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
As is tradition in the last week of term, our talented students from right across Penpol School put on a spectacular show for the whole school to enjoy today. The incredible students taking part in Penpol’s Got Talent showcased their singing, dancing, gymnastics, tap dancing, yoyo skills and so much more!
On Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd July, our Year 2 pupils embarked upon some unforgettable boat tours of Mounts Bay with Marine Discovery Penzance.
We met the Marine Discovery crew on Albert Pier at Penzance Harbour. While we were fitted with lifejackets and suitably warm clothing, the children explored fact files about a rage of local sea animals, including minke whales and basking sharks. We then carefully descended the steep steps down from the harbour and boarded Shearwater II, a 10-metre sailing catamaran.
We left the calm waters of Penzance Harbour and headed south towards Mousehole. The children observed this historic fishing village from the sea and learned about the history of the Mousehole Cave and its use by smugglers. We learned that the Cornish name for Mousehole is ‘Porthenys’, translating to ‘harbour island’. This refers to St Clement’s Island, situated just offshore from Mousehole.
Historically, St Clement’s Island was home to a medieval chapel. Nowadays it is an important habitat for a host of seabirds and grey seals. We observed several seals, some of which were resting on the rocks and others could be seen ‘bottling’ in the water.
Josh, the crew’s marine mammal expert, let the children explore a real seal’s skull and some seal fur!
The bay also had a plethora of local seabirds, including skuas, Cory’s shearwaters, gannets, cormorants and oystercatchers.
It was time to hoist the sails as we set a course due Northeast for St Michael’s Mount! On the way, we sang sea shanties, spotted a number of different types of boats and kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife. Some children helped to steer the boat, using the steering pole and keeping a keen eye on the direction of travel.
As we sailed across Mounts Bay, we pondered the bay’s ancient past; it is understood that some 6000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower, the bay was home to a vast forest. ‘The Lost Forest of Mounts Bay’ is echoed in the Cornish name for St Michael’s Mount, ‘Karrek Loos yn Koos’, meaning ‘Grey Rock in the Wood’.
The children demonstrated incredible bravery and resilience during their marine voyages, at time battling high winds and choppy seas! They also showed great curiosity and a deep respect for their local environment. A huge thank you to Marine Discovery Penzance for a truly unforgettable experience and inspiring the next generation of marine voyagers!
Last week the Penpol School boys football team continued their success at the Mayor’s Cup; making it 3 wins in 3 years.
The boys played wonderfully, winning league games against Connor Downs, St Piran’s, Bodriggy and fighting back to draw with St Erth conceding only 2 goals on their way to the final.
They spent most of the first half on the back foot with Bodriggy enjoying most of the possession with Penpol captain, Isaac, having to come off injured in his last game for the school team. Also missing the game through injury was Alfie, whose team talk at half time turned the tide.
The game however, ended 0-0 and headed to the dreaded penalty shootout and I tell you what, Gareth Southgate and the England team should take note as both teams scored some excellent penalties. Unfortunately for Bodriggy, they went on to miss in sudden death. Up stepped Nicholas, the 3rd Year 6 pupil in the team making his last appearance, to confidently thrash home the winner- cue the celebrations.
Thank you to all at Hayle Football Club for the event and special thanks to Mayor June Lawrenson-Reid for hosting the event. The teams all played brilliantly, especially Bodriggy who would also have been worthy winners.
Our Year 5’s have been learning all about conservation, pollution and looking after Planet Earth this term. As part of this exciting project they’ve been designing and coding their own pollution-busting games in Scratch.
Starting with character development, each student used a fun drawing tool called Make 8-Bit Art to create a selection of fish, some polluting objects like carrier bags and drinks cans and their own underwater scene for their background.
After this the coding began in Scratch with the first session focussed around getting the fish to swim across the screen. The students explored using random generators to change the starting position, size and colour of the fish and how often they appeared.
We then used this same idea to add our polluting objects, this time falling from the surface to the bottom of the ocean. Once this was working we decided to add a variable to keep score of how many pieces of pollution were clicked on by the player.
This variable quickly led into another – this time creating a timer to keep track of the length of their game and create an element of competitiveness to see how many points could be earned in a short amount of time.
After these basics were created the children all had different ideas of where their games should go next. To help them explore, test and create these extra features they all had two weeks to design and code anything they wanted in their game. We had power-ups that gave extra time, lives that were lost if you clicked a fish by accident, game over screens, high score boards and so, so many more ideas! The children really ran with their games and created some absolutely fantastic projects. You can explore all the games from Class 11 here and those from Class 12 here.
“In my game I have lives which I’m quite impressed about since it looks complicated but actually when you think about it it’s pretty simple. What I did is when I was trying to figure out the lives I broke it into different stages – first of all doing the variable code to make it work and then if something else wasn’t working because of it I would figure out why and improve it by fixing the bugs.”
“I’ve added a score too, when you’ve finished the game it’ll come up with your score at the end”.
Luke (red-fish-235)
“In my game I’m proud that I could make it work at all! I’ve never thought of myself as being particularly good at coding but I really pushed myself and I’m so proud that I managed to get it working. I loved exploring the other games from people in my class to get ideas – they were all just so good! I think if we combined everyones ideas into one we could make a game that would go viral!”
Isla (red-fish-227)
“I’m really proud of my game because I didn’t know if I’d be able to manage all of the coding but I did in the end and I’m really happy with what I’ve done! We’ve spent four weeks doing this coding of the game and it’s already starting to look really good!”
Evangeline (red-fish-251)
“Throughout my time doing Computing at school its really inspired me to push past my limits and start doing it at home too. Inside of me it’s really sparked an interest for coding!
Inside my game I am most proud of my lives system (which mimic the variable Health) which means that I have five lives which link to five hearts on screen. Every time Health goes down a heart disappears until there are none left at which point it’s game over.
At home I also added a shop which I’m really happy with. It’s not finished yet, but it’s basically a way to use the points gathered by collecting rubbish to spend in the shop. You can buy extra time, plastic per second (which means you get more plastic to fall) and an upgrade which gives you even more boosters.”
Ned (red-fish-220)
