Year 6

3D Printing our Wonderful Winter Ornaments

12th December 202212th December 2022 by Jacob Woolcock

BUILDING WITH BLOCKS IN TINKERCAD

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…

DESIGN, REFINE AND PRINT

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.

DECORATIONS GALLERY

Year 6 children gather for evacuation!

29th November 202228th November 2022 by Bethany Waters

On Thursday 24th November, the Year 6’s of Penpol School donned their 1940’s attire and were transported back in time. On arrival, their labels were checked and destinations confirmed. Roll call was taken and they were escorted into the school building to await further instruction. Whilst waiting, they were given the opportunity to meet their fellow evacuees, discuss their destination and make sure they had the government stipulated items in their suitcases, sharing these with their peers.

Upon inspection and arrival at their destination, the evacuees had the opportunity to write back to their loved ones at home to let them know they’d safely arrived and how they were doing. The evacuees then spent the rest of the morning creating model spitfires; learning of their importance in the war, playing some 1940s children’s games and cooking up a storm with our lovely land girls and their authentic rations dessert recipe. Blackout procedures were followed to a ‘T’, throughout the day, when the air raid sirens sounded and all evacuees were safely accounted for thereafter.

During the afternoon the cooking continued and the pupils explored the Blitz through some beautiful artwork. Parents were then invited in for the evacuees to share their ‘Wartime Britain’ work from the past term with some 1940’s music to set the scene and the rations dessert sampled.

Exploring Energy and Innovating Ideas

29th November 202224th November 2022 by Jacob Woolcock

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.

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

Remembrance Service 2022

29th November 202213th November 2022 by Jono Peck

On Sunday 13th November, six Y6 pupils represented Penpol School at the Hayle Remembrance Service. The first part of the service took part in St. Elwyns Church before we paraded down to the war memorial. After listening to the names of all the local people who had fallen, we heard the last post and stood in silence to remember them. We laid a wreath on behalf of Penpol School.

The service was particularly significant to the Y6 pupils as we have been learning about the impact of WWI and WWII in our Wartime Britain topic. We have also been making our own poppies and wreaths and writing poems based on Flander’s Fields. The local community praised the respect and maturity of our Y6 pupils. It was also nice to see so many other past and present Penpol pupils representing their local clubs at the service who were equally respectful and role-models for our school and community.

Behind the Scenes of Maths Mania in Scratch

29th November 202211th October 2022 by Jacob Woolcock

Scratch is a great program that lets us build our own games, animations and tools. Using brightly coloured blocks of code we can control individual objects (called Sprites) as well as being able to combine multiple elements into more complex programs. However my favourite thing about Scratch is that you can make just about anything you like if you use your imagination.

That’s exactly what happened last week when I heard this…

“Mr Woolcock, can I show you this game I’ve been making at home?”

Below is a video of that particular game, complete with play-by-play commentary!

I can’t overstate how much creativity, problem solving and complex logical thinking are involved in bringing a project like this to life – it’s absolutely ace.

If you’d like to have a play of this game (or the prequel – Grammar Castle) you can use the buttons below.

Netball Festival at Hayle Academy

29th November 20227th October 2022 by Bethany Waters

On Thursday, twenty Year 6’s went up to Hayle Academy to participate in a Netball Festival against several other local schools. Penpol’s teams both played their hearts out and really enjoyed their afternoon up at the academy.

Everyone showed great sportsmanship, respect and integrity throughout, cheering the other team at the end of each game and congratulating each team in the tournament. Well done Year Sixes you represented the school brilliantly!

Celebrating the European Day of Languages at Penpol

29th November 20225th October 2022 by Jack Emery

Wednesday 5^th 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!

29th November 202227th September 2022 by Rebecca Best

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!

Penpol Mini Marathon 2022

1st July 20221st July 2022 by Nic Stanlake

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.

Year 6 Surf Club

8th November 202222nd June 2022 by Nic Stanlake

On Tuesday, still weary from their London trip, some Year 6’s headed over to Gwithian for their first Surf Club session of the year. the sun was shining and the waves were perfect for smashing about and popping up. Surfing is a huge industry and for many part of their way of life here in Hayle. What better way to spend a summer’s eve than in the surf! We are continuing our long running partnership with the guys at Shore Surf , who work out of St Ives Bay Holiday Park. The children were changed in record time and set off does to the beach with excitable smiles, so quickly that I could barely keep up. Once on the beach it was a quick warm up and refresher as all pupils have already surfed as part of the the curriculum and into the waves. There were lots of children paddling furiously before popping up expert grace and lots of children falling off with considerably less grace. Anyway, here are some photos for you to enjoy!