Year 4

Celebrating our first Careers Fair

21st November 201921st November 2019 by Mr Pollard

On Wednesday the 6th of November, Penpol held our first ever Careers event. 30 different businesses and employees gave up their time to explain just what makes their job sector special, with hands-on demonstrations, interactive activities and a stream of answers ready for the children’s questions. The event was a huge success and we look forward to doing it again next year.

Special thanks must go to those people who gave up their time to inspire others. The exhibitors were very impressed with the children’s interest and described them as ‘eloquent, interested and a joy to talk to’.

Penpol School Choir at Camborne Music Festival

21st November 2019 by Mr Jones

On Thursday 14th November, some of our fantastic KS2 choir represented Penpol School excellently at the Camborne Music Festival. The Choir sang two pieces, Human – by Rag ‘N; Bone Man and When I Grow Up from the hit musical Matilda, written by Tim Minchin. The choir sang beautifully and were well received by the audience and adjudicator, receiving 84 marks and being Highly Commended.

During the piece When I Grow Up, there was a well praised solo and a number of duets and small group parts which were highly praised and wonderfully sang by the pupils. We look forward to competing at the festival again another year.

The successes of our school choir have led to a record number of members, which now total a staggering 57 pupils in Key Stage 2. If you missed the performance of the choir at the music festival, please look out for future Christmas Concert dates in the coming month. We shall be performing at the annual Key Stage 2 Christmas Concert at St. Elwyn’s Church on 18th December, as well as other venues in the lead up to Christmas.

A lovely morning for some Bingo!

3rd November 201924th September 2019 by Mr Woolcock

Welcome back to the new term at Penpol School!

As a fun starter for this year, Mr Woolcock and his classes played a game of ‘Summer Holiday Bingo’ using the new Outdoor Classroom area and our iPads.

This game proved quite the hit with the pupils, who spent a good half an hour trying to fill their game cards before everyone else could.

The game itself was very simple – each child had to take a selfie with another child who had taken part in a particular activity over the summer holidays. For example, “rode a bike’, ‘went on an aeroplane’ or ‘watched an amazing film’.

The only catch was that they couldn’t get a photograph with the same child twice! This didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but soon proved quite tricky…

It quickly became apparent that some of the bingo squares were harder to find that others and that only a couple of children had completed some of the activities. This led to some rather hasty rearranging of selfies to ensure every box was filled.

This activity was a great chance to get outdoors with the iPads, but also to get to know our new classes and catch up with old friends.

Music in the Marquee 2019 – The Movie!

5th September 201918th August 2019 by Mr Woolcock

This year we had our fifth Music in the Marquee concert here at Penpol School, this year featuring the amazing Leanne Kyte as The Ariana Grande Experience. As is fast becoming a tradition, we’ve made a very special short film of the evening to bring back all of those amazing memories!

As always, these events are held to help raise money for the Penpol Friends Association (PFA) and this year I’m thrilled to say that we’ve raised nearly four and a half thousand pounds – all of which will go to supporting Penpol School in the years to come.

Thank you all so much for supporting our school through events like these.

Penpol Pupils extend Be Internet Legends with their own ideas

20th May 201922nd April 2019 by Mr Woolcock

This half term we’ve been revisiting our learning on E-Safety and reminding ourselves how to stay safe online using the five sections of the Google Be Internet Legends scheme. We’ve dived into each of these five areas, had some fascinating and honest conversations and we’ve managed to ensure we all know how to stay safe when using the internet.

But towards the end of the sessions lots of children started asking about other elements of Online Safety – areas which perhaps weren’t covered in the Google program. This got us thinking…

“What would we add to Be Internet Legends if we were Google?”

We explored this question and quickly realised that we could enhance the Be Internet Legends program by adding even more valuable and important information of our own. Each child made a plan of what they’d like to include along with an idea for the Inter-Naughty (baddie!) who would play against the character of Legend in the game.

Using Keynote and the shapes tool, the pupils then created their own Inter-Naughty characters using triangles and clever colour shading to try to mimic the unique style of the other characters.

With an idea and a fabulous character in hand, the children then set about using a Keynote template to create their own poster, designed to fit into the current set of five made by Google. They considered colours, key words, messages and style and ended up creating these absolutely stunning posters which wouldn’t look out of place next to the real things.

It’s been a really enjoyable project learning about being safe online this half term, made even more so by the children taking their imagination and creativity to new heights by making their own posters and lessons for others. Many even designed the level of the Interland game along with sketches of the island itself.

It’s been great to see so many brilliant ideas and terrifying Inter-Naughty characters and these new posters will remain on display in the Mac Suite for the whole school to see.

Announcing Music in the Marquee 2019

19th March 201919th March 2019 by Mr Woolcock

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?

12th March 20198th March 2019 by Admin

‘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?

1st March 20191st March 2019 by Mr Woolcock

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

Etch-A-Scratch with Year 4

29th January 201929th January 2019 by Mr Woolcock

This term the Year 4 pupils are learning all about robots and their uses in the world. They’ve been taking this learning into Computing as well and this week we’ve written programs to help us draw our very own robotic creations.

Using Scratch 3.0 the children have worked together to make a program which mimics a traditional Etch-A-Sketch, moving the pen up, down, left and right by using the correct blocks of code.

Here’s a few pictures of what their programs looked like, followed by a gallery of the Class 9 robots and the Class 10 robots.

To make their programs even better the children used the MicroBit as a remote controller, adding in pen up, pen down and clear screen functionality into their coding.

Class 9 Robot Drawings

Class 10 Robot Drawings

Electrifying!

22nd January 2019 by Mr Jones

Have you ever wondered where electricity comes from? Class 9 have been investigating the different ways in which electricity is produced. After investigating and finding information, the children wrote short scripts outlining what they have found. Using iPads, the children have narrated a video from the BBC website to help people understand more about where electricity comes from.