Unique Visitors

Thursday 24 November 2016

Rugby sessions

Fred and Tom put us through another tough but fun session of rugby today. Despite the cold wind we all had great fun and enjoyed our short games of tag rugby. We are starting to get a better understanding of the rules as we go along.




























Tuesday 22 November 2016

Dragon Studios visit to the set of Will

We had an amazing experience today as we got to visit the set of a major American TV series being filmed at Dragon Studios in Llanharan. The show is based on the life of young William Shakespeare and is currently in production at the studios. As the crew were off filming on location today, we got the opportunity to have a tour around the sets.

As it is being set in Shakespeare's London, the first place we visited was a London market place, directly outside the front of the Globe theater. The recent rain made the muddy squalor even more realistic as we squelched around in our wellies. We got to see how realistic every single detail was on the set, from tools, clothes, food to buildings.

We then walked through late 1500s London from the poorer area to a richer trading part. It was a relief to have stone pavements under our feet rather than mud. Again the scenery was amazingly realistic with frontage set to look exactly how it should. The most baffling part of it was seeing the wood and bricks - then feeling it...which turned out to be plastic.

Following this we walked to the poorer area of the town - which looked completely different - the mud was back with style. The houses were built in shanty style and did not look very welcoming. All of these scenes were surrounded by giant green screens to add background detail.

Next we moved indoors to one of the huge sound stages where we got to see a dungeon set. Again it was almost far too realistic for our liking - it felt like being a real life dungeon. Some of the torture props did not look pleasant at all. We then moved into a pub set and got to sit on the seats at the inn. No drinks were had!

The final part of the tour was a visit inside Shakespeare's Globe theater which looked amazing! We even got to go on stage and act out one of our Christmas Concert scenes.

We had a fantastic day and would like to thank Tony Hood who took us around the set.

Friday 18 November 2016

Fairy tales - breaking News

As part of our focus on alternative Fairy tales we have been looking at how the events would be reported in today's 24 hour rolling news broadcasts. We discussed a range of fairy tales and what the main key events of these were.

We then had a demonstration of the Breaking News application on Classtools. Mr Roberts modeled and example of a main event from a tale and showed how to fill in the page. We focused on having short, concise and snappy headlines and a description with more information and alliterative features. We also discussed using appropriate images linked to the story.

We then split up into partners and used our iPads to have a go at making Breaking News stories from our own chosen fairy tales.

Here are some of our efforts.














Thursday 10 November 2016

Arwyr - experiments with using Tellagami for Welsh

Keeping in line with our topic looking at heroes and villains, we experimented with using Tellegami as a vehicle for developing our Welsh second language skills.

We took some of our famous Welsh heroes and revised some sentence patterns.

Into Film Cymru Wales on Film resources launch at the Senedd

Yesterday was an amazing experience for us as a school, as we were invited by Into Film Cymru to showcase and celebrate the learning experiences we had when working on the pilot of their media literacy project. This event took place at the Senedd and was attended by many leading figures in education and politics in Wales. There were speeches from Professor Donaldson, Jane Hutt and Kirsty Williams. Oh, and from myself and two Year 6 pupils Eliza and Iwan...

We were invited to participate in this exciting project in the Summer term of the last academic year. This involved myself receiving training from Into Film Cymru and two fantastic education consultants in Tim Bleazard and Philip Webb. As a school we also received INSET from Into Film Cymru in film literacy.

The media literacy project focused on using a short film, The Girl and the Fox, as an impetus for a mini project using comprehension, inference and digital literacy skills. The experiences that the class got from this project were amazing and the learning that came from it was of a very high standard. Pupils got to experiencing using film as the driving force for learning literacy skills...and have a lot of film. They even planned, wrote, filmed, edited and produced their own short films.

Yesterday Into Film Cymru were launching their Wales on Film resources at the Senedd and invited us to not only showcase the learning that took place by having a stand but also asked us to present to the invited crowd. I invited two of our Year 6 school council members to accompany myself and Mrs Price and to have the opportunity to join me in presenting. Iwan and Eliza spoke well and were a credit to the school,

We then returned to our stand and shared and explained our experience to all guests who visited us. One such visitor was Professor Graham Donaldson, Chair of the Independent Advisory Group for the Welsh Government. He spent a considerable time talking to myself, Mrs Price, Eliza and Iwan and was very interested in the range of learning that took place throughout the project.


I shared the learning that took place on this very blog. You can follow the journey from start to finish below:

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8
Session 9
Session 10
Session 11
Session 12 part 1
Session 12 part 2
Session 13
Session 13 The Films