Muni Song-writing Project

Our Year 5’s worked with the Muni Arts Centre this morning on a song-writing project about the environment. They have started the process of writing a song and will conclude it in a few weeks time. 

Stats in Sound Day 2

As I was unable to attend it’s over to Mr Arthur for this report.

On Friday we embarked on a trip to G24 Innovations near Rhymney in Cardiff. After a false start (we got on the wrong bus!!) we arrived a little late to the G24i factory to be greeted by a welcoming party who took us to our own education suite, which would be our base for the day. The huge room was kitted out with state of the art equipment which we would later get our hands on!

After a very informative talk about the company telling us what it does and explaining its environmentally friendly core values we were taken on a guided tour of the factory, where we were lucky enough to see where solar panels were being made out of recycled batteries. We then braved the weather outside for a quick look at the wind turbine, polytunnel and allotment (more on these later!) 

After the tour had finished we were split back into our Stats in sounds groups, and were each given an area and set of equipment to use in order to capture the different sounds and images of the G24i factory. We used a range of equipment including tripod mounted video recorders, digital cameras and laptops to build up a picture of the site and what it does.

We stopped for a spot of lunch before rotating the groups (each went to a different area) and swapping over some equipment. This meant that everyone had an opportunity to have hands on experience with the different equipment, capturing different environments. 

There were many interesting things to capture and record at G24i, including the large factory floor, the electric car charge station and the wild grass land on site, the most popular areas to record appeared to be the turbine and the Polytunnel, with good reason!

The turbine was an enormous structure (It is the largest man made structure in Cardiff, we actually followed it to get directions!!) and we learnt some fascinating facts about how fast the turbine arms move (200mph!!) and what happens if the wind picks up (it moves faster!)

The polytunnel, although impressive on the outside held many surprises. We learnt that in the summer months, the gardener had to work only in the night time because the temperatures could exceed 120 degrees in the day! The most exciting discovery of what was being grown inside, something even hotter than the summer temperatures… the rare and EXTREMELY hot chillies! We were given an excellent tour of the tunnel, where we were told all about the rare chillies and tomatoes on show, and some brave, brave children even attempted to eat some of them (seeds and all!!) However the tunnel held one more surprise, the class was very kindly donated a Jalapeno Chilli pepper along with an as yet unnamed plant! 

After all this excitement, and scorching heat, it was unfortunately time to say our very warm thank you and head back home to school with our found knowledge and plants intact. Everyone is now extremely excited to be continuing with our Stats in sound project on Monday and Friday where we will begin to thread together all the data we have collected so far!

These photos were added to the @StatsInSound Twitter feed.

Visit from Paralympian David Roberts CBE

We had a visit from 11 times Paralympic Gold Medalist David Roberts CBE today as part of our Olympic topic. Our class has been coming up with a range of questions linked with various categories such as family, early life, school, sport, inspirations, favourite things and the future.

He sat in the hot seat for almost 40 minutes non-stop firing back answers to an avalanche of questions including getting some secrets about his brother...Mr. Roberts.

He closed the session by giving the pupils the opportunity to look and feel one of his Beijing 2012 Paralympic Gold medals.

A video of some of his answers can be found below.

Our Boasting Poem

As part of our word warm-up for today's literacy lesson we have been making a class 'boasting poem' based on the topic; 'A Llanharan Primary School pupil is...'

A Llanharan Primary School pupil is...
A human calculator,
Posher than the Queen,
As respectful as royal subjects,
Writes better plays than Shakespeare himself,
Prettier than any pop star
that has been discovered,
Cooler than an ice cube,
Make the Fantastic Four the Fantastic Five,
Never takes no for an answer.

Stats in Sound - Day 1

Today saw the much awaited arrival of the first day in our Stats in Sound project working with Community Music Wales. After a brief introduction about the project the class was split into three groups and assigned an expert from the Community Music team.

The pupils then got the chance to explore and try out the different types of equipment that they would be using for the project including cameras and sound recording equipment.

After a short while getting used to everything they needed to use the groups moved outside into our fabulous school grounds and began a ‘sound walk’, taking recordings of any natural sounds they heard and others they could generate using natural materials. They also took as many photographs of interesting natural things that they found on their travels.

In the afternoon, each group got the opportunity to edit their media from the morning; cropping and enhancing photographs, looking through video clips and selecting and editing the appropriate parts and listening to audio files and editing them together as a soundscape.

The whole class had a fantastic day and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn new skills using modern technologies. We now cannot wait for Day 2 on Friday! 


Here's a link to the Stats in Sound blog for our class: http://statsinsound.org.uk/schools/llanharan-primary/

Stats in Sound!

Tomorrow we shall be starting an exciting project called Stats in Sound with Community Music Wales and the Art Council of Wales. We will be blogging more details about this project throughout the term. Here is a calendar of events involved in the project:

Day 1: Tuesday 12th June:
Location: School
The pupils will familiarise themselves with the equipment used in the project and investigate our school grounds to gather evidence to help us push towards our Eco School Green Flag.

Day 2: Friday 15th June:
Location: G24i visitor centre and allotment.
The pupils will visit the G24i visitor centre and use audio recorders and cameras to gather and document information.

Day 3: Monday 18th June:
Location: School
Pupils will experience using Ardunio, use basic electronics, learn basic computer programming, learn about integers, libraries, variables and electronic sound production.

Day 4: Friday 22nd June
Location: National Botanic Garden of Wales
Gather information relevant to the gardens using audio recorders and cameras and begin to upload it onto a website that will become accessible via QR codes.

Day 5: Thursday 28th June
Locatio: School
Edit and blog using the information gathered from the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.

Rugby League Training

We had a visit from South Wales Scorpions coach Lee this morning who taught us all some rugby league skills. Despite the relenting sun and heat we all enjoyed a good hour session picking up lots of tips and skills to play the game.