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
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 Wednesday 4th October, Penpol School celebrated European Day of Languages for its 6th time. We are so fortunate to have so many languages being spoken as either a first or second language by our students. For this reason, European Day of Languages is a prime opportunity to shine a light on each of these languages which represents our diverse learning community here at Penpol.
Back by popular demand, the French café was a favourite amongst students and staff. Like last year, 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.’ KS2 students then put their French linguistic skills to the test to then host their KS1 reading buddies in their classroom.
Finally, at the end of the day, Mrs Curnow and Mrs Best had KS1 enthralled with a reading of ‘Goolan’ to celebrate the Cornish language. In addition, Mrs Best and Mr Jones serenaded the children with songs featuring Welsh, Cornish and French. Mr Jones and Mr Emery led a European singalong in KS2, which culminated in a school record of 8 languages being sung in one song. This rounded off a fantastic day which marked an important day in the school calendar.
A huge ‘Meur ras’, ‘diolch yn fawr,’ ‘merci,’ ‘gracias,’ ‘dzien dobry,’ aciu’ and ‘obrigado’ to all of those who helped to make the day a huge success. 
Earlier this week, we were visited by educators from the Council’s Healthy Cornwall team who worked with all of ur KS2 pupils . The idea for this session was the empower our children to make their own healthy choices when choosing what to fuel their bodies with. The Healthy Snack Family Challenge is attached below.
The session included 3 different activities: the tasting of different healthy snacks including, beetroot, dried apricot, sugar snap peas and humus; what a balanced diet looks like and how it contains lots of different food groups in moderation; and finally, shattering the myth that healthy food have to be expensive. The children all tasted different foods, with many doing so for the first time.
The children learnt all about the ‘Eatwell Healthy Plate’ and discussed how different food groups serve different purposes and how each are individually important to the growth, development and maintaining of a healthy body and mind.Our Year 5 and 6 pupils also took a more in-depth look at the calorie content of different foods, both healthy and unhealthy and took a closer look at the monetary cost vs nutritional output of each food.
They were particularly shocked at the sugar content of some their favourite drinks! With one even commenting “that’s why were encouraged to drink water!”
All children in KS2 then were gifted a free water bottle to celebrate their participation in which was some information to share with parents and a healthy snack challenge, all of which is included below. It has been wonderful to see so may children making healthy choices with their snacks continuing to celebrate the learning they have undertaken in science, PE and PSHE around health and wellbeing.
This half term (25.02.2023), Classes 7 and 8 went on an exciting trip to Geevor Tin Mine as part of their topic for this term – ‘Minecraft’!
We arrived in the morning and put our hard hats on – ready for adventure!
Both classes split into two groups with one going down into one of the mines and the other learning about the different types of rocks and minerals that were mined at Geevor…
The mineshaft was very confined; the adults had to bend down to be able to walk through properly!
After both groups had explored their respective areas, we swapped over to discover what else the tin mine had to offer!
We were able to have a look around lots of different areas that the miners used from 1911 up until 1990!
We learnt lots of interesting facts about why Geevor was built and how all of its machinery operated – we were also lucky enough to have the chance to pan for gold!
It was a hugely exciting day packed full of fun, for one and all!
A huge thank you to The Heritage Trust who funded the bus travel to get to Geevor!
This half term our Year 3’s have been learning how to use Tinkercad to create 3D models and objects on their computers. This clever program lets you create anything you like in three dimensions, which can then be sent to a 3D printer to turn digital designs into real world objects.
To start with our students were introduced to the basics of Tinkercad (including how to resize, rotate, recolour and arrange 3D shapes). They then applied this learning to a series of fun (and slightly bizarre!) challenges – including building a Giraffe in 8 blocks, a favourite food item in 6 blocks, a spaceship with 4 blocks and a self portrait with 2 blocks (and the awesome Scribble tool!). To make it even harder then only had a few minutes for each challenge!
