The Penpol Times

Spelling Bee 2018

27th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

Tuesday brought around the much anticipated Year 5 & 6 Spelling Bee final. Our upper KS2 children have been meticulously going over their spelling words for the last couple of weeks before taking part in a class-based sub competition. It has proved a huge success as it has in previous years. Each class provided 4 finalists, between them spelling over 200 words to book their place in the final.

The final brings around a different challenge with the children standing and delivering many correct spellings including treachery, pronunciation, catastrophe, alleviating and extraordinarily.

Finalists

Class 11- Zara, Emma, Lily and Issy.

Class 12- Piran, Ella, Gabby and Freya

Class 13- Lola, Jake, Ben and Taran

Class 14- Jack, Luca, Finley and Jude

It was a very close competition with the difficulty of words making even the teachers sweat. But the eventual winner came from Class 13 after a very closely fought battle with Jack, Class 14. Well done Lola, this years Spelling Bee Champion.

Year 5 Girls Swim Team Heading To School Games

27th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

After a super successful swimming gala Zara, Emma, Miranda and Freya have qualified for the Cornwall School Games in June, our first competitors for more than 3 years!

They tasted both individual and team success at the gala where they won 2 individual silvers and 1 bronze and also a silver in the team relay.

Well done girls, were all super proud! Good Luck!

Computing Speed Challenge: Musical Robots!

27th March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week Class 8 had an unexpected Computing Speed Challenge with the Lego WeDo 2.0 robots. Their task was to design, build and then code a moving robot which makes noises using just the Lego bricks. No sound effects allowed!

To make this even harder, the children only had 45 minutes from start to finish, including tidying up time. The race was on and the children were eager to make the noisiest robot they could.

Here we have Oskar and Henry showing off their robot:

And here are Finley and Lucy with their design:

Finally, here is the robot that Brodie and Patrick built:

Huge Medal Haul For Our Super Swimmers

26th March 2018 by Nic Stanlake

Over the last couple of weeks our swim teams have been competing in the Penwith Swimming Gala’s at both Year 3 & 4 and Year 5 & 6. As always, it was a pleasure to travel with these children to represent the school alongside 18 others from the area. All children took part in their individual events including, front crawl, back stroke, breaststroke and butterfly (Yr 5 & 6), as well as the relay events. Many of our children placed 1st or 2nd in their heat and qualified for the finals.

Penpol School were very well represented in the finals, present in 23 of the 36 finals collecting many medals in the process.

Year 3 & 4 results

Both Joe and Ronnie picked up Bronze medals for the boys in the front and backstroke with Amber collecting Bronze in the Yr4 girls front crawl.

Out of the 18 teams present our Year 3 girls and Year 4 boys both finished 3rd in the team competition.

Year 5 & 6 results

I returned from the year 5 & 6 gala with a pockets bursting with Penpol winning 14 medals.

Miranda and Zara both won silver medals for their front crawl and backstroke whilst Freya won bronze in the breaststroke. Emma was not to be left out either following up her 4th place in the butterfly with her part in a silver medal relay performance bringing the year 5 girls total to 7.

The year 6’s collected 3 individual bronze’s through Jude, Finn and Eva before the Year 6 boys collected a bronze medal each for the relay.

Overall our Year 6 boys came third for their age group and the Year 5 girls came second and qualifying for the Cornwall School Games in June.

The results of the combined competition proved how success the gala had been for Penpol School as we came in 3rd behind the very competitive teams from St Ives and St Uny. However, 3rd placed out of 18 teams is an outstanding achievement.

Well done everyone, and good luck to the Year 5 Girls team at the school games!

Penpol Languages Survey- We Value Your Feedback

11th February 202026th March 2018 by Jack Emery

With the final term at Penpol School almost upon us, it’s the perfect time to reflect and evaluate on the year so far.

All students here at Penpol have one hour a week of French, as well as the opportunity of attending after school language club on Thursdays. Year 6 are currently involved in an email exchange with Octave Cazauvieilh, a primary school situated on the outskirts of Bordeaux in the South-West of France. We also celebrate students achievement in languages by awarding a Star of the Week badge in both Infants and Juniors.

As a way of evaluating languages at Penpol, please would you be so helpful and spare a moment to complete this short questionnaire below.

Click Here

Your opinion is very valuable and you can be assured that your completed questionnaire will be totally anonymous.

Many thanks,

Mr Emery (Penpol Languages Co-ordinator)

The overall winners from class 13

Class 7 are Internet Strong

23rd March 2018 by Jacob Woolcock

This week we’ve been looking at how to be Internet Strong in our E-Safety lessons. The key idea here is that our passwords need to be as strong as possible to protect our accounts and keep our things safe. We’ve talked with each class about some top tips for making strong passwords and have explored a website called DinoPass which is a fantastic and free way to create some super-strong passwords!

