Preparations for St David's Day (Dydd Gwyl Dewi) 2007

As part of our study of The Tudors we wrote and recorded some acrostic poems on Tuesday this week. We had listened to the acrostic poems from our friends at The Buzz,( http://twowhizzy.podomatic.com/ ) who have just posted their second group of poems. We hope that you enjoy our efforts..... part 2 to come The music 'Greensleeves' is courtesy of Harpist - Sally Fletcher (http://www.heavenlyharpist.com/index.htm)

Teigan and Daryl spent 2 class sessions researching their presentation and making their puppets and set. They did very well, as 2 members of their group were away for the week! Our next audio podcast will be on the life of Henry VIII and his 6 wives.

Maia and Shayana begin the new series of Cefn Fforest Podcasts. They introduce life in Year, and our History Topic on 'The Tudors' . They give us an idea of the podcasts to come this term.

I have posted this piece of work even though as yet it is incomplete, my reason for doing this is : To show the main reason that we use these web 2.0 tools with young pupils - That the thought process and skills development is the most important part of any piece of work, the final product is rewarding but the route to it is always fascinating : The background to this piece is that the young lady creating the work is 11 and will be going to Key Stage 3 (High School) in September. She is on our More Able and Talented register for her ability in Literacy ( having won our Eisteddfod with a wonderful poem using evocative language). She has been using Audacity for at least 4 months now and actually said that she prefered it to GarageBand ( non of my doing honestly) in fact this piece was recorded on a MacBook using Audcaity. Jess has asked for a quiet room to work in - in fact all e could hear from across the hall was strange tapping and clapping ( we ask no questions in our podcasting club!!!) It was only later at the end of a 45 minute session that I was shown this piece. It consists of 8 audio tracks, a mixture of voice and body percussion which has been timed and mixed ( including increasing the volume on some tracks ) by one person in less than an hour. I was certainly impressed and I wouldn't even like to consider what NC Level you would possibly like to put on the original idea, let alone the final product. The only problem we have as I see it is giving these children the opportunities to develop the skills they now have in a system which still tends toward rigid conformity with a set of steps !!!! Creativity !!!!

The final verse of the poem. We have planned to recite the poem together with our friend Irena and her class from the Czech Republic on the morning of Wednesday 20th June - at 10am(UK) -11am(Czech Rep). Also that day we are going to let our pupils chat and allow the pupils from the Czech Republic to practice their English.

Second verse of the poem.

Like many other friends in Europe we here in Wales have been practicing the poem Promemoria which Daniela's Class recited a days ago - here is our version in English - Thank You for the translation Daniela.

This video is for our European Friends and shows us playing football at Playtime on Monday 4th June in the afternoon.

This is a further podcast in our creative podcast series produced by Year 6 pupils in their final term in our school before they move up to what people may call the High School. This piece is very much a work in progress with some work needing to be done to the abrupt ending, it shows some of the technical ideas that this group of creative pupils have had over the past few weeks.

**F.A. Cup Final Report** This report on last Saturday's F.A. Cup Final between Chelsea and Manchester United was written, recorded and edited by the boys heard giving the report, using Audacity on a Dell laptop. It is great to see how these 7-8 year olds have come to terms with using the technology - BEWARE : Digital Natives at work!!!!!!