Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett
Email the Office
secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk
Telephone Number
01736 753472
Follow us on Twitter
@PenpolSchool
Our Address
2 St George’s Road, Hayle,
Cornwall, TR27 4AH
Jacob Woolcock 
Today in school we had ‘Dress Like a Pumpkin’ day where everyone was encouraged to come in wearing orange if they could. As well as this we had a ‘Name the Penguin’ competition and a really exciting LEGO Sale as well (thanks to James B’s dad!) which helped us raise lots of money towards our trip.
Today we had the pleasure of being joined by CEO Steve Jermy and some of his team from Celtic Sea Power, who are kindly sponsoring us in our bid to get to America. We learnt all about their plans to launch floating wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower into the ocean and in return we shared our presentations and Robot Games run through with them. Thank you so much for the support Celtic Sea Power, we’re incredibly grateful.
This is a message I really wasn’t expecting to write (especially after just two weeks!), but I’m delighted to say that we’ve reached our fundraising target!! The £10,000 from GoFundMe along with the nearly £15,000 from companies sponsoring the Pumpkins means we’re going to go to America in two weeks time!
On behalf of myself, Penpol School and of course the Penpol Pumpkins themselves I want to say a massive thank you to each and every one of you for your support, generosity and kindness in the last two weeks. We couldn’t do this without you and seeing our whole community rallying around these students has left us all feeling completely overwhelmed.
When we return from America we are hoping to share our experience with other schools in Cornwall and hopefully encourage them to take part in the FIRST LEGO League too. To this end if we find ourselves in the situation where we have any leftover money, the Pumpkins would like to purchase some LEGO Robotics kits to share with other schools. This will enable them to build on their success by creating a legacy of encouraging more children in Cornwall to take up STEM and Robotics in their schools.
Thank you once more for all the support and be sure to keep an eye on our school website to see how the Pumpkins get on when they arrive in America!
Jacob Woolcock
James S, Ernie and Piran went up to the Pirate FM Studios this morning to speak to Neil and Saffy LIVE on air! They shared how excited they were about going to America and how it felt when they first learnt that they’d been invited to represent Great Britain. Not only that, but Saffy challenged them to a LEGO building challenge against Neil which proved to be a lot of fun!
Listen to our chat with Neil and Saffy:
And find out how we got on with the building challenge!
Today we were kindly visited by Gavin Beresford from Cornwall Council, who is a referee for the Robot Games in his spare time. He kindly gave up an afternoon to work with the four children on the Robot Games team to help them refine and improve their robots performance. Thank you Gavin!
It was lovely to meet Hannah Rowe from Rowe IT and Sarah Ableman from Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Careers Hub today and to thank them in person for all the support they’ve given to the Pumpkins. We shared both of our presentations with them and talked about how much it means to us to be representing Great Britain in this competition.
Hannah said “I spent the afternoon at Penpol School with an amazing, funny group of individuals who together make up the Penpol Pumpkins. I cannot begin to tell you how brilliant they were!”
Today was very exciting – a trip to Langage Farm (just outside of Plymouth) to meet Ewen McClelland for a guided tour of their Food Waste Recycling facility. We learnt where the food waste comes from and saw it’s journey from being unloaded from the back of a lorry (in the smelliest room in the world!) right through to becoming clean Methane Gas which is then used to power two generators to create electricity.
We got to explore the whole processing plant, including standing on top of a giant tank which contained many, many tonnes of biodegrading food waste!
Ada, James and Ethan were interviewed (live on air!) by Julie Skentelbery to hear how their Food Waste project has earned them a place in America, as well as discussing what going to America would mean to these students.
You can listen to their interview here.
Today we were joined by BBC Spotlight, who came to visit us at Penpol to learn about our Food Waste project and how we’re fundraising to get to America. They interviewed us and filmed lots of clips of our Robot in action.
The program aired on TV and we received lots and lots of donations from people in Cornwall though our GoFundMe page straight afterwards – thank you everyone!
This morning we broke some very exciting news to the Penpol Pumpkins – and filmed their reaction! They thought they were reading lines off the screen to make a video for the Council, but that wasn’t quite the whole story.
Here they are discovering the very exciting news!