Here are some of the tips we’ve learnt this week:

Passwords should be strong so that hackers can’t get into our things. You could put an exclamation mark in your password to make it even safer! – Samuel

You should put capital letters and symbols into your password so that nobody can guess them. It’ll take them ages to work it out! – Aimee

You should never tell anyone your password, apart from an adult you trust who can keep it safe for you in case you forget it – Kiki

They should be quite long, maybe with two random words put together. It’s really important that you can remember your password! – Tilly

Of course we also got to explore a new island on Interland too, this time is was the Tower of Treasure where the children had to collect letters to build the strongest password they could.

Fantastic Fun at Newquay Zoo

20th March 2018 by Penpol School

On Friday 9th March, Class 4 had a fantastic time at Newquay Zoo. The children have been learning about animals in their science lessons at school and discovering which animals have backbones and which do not. We went to the zoo to learn more about vertebrates and invertebrates, and to learn more about the classification of animals.

When we got to the zoo, we were met by Pippa who gave us a really interesting lesson about classification. The first thing Pippa showed us was a cockroach. She explained that they have holes down their sides which allows them to make a hissing sound.

When the coach roaches get scared, they all get together and make a hissing sound that sounds like a snake. It tricks the predator that wants to eat them! Ada

Some animals do not have backbones, like insects. They are called invertebrates. Insects have 6 legs. Oliver

The next thing Pippa showed us was the skin of a royal python. It was very long and smooth. Flora and Amelie helped Pippa and held the snake skin. Everybody got a chance to touch the skin.

After that, we had to be very quiet because Pippa got out a real snake. His name is spot. Everybody got a chance to touch him if they wanted but we had to do it with the back of our hand.

I like the snake. I’m not scared of him. He’s quite cold. – Ptolemy

I know all about snakes because I’ve got one at home and he’s called Monty. Snakes are cold blooded animals. – Alfie

After a really interesting talk, we got to explore the zoo. Although it was raining and we got quite wet, we all had a fantastic time. Here are some of the photos…

Caio and Flynn count the meerkats

Silly selfies in the tropical house!

Ted, Riley and the lions have a roaring competition!

What a fantastic day out!

A Brilliant Book Day

25th June 201820th March 2018 by Penpol School

Class 4 had so much fun on Friday. It was Penpol Book Day! The school missed World Book Day due to the snowy weather but we made up for it in style. Everybody dressed up as their favourite book character and Class 4 were dressed to impress. Check out some of our photos…

I was dressed up as the wolf man and I was so excited because I won a prize for the dressing up competition. – Flynn

The children and the parents put in a huge effort in making the costumes. The children looked fantastic. They brought in their favourite stories from home and shared them with the class.

I’m Mr Strong. Mum and Dad helped me make my costume. I love it. – Zak

Georgia and Tacita dressed up as Goldilocks.

I dressed up as the rainbow fish. I helped my mum make the costume and my mum wore the same costume to her school for their book day. – Ada.

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

Well done class 4.

Aboriginal Art

20th March 2018 by Colin Jones

For our topic of Weather Around The World, Class 8 have visited Australia. We found out about the climate there and studied some of the Aboriginal culture: Dream stories and artwork. Inspired by some of the pieces that we had studied, the children set about designing and drafting their own animal based picture in the aboriginal style.

I loved looking at all the different pieces of aboriginal art. I especially liked finding Australian animals. – Harry

We then painstakingly completed our final pieces with acrylic on paper, dot by dot by dot! The animal designs were made first using paint on black paper. We then used white paper to make our backgrounds. We had to choose colours that complemented our animal designs so they stood out. To create our dots, we used cotton wool buds liberally loaded with paint and carefully applied onto the paper.

I really enjoyed making the background – Tess

Our finished products will be on display in our classroom.

Delilah, Ines and Lola receive ‘Eradicate Plastic Pollution’ responses!

20th March 2018 by Mark Pollard

Recently, Year 6 have written letters to different establishments to attempt to persuade them to do more to rid the world of plastic waste, and this week the first responses came through, with Delilah, Ines and Lola each receiving a letter!
Delilah received a letter from Tesco, describing what they already do to try to eradicate plastic waste and what they are attempting to do by 2050. They also praised Delilah for her well written letter.

Ines and Lola both received responses from 10 Downing Street, describing how their letters had been passed onto a different department and that, hopefully, they will have an answer to their letters soon, so watch this space!

I was really happy to get a response, but I think that making these changes by 2050 is too far away – Delilah.

I really enjoyed receiving the letter and finding out that we might be getting another letter – Ines and Lola.

Year 2’s Marine Discovery

“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.”