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
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!
The sun shone brightly for our first Penpol Mini-Marathon for 3 years on Wednesday; with it came the flushed red faces, the gallons of water drank and the hundreds of smiling faces.It always is such a lovely afternoon and it was bettered this year to finally be able so many parents back to spectate. I am sure this of you in attendance would agree that the children (and staff) did brilliantly; all showing determination to achieve their own person best! Our PFA do a wonderful job in supporting the school through events like this so please do send any remaining sponsorship money in with them or drop it into the office.
Paul has put together an awesome video of the event for you to enjoy below.
On Tuesday 14th June, Class 8 set off on their first overnight school camp to Footsteps of Discovery; spending all of Tuesday there as well as Wednesday morning. During the camp the children got to try out a range of different bushcraft and survival activities, all of which had been tailored to our summer topic of the rainforest!
The pupils had the opportunity to experience fire lighting, water collection and purification, some problem solving survival situations as well as knot tying, a rainforest expert’s talk and plenty of free time to explore the beautiful woodland they were camping in!
The pupils should be incredibly proud of themselves and how they represented the school. For many it was their first time staying away and what a great job they did! The camp brought out the collective empathy and kindness that class 8 are so good at showing, as well as their resilience and friendship; truly upholding all of our school values throughout the trip. Even the people running the programme commented how well behaved and what good listeners they all were!
Well done class 8!
War-rag, war-barth!
Year 3, have just returned to school after visiting and spending the night at the Footsteps of Discovery centre in Summercourt, Newquay.
Whilst at the centre, the children participated in a range of lifesaving skills. This included fire lighting using various methods, safe cutting and an introduction to basic carving, location and signalling, outdoor cooking and basic water sourcing.
The children also had the opportunity to play team sports, cook marshmallows and learn how to tie a range of knots.
Over the past few weeks Year 3 have been learning to code on our Micro:Bit computers. These tiny devices are a great way to get hands-on with Computing and enable our students to write programs that they can run on real hardware in their hands.
To start with we explored the concept of Input and Output by using buttons, sensors and the LED displays on the Micro:Bits. It was interesting to see the range of programs that could be created with just two buttons.
Once the children felt confident with this aspect of the device then took things a step further by using some LED light strips which connected to the pins at the bottom of the Micro:Bits.
Suddenly the Mac Suite was transformed into a disco! We had colour changing, flashing and rainbow coloured lights everywhere.
When we finished having a mini party we used the opportunity to learn about using loops and repeat blocks to create colour changing light patterns.
And that brings us on to today, where the children have been using the Micro:Bits in an entirely different way.
By using three crocodile clips and some nifty external speaker modules, our Year 3s have been creating music! From individual notes to complete melodies, the Mac Suite was the place to be on Monday morning if you wanted some music.
(I must stress the word ‘music’ is used loosely here – it sounded less like Taylor Swift and more like an old fairground where the rides were breaking down and the normally happy music had started to sadly fade away into a sea of 8-bit beeps and bloops…)
As part of this activity the children embarked on some challenge based learning, where they were required to problem solve and troubleshoot both the code and the physical connection between the devices to get their music working. This proved to be a lot of fun and certainly got their brains thinking!
We love using Computing in hands-on ways at Penpol – why should we be confined to a screen when we can have colour changing lights and music coming out of our Micro:Bits?!
I dare say Year 3 would certainly agree.
It was such a glorious sight to see the whole school on the field enjoying the sunshine and celebrating the Queens Jubilee.
Every child had a smile, younger children danced and played with children from the older years and there was a real festival feel.
It has been such a long time since we were all able to be together, but I am sure it is the beginning of many more events to come!
A huge thank you to those who gave up their time to talk about their careers and if you might be interested in joining next year, please do get in touch with our Careers Lead, Mr Pollard by emailing him at mpollard@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk
