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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.”
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Year 3

Class 6 brave the elements, whilst visiting St Michael’s Mount

Before being beaten by the weather, Class 6 had a great time exploring in the sand, rocks and sea.  The children were so excited to find a crab and with a little bit of help from Hazel, managed to find its way back to the sea.

The children enjoyed walking across the causeway and heading up the steep path towards the castle. After visiting the inside of the castle the weather  deteriorated  very quickly and sadly the children had to make a very quick return to the mini buses. All of the children from Class 6 demonstrated great stamina and perseverance against heavy rain, hail showers and a biting cold wind. As their Class Teacher, I am extremely proud of all  of them!

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing Music in the Marquee 2019

The last four years have seen sell out performances at our annual Music In The Marquee concerts from Little Chix, Yellow and last year’s return performer Bradley Johnson.

I’m delighted to say that this summer we will be hosting our fifth concert in the marquee, on Saturday 20th July 2019. Each year we ask the children which music they are enjoying and what sort of act they’d like to see play in our marquee at the end of the Summer term. This year one name kept coming up in each class we spoke to and that was the one and only Ariana Grande.

So, with great excitement, I’d love to introduce you to The Ariana Grande Experience performed by the incredibly talented singer Leanne Kyte. Leanne is a singer/dancer from North London who studied musical theatre for two years in California. Since coming back to the UK she’s been on tours around the country, has performed in the US and Canada and has received rave reviews for both her singing and dancing.

 

Leanne will be playing two sets of live music on the night, the first being a hit-filled and family-friendly Ariana Grande tribute set including tunes both new and old including ‘Problem’, ‘No Tears Left to Cry’, ‘Into You’ and ‘One Last Time’, followed by a later set which will include other popular covers. As always with Music in the Marquee her two sets will be accompanied by local support acts to round off the whole evening’s entertainment. We’re delighted to confirm that this years support acts will include a return for the fantastic DJ Flo Selecta, a debut performance from acoustic singer Hannigan and also an incredibly exciting set from the local band Saltwater Cure – featuring our very own Mr Emery!

Just like in previous years the event will raise money for the Penpol Friends Association and will also feature a fully licensed bar, BBQ, soft drinks, and food for everyone to enjoy. I hope you’ll agree that Music in the Marquee 2019 is already shaping up to be a phenomenal night of entertainment.

We are opening this event to the whole community, but want to give our Penpol parents the first chance to get tickets.  For this reason we’re offering you a special pre-sale of tickets, starting TODAY! Tickets are priced at £9 for adults and £6 for children.  Please note that all children must be accompanied by an adult.

Please return this slip and money to the office to secure your tickets. Music in the Marquee has been a sell out for the past four years and tickets will be on a first come first served basis.

How can we Recognise Fake News?

‘Fake news’ is a huge topic at the moment and believable but untrue content online has become more and more commonplace.  Luckily, this week in our E-Safety lessons we are learning all about being Internet Alert, which means recognising what is real and what is fake, as well as being able to develop strategies to keep ourselves safe from false and misleading information.

To start our sessions the children were issued a research task, to learn as much information as they possibly could about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.  If you haven’t heard of this rare animal then I wouldn’t be surprised, especially as it’s completely made up.  In a sneaky twist, the children were actually researching from a fake website, trying to learn how some octopuses can live in trees when the children all know that they actually live in the sea.

This proved an excellent introduction to the fact that, sadly, not everything you read online is true.  This particular website was made many years ago as a way of teaching children this very lesson.

The children then explored the concept of mis-information and fake news further, discussing how photographs and even videos can be misleading and not always what they appear to be.  We discussed how this related to the idea of phishing too, which we learnt all about in our E-Safety lessons last year.

"I thought the tree octopus was very convincing because all of the facts sounded pretty real and the picture looked very convincing. It showed me that not everything that looks convincing is actually real."

Zara, Year 6

The children have once again shown themselves to be very aware of how to stay safe online and also able to hold sensible and mature conversations with their peers about how they can help each other to protect themselves online.

"I learnt that not everything that we see online is real. And that we should always watch out for scams and fakes."

Ariana, Year 5

We finished the sessions this week with a game of Reality River on Interland as a way to recap our learning and to ensure we are all making the right choices when it comes to understanding what is real and what is fake.

What is our Online Persona?

We are spending this half term focusing on the internet and how we can keep ourselves safe whilst online.  Over the next six weeks we’ll be looking at online safety from a variety of different aspects, starting with looking at the information we choose to share online.

We’re basing our work on the Be Internet Legends project from Google, which builds on the lessons the children had last year.

To begin with we are looking at our ‘Online Persona’.  This is how you appear online to other people, based on the information we have chosen to share.  We’ve talked about the risks of over sharing our personal data and also the way other people might see what we’ve shared and draw conclusions about us.

