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 is tradition in the last week of term, our talented students from right across Penpol School put on a spectacular show for the whole school to enjoy today. The incredible students taking part in Penpol’s Got Talent showcased their singing, dancing, gymnastics, tap dancing, yoyo skills and so much more!
On Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd July, our Year 2 pupils embarked upon some unforgettable boat tours of Mounts Bay with Marine Discovery Penzance.
We met the Marine Discovery crew on Albert Pier at Penzance Harbour. While we were fitted with lifejackets and suitably warm clothing, the children explored fact files about a rage of local sea animals, including minke whales and basking sharks. We then carefully descended the steep steps down from the harbour and boarded Shearwater II, a 10-metre sailing catamaran.
We left the calm waters of Penzance Harbour and headed south towards Mousehole. The children observed this historic fishing village from the sea and learned about the history of the Mousehole Cave and its use by smugglers. We learned that the Cornish name for Mousehole is ‘Porthenys’, translating to ‘harbour island’. This refers to St Clement’s Island, situated just offshore from Mousehole.
Historically, St Clement’s Island was home to a medieval chapel. Nowadays it is an important habitat for a host of seabirds and grey seals. We observed several seals, some of which were resting on the rocks and others could be seen ‘bottling’ in the water.
Josh, the crew’s marine mammal expert, let the children explore a real seal’s skull and some seal fur!
The bay also had a plethora of local seabirds, including skuas, Cory’s shearwaters, gannets, cormorants and oystercatchers.
It was time to hoist the sails as we set a course due Northeast for St Michael’s Mount! On the way, we sang sea shanties, spotted a number of different types of boats and kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife. Some children helped to steer the boat, using the steering pole and keeping a keen eye on the direction of travel.
As we sailed across Mounts Bay, we pondered the bay’s ancient past; it is understood that some 6000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower, the bay was home to a vast forest. ‘The Lost Forest of Mounts Bay’ is echoed in the Cornish name for St Michael’s Mount, ‘Karrek Loos yn Koos’, meaning ‘Grey Rock in the Wood’.
The children demonstrated incredible bravery and resilience during their marine voyages, at time battling high winds and choppy seas! They also showed great curiosity and a deep respect for their local environment. A huge thank you to Marine Discovery Penzance for a truly unforgettable experience and inspiring the next generation of marine voyagers!
Last week the Penpol School boys football team continued their success at the Mayor’s Cup; making it 3 wins in 3 years.
The boys played wonderfully, winning league games against Connor Downs, St Piran’s, Bodriggy and fighting back to draw with St Erth conceding only 2 goals on their way to the final.
They spent most of the first half on the back foot with Bodriggy enjoying most of the possession with Penpol captain, Isaac, having to come off injured in his last game for the school team. Also missing the game through injury was Alfie, whose team talk at half time turned the tide.
The game however, ended 0-0 and headed to the dreaded penalty shootout and I tell you what, Gareth Southgate and the England team should take note as both teams scored some excellent penalties. Unfortunately for Bodriggy, they went on to miss in sudden death. Up stepped Nicholas, the 3rd Year 6 pupil in the team making his last appearance, to confidently thrash home the winner- cue the celebrations.
Thank you to all at Hayle Football Club for the event and special thanks to Mayor June Lawrenson-Reid for hosting the event. The teams all played brilliantly, especially Bodriggy who would also have been worthy winners.
Our Year 5’s have been learning all about conservation, pollution and looking after Planet Earth this term. As part of this exciting project they’ve been designing and coding their own pollution-busting games in Scratch.
Starting with character development, each student used a fun drawing tool called Make 8-Bit Art to create a selection of fish, some polluting objects like carrier bags and drinks cans and their own underwater scene for their background.
After this the coding began in Scratch with the first session focussed around getting the fish to swim across the screen. The students explored using random generators to change the starting position, size and colour of the fish and how often they appeared.
We then used this same idea to add our polluting objects, this time falling from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. Once this was working we decided to add a variable to keep score of how many pieces of pollution were clicked on by the player.
This variable quickly led into another – this time creating a timer to keep track of the length of their game and create an element of competitiveness to see how many points could be earned in a short amount of time.
After these basics were created the children all had different ideas of where their games should go next. To help them explore, test and create these extra features they all had two weeks to design and code anything they wanted in their game. We had power-ups that gave extra time, lives that were lost if you clicked a fish by accident, game over screens, high score boards and so, so many more ideas! The children really ran with their games and created some absolutely fantastic projects. You can explore all the games from Class 11 here and those from Class 12 here.
