school wearing capes, dresses, crowns and robes. During the afternoon the children sang Tudor songs, performed a Tudor dance and held a special banquet. A great day was had by all.
Today, Year 4 celebrated the rise of the Roman Empire in true fashion. Armed with shields, swords and Roman legion attire, the excitement from the students entering school was palpable.
To begin with, the Year group were greeted with Roman army commands: Consiste! (Halt!), Laxate (at ease), silentiurm! (Silence!) and Sin/ Dex (Left/ Right!), which would come in hand later on in the day.
Next, both classes were thrown into the melee and had to use their best codebreaking skills in order to crack a hidden message written by the emperor himself, Julius Caesar. The hidden message revealed one of Caesar’s greates quotes to date:
“It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.” Julius Caesar
After exploring this quote and thinking deeper into what Caesar’s quote means, creating is exactly what the students did next. After having designed mosaics the day before, the students were tasked with creating a Roman mosaic. This proved lots of fun and the results are already looking promising.
The grand finale, however, had to be experiencing what it was like to march like a Roman. Led by Mr Wise’s booming commands, Classes’ 9 and 10 both marched up and down the hall, to embed their understanding of Roman commands. Next, the students practised forming the defence shape, which is the ‘testudo’, or the tortoise. This proved an effective barrier against incoming missiles aimed by the teachers, as you can witness in the video below.
All in all, the children had an excellent morning immersing themselves in the Roman life and learning first hand how the Roman army worked.
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Today, Class 9 took their Maths lesson outside and, it has to be said, they have embraced the outdoors despite the change of weather!
The lesson today was a recap of what they have been learning about this term – Place value. The students showed great teamwork and were able to confidently partition 4 digit numbers, as well as round their chosen number to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000.
In addition, our Topic this term is ‘Romans on the Rampage.’ The class have been busy learning about who exactly the Romans were and what they have done for us. For DT, each of the students were tasked with creating a Roman helmet using paper mache, balloons, cardboard and, of course, the red and gold paint! This was a great success, with all students now learning Latin salutes in anticipation of a Roman Legion army drill in the coming weeks. ‘Dextrum sinistrum!
Finally, the good weather so far was not wasted, with many of our Guided Reading sessions taking place outside in the Gazebo and our first session of Tag Rugby taking place in glorious sunshine.
Enjoy the pictures below!
Team Y4