These fun and low-stake challenges helped the children explore the program and encouraged them to create multiple designs very quickly, rather than spending hours on each project. That meant when we came onto designing our Winter Ornaments the children were able to rapidly prototype different ideas before choosing their favourite.
But rather than me telling you about that here’s a video from some of our Year 3’s talking about the project…
Once the children had designed a few different winter ornaments it was then time to refine those designs to ensure they looked as great as possible (and that they would print out nicely on our printer).
Part of this process involved checking the dimensions to ensure they all fit inside a 60mm box and also the tricky task of choosing which colour combination they’d like to use!
Lastly, we added a hole to the top to ensure our decorations could be hung up if desired.
After that all that was left was to print them out. An easy task you might think? Well, given we had 113 to print and each one takes nearly an hour it was touch and go whether or not we’d get them all done by the end of term!
Thankfully we managed it and below you can see a gallery of every single decoration designed by our Year 3’s and Year 6’s this year.
This half term we’ve been building Pyramids in Minecraft Edu in our Computing lessons. Mr Woolcock and Paul have created a shared world where we were all able to work together and build pyramids for our Egyptian Pharaohs. We researched what would be inside a pyramid and learnt about the traps and secret rooms designed to stop thieves and included these in our designs. We even created secret chambers full of canopic jars, golden treasures and scrolls of knowledge for the mummies to take with them into the afterlife.
Here are some more photos of all of our pyramids, along with some extra information about each one.
This is a maze which is to trick the people that try and break in and take all the gold. There are pressure plates on the floor and when you step on one they open up a trap door and you fall down! At the centre of the maze there is lots of treasure which was buried with the god Osiris.
Our pyramid is for Thoth. We made a patten in the wall which was meant to be a hieroglyphic. We’ve added lots of gold and treasures inside our pyramid along with a red carpet which feels very royal. We put some chests in there too with lots of important things in them like precious gems and golden objects.
We put two chambers into our pyramid one is full of treasures and is where the sarcophagus is placed. The pharaoh would have been buried with all of their treasure. There are secret tunnels to get into the chambers to stop anyone naughty coming in. It’s designed to be really scary in the tunnels!
We’ve got a staircase inside the pyramid which takes you up to a large maze where people might think the treasure chests are hidden, but it’s a trap! They’re actually hidden under the pyramid. This traps thieves inside the pyramid. We’re really proud of the fact it has two levels and the fact we’ve added ancient books to give the pharaoh lots of knowledge in the afterlife.
It was designed so explorers who come in through the entrance will fall into a trap. There’s an empty chest filled with really rubbish items which will trap the robbers into a chamber. We’ve made it really confusing so nobody can get into steal the mummy or the treasure! It’s full of traps and surprises!
We made an upstairs in the pyramid, but didn’t quite finish it off yet. But there’s also a dungeon room below the main room where there are spider webs, creepy things and stuff like that. Our pharaoh was the god of the underworld so we made his dungeon look like the underworld.
We really enjoyed making the pyramid! We thought “what would an ancient Egyptian think about when the pyramids was created?” We thought the answer would be glory, cool secret stuff and valuable treasure. On the top of our building there’s loads of gold and I made the Egyptian symbol of life out of gold! We also really enjoyed making the secret entrances behind the hieroglyphics.
The trap in our pyramid has a little hole in the middle of it, so if anyone is silly enough to walk in the middle they’ll fall through! Our little room is really important because you can only fit really special things inside it. There is a secret treasure chest hiding under our bridge!
On Thursday, Year 3 had the opportunity to dress up in their best ‘ancient Egyptian’ outfits as part of their topic this term.
However, afterwards, it was then time to explore the ancient Egypt area…
One of the tour guides from the museum told us all about (and showed) their different Egyptian artefacts, a sarcophagus and a real mummy! We even got the chance to draw on some papyrus paper!
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.
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!