“In my game I have lives which I’m quite impressed about since it looks complicated but actually when you think about it it’s pretty simple. What I did is when I was trying to figure out the lives I broke it into different stages – first of all doing the variable code to make it work and then if something else wasn’t working because of it I would figure out why and improve it by fixing the bugs.”
“I’ve added a score too, when you’ve finished the game it’ll come up with your score at the end”.
Luke (red-fish-235)
“In my game I’m proud that I could make it work at all! I’ve never thought of myself as being particularly good at coding but I really pushed myself and I’m so proud that I managed to get it working. I loved exploring the other games from people in my class to get ideas – they were all just so good! I think if we combined everyones ideas into one we could make a game that would go viral!”
Isla (red-fish-227)
“I’m really proud of my game because I didn’t know if I’d be able to manage all of the coding but I did in the end and I’m really happy with what I’ve done! We’ve spent four weeks doing this coding of the game and it’s already starting to look really good!”
Evangeline (red-fish-251)
“Throughout my time doing Computing at school its really inspired me to push past my limits and start doing it at home too. Inside of me it’s really sparked an interest for coding!
Inside my game I am most proud of my lives system (which mimic the variable Health) which means that I have five lives which link to five hearts on screen. Every time Health goes down a heart disappears until there are none left at which point it’s game over.
At home I also added a shop which I’m really happy with. It’s not finished yet, but it’s basically a way to use the points gathered by collecting rubbish to spend in the shop. You can buy extra time, plastic per second (which means you get more plastic to fall) and an upgrade which gives you even more boosters.”
Ned (red-fish-220)
This week we were joined by staff and students from Bodriggy Academy Hayle Academy for our annual Careers Fair. But what would a Careers Fair be without some careers?! Well, luckily we had over 40 different professions represented from across Cornwall, giving our students an incredible insight and inspiration into future job opportunities.
Check out this video to see more from this exciting event!
That’s a wrap on the 2023-24 Cross Country season…
What an exciting and incredibly successful first season for the Penpol Panthers running club! The club has grown in numbers and enthusiasm since September, with runners enjoying weekly club sessions – come rain or shine!
Throughout the year, pupils have grown in resilience and built supportive friendships with their fellow Panthers as they’ve honed their technique through fun running games, endured the infamous bleep test and prepared for some arduous races.
The new club name and logo were designed with creative input from some of our own club members and earlier this month, we were very grateful to receive some very smart running vests. A massive thank you to the PFA for funding the purchase of the vests and to Exhibit 1 Clothing for printing them.
We have had over 35 different pupils from KS2 join our club sessions and represent the school at district and country races. A massive congratulations to every runner who has taken part this year!
It would be remiss of me not to mention some of our more decorated Penpol Panthers.
In their respective Penwith District school race meets, Niyah (Year 3) placed 3rd, 1st, 1st & 2nd; Fred (Year 4) placed 1st, 1st, 1st & 1st; Atia (Year 5) placed 1st, 1st, 1st & 1st; Theo (Year 5) placed 1st, 4th, 4th & 7th.
What’s more, in the county finals Niyah finished 3rd overall, Fred placed 1st and Atia came in at 2nd. Such a incredible achievements from these young athletes!
Finally, a big shout out and massive thank you to all of the parent support we’ve had this year – not least of all Ahsan for volunteering at both the club sessions and races across the season.
We look forward to another joyous cross country season beginning in September 2024!
To celebrate all of the fantastic learning which has been going on, Year 4 celebrated a Harry Potter ‘dress up’ day on Tuesday 26th March. The school playground was abuzz with spells and charms, the favourites being ‘expeliarmus’ and ‘wingardium leviosa.’
This term, Year 4 have been immersed into the world of Harry Potter, reading Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone. They have absolutely loved their Whole Class Reading sessions on this book and have really excelled at retrieving key information to help explain their understanding of the book.
In PE, our students have been delving into the enchanting world of Quidditch. Under the guidance of Mr. Stanlake, our PE coordinator, in their inaugural Quidditch session, our budding Witches and Wizards embarked on their maiden voyage into the intricate rules of this bewitching game. Ever since their inaugural session, the students have eagerly embraced the complexities of Quidditch, reveling in its magical challenges.
In English, they have described Hogwarts using adventurous adjectives, similes and metaphors to really showcase the magic that conjures up Hogwarts castle. In addition, they have also experienced a Potions lesson with Professor Emery and Professor Peck.
This involved concocting a potion, deciding upon its magical value and then advertising their potion to the masses.The students were incredible and bowled us over with their enthusiasm and flair for writing this term. Their persuasive posters and adverts were of spell-binding quality. Check out the pictures of the students and teachers having an incredible time below!
Last week our Year 6 and Year 5 Lego Teams (the Six Super Stars and the Dragons respectively) took part in the Cornwall finals of the FIRST Lego League.
With thirty other teams taking part each day it was wonderful to see the event getting bigger and better every year in Cornwall. But of course more teams also means more competition for our own Penpol pupils! They completely rose to the occasion though with both groups sharing two excellent presentations and each taking part in three brilliant Robot Games runs.
This is the story of how our students got on at RNAS Culdrose…
The Robot games is a fun challenge where the children have to design, build and code their very own robot to complete different missions. There is a maximum of 550 points on offer this year and a score of anything over 200 is considered exceptionally good – especially for primary teams!
Never under-estimate how much pressure it takes to be a Robot Games Engineer. Not only are you lining up your robot and ensuring your code works perfectly, but you have a whole world of excitement, pressure and expectation building around you. Those two and a half minutes determine a huge part of your whole teams score in the competition – so it’s a lot of pressure!
Not that you’d know if from watching the Dragons though. They stayed cool under pressure, re-ran missions that didn’t work quite right and communicated throughout to ensure they got the very best score possible in each game. And all that hard work paid off on the third and final run as, to much cheering and support from their fellow team members, the robot managed to achieve it’s best run and got a score of 265 points when it mattered the most – catapulting the team to second place on the Robot Games scoreboard.
In the Robot Games you are given three opportunities to get your best score possible – but the Six Super Stars did theirs on the very first run! To much cheering and excitement their robot pulled off the perfect run, completing all the missions they had planned and scooped up a brilliant score of 265 points. This took the pressure off the other two runs, allowing the students a chance to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the moment. This was a real team success as every member had the opportunity to launch at least one mission in the two and half minute timeframe.
They even engaged in some friendly banter with the the Year 7 team from Hayle Academy, which included some team-members from last years Penpol Pumpkins. This caught the attention of BBC Spotlight who sent their reporter Johnny Rutherford who featured the team on his report in the evening news!
The Innovation Project is a chance for the children to identify a problem linked to the annual theme (Creativity and Hobbies for this season) before researching, creating, refining and presenting their own innovative solution. This takes the form of a five minute presentation to the judges and a ten minute question and answer session afterwards.
For their Innovation Project the Year 5’s conducted a survey all about art and found that 80% of children in school loved to draw. The only problem was that three quarters of those children often didn’t draw because they didn’t have any good ideas of inspiration of what to create.
The Dragons set about fixing this by creating a Scratch project called the DrawingRandomiser which gives people an idea of what to draw – often with some very funny results!
They shared this project with the judges in a short comedy sketch that they’d written together and gave the judges a chance to try their project for themselves.
For this presentation there was nowhere to hide and the team all had to be really brave in their confidence – something they truly excelled at in the run up to the competition. On the day they were able to speak confidently and proudly to the judges (in fact one of the organisers told us it was hard for the judges to get a word in because the team were so confidently explaining everything they’d been doing!).
The judges praised their “unique idea to encourage creativity for all people” and thought they “adapted to failing technology very well” when their laptop couldn’t get onto the internet.
The Year 6 Innovation Project also revolved around the theme of art, but with a slightly different focus.
After lots of planning meetings and discussions, the team identified the problem that quite often people struggle to draw because they don’t know how to. To help with this problem they decided to create a book that students can use to learn how to draw different things with friendly, step-by-step instructions. They chose popular things to draw such as animals and using iPad they created illustrations and instructions to help even the most beginner artist create some beautiful pictures.
Having made this book the team then created a presentation to share with the judges which featured lots of comedy and some great acting too. They also had a printed copy of their book to demonstrate what the finished product would look like in the future.
They were full of confidence in the judging room and ensured that each team member had the opportunity to talk and reflect on the journey they’ve been on over the course of the competition.
The judges enjoyed their “unique, acted presentation” and said their “excellent, enthusiastic teamwork” was evident throughout whilst describing and solving their “novel problem”.
The last part of the competition was the Robot Design Presentation. This name is slightly deceptive as it isn’t just about the robot that the teams have built. Yes it is largely about this, but it is also a chance to share the story that the children have been on since starting their journey in the competition. This is a chance to share their learnings, their new skills, their strategies, plans and anything else that they want to with the judges.
When it came time to share their Robot Design presentation the Year 5’s decided on an ‘interview-style’ approach where they took it in turns to ask questions for each other to answer about the robot, coding, mission strategy and testing they’d done.
This fun approach meant the children were able to talk naturally without having to learn a script beforehand and gave them plenty of opportunities to highlight their coding and strategy for their missions.
The judges shared that it was “well presented” and that the team “explained thoroughly what could go wrong and the how to avoid mistakes during the missions.”
