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Chris Coyle-Chislett

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secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

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01736 753472

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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 foundations 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 5

Exploring Energy and Innovating Ideas

Today our Year 5 and Year 6 LEGO League teams were fortunate enough to have not one but two very special guests around to help mentor and support them with their competition preparation.

Our team mentor, Chelsea from RNAS Culdrose, has kindly agreed to visit every Thursday to help coach both teams.  She’s a familiar face at Penpol now having worked closely with our teams last year as well – in fact she asked if she could come back this year!

Alongside Chelsea we also had another very special visitor – somebody who has travelled slightly further than Culdrose to join us…

Alejandro Buitrago is an engineering student from the University of Technology and Engineering Careers (UTEC) in Lima, Peru.  He is currently travelling around Europe and through a happy coincidence ran into Mr Woolcock.  Upon chatting, Mr Woolcock discovered that Alejandro is in the middle of a degree in Renewable Energy Engineering – which just so happens to be the exact theme for this years LEGO League competition!  

Alejandro very kindly agreed to spend an afternoon with us and spent time working with our Year 6’s over lunchtime and our Year 5’s this afternoon.

Y6's took time out from Evacuee Day to learn about Energy
A lot of Energy-themed prototyping and idea development with the Y5's

During this time Alejandro kindly answered questions, shared a wealth of knowledge and inspired the children to pursue and develop their innovative ideas for the Innovation Project.  By the end of the day the library was covered in hand-drawn sketches, coloured paper, glue sticks, cardboard boxes turned into prototypes and assorted LEGO constructions.  All the signs of a good afternoon!

A massive thanks to both Chelsea and Alejandro for their support.

Year 6 Photos

Year 5 Photos

South West Title for Super Gymnast

Penpol School now has an Under 11 South West Gymnastics champion amongst its sporting stars. She has, for many years now, been featuring on the Penpol times but this is her biggest accommodate to date.

Travelling all the way to the Welsh Institute of Sport, she undertook 4 individual events which culminated in an overall 1st place. This wonderful young lady placed first in the uneven bars, which is her favourite event. 1st place in the beam (which is only 1o cm wide!!) and 3rd place in both the floor and vault.

This remarkable young lady shows a great commitment to her sport by training up to 16 hours a week at Penryn Gymnastic Club! Keep it up, the hard work is certainly paying off!

Celebrating the European Day of Languages at Penpol

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.

Andrew Clover reminds us that Reading and Writing is Magic!

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!

Daya Visits Penpol School

Class 6 loved our workshop with Daya, in which we looked at the life of someone who follows the religion of Islam, including the Five Pillars of Islam, Islamic prayer practices and the role of a mosque in Islamic culture. Daya taught us how Muslims pray and that they pray 5 times a day, in the direction of Mecca. All pupils then had the chance to dress in some traditional Indian clothing and learn some wonderful Indian dance!

Both Year 5 classes had the opportunity to work with Daya. She introduced our key question, ‘What is it like to be a Muslim in Britain today?’

The children had the chance to discus different faiths and how they differ from each other. There was a particular focus on the pillars of Islam, before having the chance to dress in traditional muslim attire and have a go at some Indian dancing.

Coding Underwater Adventure Games in Scratch

Our Year 5 students have been exploring Scratch this term and learning lots about coding along the way.  From small beginnings, the children have quickly developed a really exciting and creative understanding of just what’s possible in Scratch.

This learning has all come together in the last few weeks with a massive game building project, based on their class topic of a ‘Conservation Conversation‘.  This project started out as a simple ‘falling objects’ type game where they were trying to collect pollution before it hit the bottom of the ocean.  However this quickly developed into something far more interesting thanks to some incredible ideas from the children.  First they wanted to make the game more random, with objects falling at different times in different places.  Then several of them explored the idea of ‘power ups’ that would make the game easier or harder.  The natural next step was to add a variable to hold a Score and after that we decided it would be fun to add a time limit variable to add to the pressure!

But they didn’t stop there – the children then developed even more elements in their games.  Time limited boosters, sneaky tricks to get extra points, objects that immediately ended the game when caught.  The list was endless!

Finally we all came together and explored how a micro:bit could be used as a game controller for these games.  We used buttons as an input, before Rio came up with some quite brilliant code to use the motion sensor too!

This has been a hugely fun project and the children have been problem solving, debugging and creating new code with incredible skill and precision.  They’ve even got into the habit of labelling their code as they go to make it easy to pick up and edit in the future!

Below you can see some of the code they’ve been constructing, as well as some of their games for you to play and enjoy!

For this game you need to use the Arrow Keys to move the paddle along the bottom of the screen.

Catch the pollution but beware of bad power-ups!

Press the Green Flag to start.

