Rivers Trip Cilfynydd

We had a great time at the Education Centre in Cilfynydd. The children took part in two activities, the first activity was visiting the river. The children had to measure the flow of the river using dog biscuits and finding the average time they took to travel 5m. After this the children used nets to catch minibeasts living in the river and used their charts to find out what they had caught.
After lunch in the sun the children then visited the centres pond where again they used nets to catch minibeasts and used microscopes to look closely at what they had caught. It was a great day and an excellent start to our new Cornerstones topic Bend and Flow - Rivers.

 https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/116476865899222510790/albums/6016682687582984865https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/116476865899222510790/albums/6016682687582984865

Bethel Baptist and Playground Computing

We've had a busy start to the week, yesterday we walked to Bethel Baptist Church to participate in Easter Cracked, a fun packed morning finding out about the Easter story. The children had a great morning and were lucky enough to leave with a chocolate egg!

Today Beth visited us from Playground Computing, a project which introduces children to computer science and coding without the use of computers. We began the session by being introduce to coding and in particular binary coding. Here is an example of the alphabet in binary code that Beth gave us.

 

We then used Binary coding to write our names which was quite tricky:

We then went out into the playground, we were given a number and had to arrange ourselves in order from smallest to largest. It was very chaotic to begin with but Beth showed us how computers do it and it was so much easier and quieter which made Miss Morgan and Mr Williams happy!

To end our session we pretending we were robots and programmers, the robot was given a blindfold and the programmer had to give them commands to finish the assault course, it was very funny watching the robots and we decided we needed a little bit more practice on directing our friends. It was a great day and more information can be found on the Playground computing website

 

 



University of South Wales Rugby/Purplemash

All children have now been given their Purplemash login details, all logins and passwords should work but if there are any issues please do not hesitate to let myself or Mr Williams know and we will ensure they work!

We were fortunate enough today to have a visit from Rugby students studying at the University of South Wales. They worked with both Year 6 classes and taught them rugby skills ending with a small rugby game, The children thoroughly enjoyed the session. Here are a few photos from the afternoon:

Eisteddfod/The Blitz

Welcome back! We hope you all had a fantastic half term break. This week we are busy preparing for our Eisteddfod on Friday before starting our new topic next week.

Our new topic for this half term is The Blitz. The children are really excited to start this topic. This is a historical topic with a focus on writing stories with a flashback. We will focus on when the Blitz happened, why it happened, why children were evacuated and where the children were evacuated to. We have planned a fantastic trip to the Swansea World War 1 and 2 museum for week 5.

If anybody has any books, artefacts, pictures or any relatives who would be willing to come in and discuss their experiences/memories with the children we would be very grateful if you could let Miss Morgan or Mr Williams know.

We've had a great time in Year 6 during our eco days. We started the days on Wednesday by wearing green. We had an assembly to begin the day where we found out that our topic was 'Global Citizenship'. During the day we found out how far our food travels before it arrives on our plate, we were really surprised to find out some foods travel over 3000 miles before they even reach our plate. We then played the 'Banana Split' game where we had to share our 30p between 5 workers, deciding on how much they each deserved and present our ideas.

 

Today we carried on our Eco activities with our Trashion Show this morning. Our outfits were very impressive and it was obvious how much effort had been put into making them. In the afternoon Mr Reynolds visited us to tell us more information about how Fairtrade can help farmers in Africa. He let us wear some of the clothes they had made, show use jewellery and pictures from his travels. It was really interesting and helped us to understand just how lucky we are



Eisteddfod competitions

As usual, we will be holding Eisteddfod competitions in all classes this year in the run up to our St. David’s Day Eisteddfod. The nature and number of the competitions depend on the age of the children.  Competitions include Art, Creative Writing, Handwriting, Poetry (Reading and Writing, Welsh and English), Singing (Welsh and English), and Music. Every child in the school will take part in the Eisteddfod activities ranging from the Nursery (Art) to Year 6 (all the above).  As a school, we would like  to wish every pupil success in the competitions, and would like to thank the parental support given each year in preparing the children for the Eisteddfod. 

Please follow the following link to find the Year 6 Eisteddfod song; Dwi'n Gymro

https://hwb.wales.gov.uk/cms/hwbcontent/Shared%20Documents/vtc/2008-09/music/rimbojam/rimbojam.html

Cardiff University Science Trip

We have very good links with the Science department in Cardiff University and we were very fortunate to be asked again to attend a Science workshop morning. We took all the Year 6 children to the University and they had a great educational morning.
The workshop was run by Cardiff University students, many of whom would like to become teachers, the students had each created a station teaching the children about a Science concept. The children were able to learn about bacteria and viruses and the use of antibiotics. They learnt about how the brain works and classified animals. Learnt how the heart pumped blood around the body to their organs and how to pick up dog poo so their dogs would not become ill from bacteria. It was a fascinating morning and a great opportunity for the children to see what a University is like. Here are some pictures from our morning