For their Robot Design presentation the Year 6’s created and shared A1 posters which featured their code, photos of the robot and attachments and important information about their robot. This meant they were able to clearly articulate the journey they’d been on with their coding, including the decision making strategy behind changing their robot design from the standard ‘Advanced Driving Base’ to a more unusual ‘Coop Bot‘ which they found after doing lots of online research into effective robot designs.
They took this starting point and adapted the robot for their own mission strategy by creating an assortment of interesting attachments to help them earn points.
The judges said their presentations were “novel, funny and charming” as well as their “detailed explanation of design, issues and solutions”.
The final of the four areas that teams are marked on is called the Core Values. These values include Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork and Fun. Throughout their presentations, their robot games and the day itself the teams are being judged on these six areas.
As a team, the Dragons really embodied their Core Values over the course of the day. They supported each other throughout, from cheering during the Robot Games matches to supporting each other in the presentations if they stumbled on any lines.
They demonstrated the impact they’ve had through their project and shared all the discoveries they’d made as they learnt to build and code their Lego robot.
The judges were really impressed with how the team “supported each other and the most confident always encouraged the least confident” and said that “when asked about teamwork they all discussed how they organised as a team and how the team has supported each other learning new skills”.
The Six Super Stars did a fantastic job sharing their Core Values during the competition – from supporting each other and exploring the STEM exhibitors together to being kind and courteous to adults and other teams.
The judges picked up on their team spirit and gave them a rare Exceeding score of 4 points for both their Teamwork and Fun. For every other score they got a 3 which shows that Discovery, Innovation, Impact and Inclusion were “consistently observed across the team“.
The judges praised their “excellent teamwork”, the fact they “worked out improvements and simplified their designs” and the fact that during their presentation there were “great answers by all members to questions”.
As you can see from each of the four areas above, both teams did really well and embraced each and every aspect of the competition. I’m thrilled to say that they both returned to Penpol with a trophy to recognise their hard word.
The Dragons came second overall in the Robot Performance category with a score of 265 points, as well as taking home the Breakthrough Award which "celebrates a team that made significant progress in their confidence and capability in both the Robot Game and Innovation Project and are a shining example of excellent Core Values."
The Six Super Stars came top of the charts in the Robot Games section, beating over 30 other teams with their incredible score of 265 points.
Because of this excellent score they take home the Robot Performance Trophy.
On Tuesday 27th February, Class 9 and 10 took a memorable and magical trip to St Michael’s Mount. This visit ties in closely with our current topic of Harry Potter and, in particular, focusing this week on describing the imperious Hogwarts castle. The Mount certainly has that magical quality to it and offered the perfect stimulus to encourage the children to describe a castle setting description, using similes and metaphors.
The excitement was palpable preceding the exciting walk over the iconic causeway, which links the mainland to St Michael’s Mount. Students were in their element, taking in the stunning Penwith coastline to the West and the imposing castle above which perched high upon the Mount ahead.
We were greeted at the harbour by Kerry Rice, the Education Officer for St Aubyn Estate, who led us on a magical journey through time as we explored the historic beauty of St Michael’s Mount. Upon arriving, the students were given a brief outline of the planned activities they would be taking part in, followed by a quick recap on why we had come to the Mount in the first place…to inspire our own Hogwart’s setting description.
Each group excelled and came up with high-quality and powerful adjectives, using them to create impressive similes and metaphors on their silhouette outline drawing of the Mount.
The children are also gearing up for World Book Day next week, where they will be studying a range of Cornish Giant folk tales in English and Guided Reading. One of the children’s favourite activities was storyboarding the Cornish folk tale, the Legend of Cormoran the Giant , where Kerry captivated the children’s imaginations with her retelling of the tyrannical giant who once lived on the mount and how he was defeated by a local boy called Jack.
“I’ve actually visited the ground where Jack’s heart is buried deep beneath in the ground last time I came here!” one pupil was keen to share.
Kerry then led a wonderful drama activity in which they acted out the story of Cormoran the Giant – complete with an authentic blast of a horn from Kerry!
There was plenty of time to explore the village nestled below the castle, where students competed to find answers to the harbour challenge quiz sheet. Students were amazed to learn that the island lays host to 30 full time residents, who stay on the island and work there each day; be that as a gardener of the castle gardens, or working in the boatyard and maintaining all of the essential equipment.
All of the students demonstrated an excellent knowledge by the end of the trip of the history of the Mount and are now looking forward to writing up their setting descriptions of Hogwarts castle using similes and metaphors over the next few days.
It’s fair to say the children are all eager to return to the Mount and see what else the island has to offer!