"It was really fun, I loved making the games with Mr Woolcock. It was hard work, but fun because we kept adding more to make our games more fun. There was a time when we tried to get the micro:bits to move and I just couldn’t get the right pieces of code to make it move properly, when I figured it out I was so excited that I just kept playing the game for ages!"
Oliver
"It was fun with the micro:bits because it was so cool watching it come to life and play the game with our own controllers. I also liked testing each others games out on Scratch because it was a great way to get more ideas for our own games."
Imogen
Cool Code in these Games

Randomising Game Elements

We quickly discovered that the games would be a lot more fun if we didn't know where or when objects would be falling from. The children explore Random blocks to create rules for the game to follow, but rules which would create an unpredictable outcome.

Variables: Timer, Score and More

Adding a Score and Timer was a great chance to spend more time exploring Variables. These clever bits of code can change their value at any time, making them perfect for adding five points or taking away a second on the timer. Some children even used the Score variable to trigger new levels starting!

Boosters

As well as pollution falling into the ocean, the children wanted to add other objects which would affect the gameplay in one way or another. Cue objects that add or remove time from the timer, ones which give you bonus points and even ones which make your paddle bigger or smaller. Bonuses, both good and bad, added a whole new dimension to the gameplay.

Micro:Bit Controllers

The last part of the project involved connecting our micro:bits to Scratch over Bluetooth to use them as an external gamepad. The children experimented with using the buttons too move left and right before Rio made a breakthrough (with the code above!) to make the tilt sensor work flawlessly. The micro:bits also came in handy for displaying the score and time remaining.

"I’ve really enjoyed this project, it was challenging but it was totally worth it. Trying to figure out where the bugs in my game were was tricky, but eventually I figured it out by using trial and error which helped because it showed me that my timer wasn’t working properly. When I fixed that the game was perfect!"
Maisie
"My favourite thing was exploring the new blocks which I haven’t used before in Scratch, like the micro:bit blocks to control the game. I made lots of choices in my game to make it fun, including where things would go and how quickly they moved!"
Tacita
"My favourite part of making our games was designing the code - especially working with the variables like the timer and the score. These parts make the game a lot more fun because they make it really competitive to play - they were challenging to get working but my friend was able how to make it work a little better."
Lylie

For this game you need to use the Arrow Keys to move the paddle along the bottom of the screen.

Catch the pollution but beware of bad power-ups!

Press the Green Flag to start.

"It was amazing because you got to make a game and play it at school! It was challenging because sometimes getting the right code was tricky, but what I did was (when I calmed down!) I had another look for the blocks I needed and I always managed to find it in the end."
Alex
"My favourite bit of the project was doing the challenges in the code where Mr Woolcock would give us a starting point and it was up to us to make the game elements work."
Caitlyn

Class 11

View all of the games made by
Class 11 on the Scratch Website.

Class 12

View all of the games made by
Class 12 on the Scratch Website.

Penpol Mini Marathon 2022

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.

Platinum Picnic at Penpol

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!

Photo Gallery

Penpol Swim to Success

The swimmers from Penpol enjoyed success in the pool at the Penwith School’s Gala a fortnight ago.

After a two year hiatus due to the pandemic it was wonderful to see a return to competitive swimming and boy did the children love it. Penpol topped the medal table finishing with 60 points over all; a monstrous 15 its above silver place.

All individual teams medalled as well with Yr 5 girls, Yr 6 boys and Yr 6 girls all picking up silver medals and the Yr 5 boys collecting gold.

The medal haul however wasn’t the most impressive outcome fore the day; that was the way in which the children carried themselves throughout the afternoon, showing exceptional levels of sportsmanship and fair play. They certainly did themselves and us as a school very proud.

An Inspiring Afternoon for Pupils at our Careers Fair

On Wednesday the 6th of April, Penpol held its second careers fair after the first, which was held back in 2019. 
 
This year, over 30 different job sectors came into school to talk about their job and potentially inspire the next generation. There were a huge range of jobs on show, from a doctor, a vet, the police and fire service, to potters, carpenters, jewellers and florists, with even the horticultural department at The Eden Project making an appearance. 
 
There was a real buzz amongst the students and exhibitors alike and, even if it only inspired one child for a potential future career, that is a job well done. Research shows that young people who have a possible understanding of what they may want to do in the future are far less likely to fall out of education and not have a job in the future. There is a saying that ‘You cannot be what you cannot see’ and this event, with Penpol being the only primary school in the South-West to hold such a thing, will hopefully have opened a few eyes to future prospects. 

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 

Our Penpol School Vision: “Penpol pupils are curious, creative and courageous learners. Our school community believes in authenticity as the foundations 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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Chris Coyle-Chislett

secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

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2 St George's Road, Hayle, Cornwall, TR27 4AH

01736 753472