This learning has been very thought provoking for the children and has seen us address lots of really interesting topics in whole-class discussions.  A particularly interesting activity has been to ‘create a persona’ for a made up person, by giving them loads of personal information and then choosing what should and shouldn’t be shared online with the world.

Below are several of the characters that have been created this week, along with lots and lots of personal information.  This information could range from general facts like their favourite colour right down to specific details like their date of birth and their phone password.

The children have then used the highlighter tool to mark green any information which they would feel safe sharing online with the world, or red for any information which they think should stay private.  We talked about how information can be changed from red to green later on, but can never be changed back from green to red as when it exists on the internet, it can never really be deleted.

“You should never share really personal information online, even with just your friends.  Always tell a responsible adult at home if somebody is asking for personal information that you don’t want to share.” – Zara

“I have learnt that sometimes when you post something other people can get sad or upset if I’m not careful.  So in the future if there is a photo I want to share I will go to the people in it and make sure they are all right with me sharing it.” – Ethan

“I have learnt about keeping myself safe on the internet and learnt to always tell your parents or teachers or family about it if something silly comes up on Youtube.” – Poppy

Penpol School make their own 3D Winter Ornaments on our 3D Printer!

This year, for the for the third time, we gave every child in Key Stage 2 the opportunity to design and refine their own 3D models on the computer, which we then printed out using our state-of-the-art Makerbot 3D printer.

This year the children had greater design freedom than ever before thanks to the fantastic new ‘Scribble’ tool on Tinkercad which lets the children draw their very own designs on screen, alongside their library of 3D shapes which the pupils have used previously.  This tool was hugely popular and has resulted in us creating some really personal and unique decorations.

We’ve made a short video below to show the process of making our decorations, followed by a very large gallery underneath of every single decoration we printed this year!

This year we printed two hundred and twenty different decorations, which took a very very long time!  You can see all of these decorations in the gallery below – see if you can spot yours…

This year there have been so many lovely designs and each one is completely unique.  They’re all brilliant, but are there any that you particularly like?

Gallery of Decorations

(click a decoration to view it bigger)

“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.” – Dr Seuss

What an amazing half term it has been. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our Extreme Reading Challenge. It has been incredible to see the exciting adventures your reading has taken you. 

Infant and Junior winners will be announced this Friday.

Have a lovely Christmas!

Keeeeeeeeeeeep Reading 🙂

Mrs Riches

Enjoying every second of the Hour of Code

Over the last two weeks each class in Key Stage 2 has taken part in the Hour of Code.  For those unfamiliar, Hour of Code is a worldwide event which encourages school children to spend an hour having fun by problem solving through writing code. 

Each year some amazing activities are created and this year schools around the world got to enjoy spending an hour Dance Party and coding their characters to dance their favourite moves.

But enough of me talking about it, here’s a fab video of the children enjoying choreographing their very own Dance Party!

– Mr Woolcock

This is the second year we’ve taken part in the international Hour of Code – you can read more about the children’s Minecraft adventure last year below:

Class 8 produce the first ever Penpol Podcast!

Penpol had a special visitor on Tuesday.  Karen Pirie, a radio producer for Radio 4 visited Class 8 and made a podcast with the children about the history of Hayle.

“I really enjoyed making the podcast and adding the sound effects.” (Obi age 8)

“I loved recording our voices and thinking about the different ways to speak on a podcast.” (Liliana age 8)

“It was really fun and I want to make my own podcast at home.” (Dylan)

“Karen was really great fun and she had a lovely smile.  I liked making the podcast” (Cerys age 7)

“We loved recording ourselves.  Karen’s job is exciting.” (Abigail age 7)

“I found it really fascinating to hear all about Karen’s job” (Lily age 7)

Listen to our podcast below:

Penpol Podcast: History of Hayle

Preparing For Christmas With The Choir

The Penpol Junior Choir has been busy preparing for this year’s festivities, rehearsing Christmas songs which are to be performed at a number of events throughout December. After working really hard to learn and polish the songs which were performed at the Camborne Music Festival, the choir have got together during a lunch time to record one of their favourite carols, The Sans Day Carol, to help get everyone in the mood. Please listen to the school choir and enjoy, whilst getting into the Christmas Spirit.

Watch out for the amazing Penpol School Junior Choir as they perform throughout December!

Reading Reaches New Heights

Another fantastic round of photos! It is brilliant to see so many new faces taking part in the Extreme Reading Challenge. Keep sending in your creative ways to read. The competition is heating up, winners will be announced on the 14th of December. Still plenty of time to get your photos in to reading@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk. 

Happy Reading!

Mrs Riches