Well this week we have had lots going on! We started the week with Mr Vauaghan who gave us a masterclass on opera. We learnt so much about the different operas and the stories behind them. As usual he brought lots of different instruments and played parts of the different operas for us. We decided that we all like opera music and would like to go to see one.
On Tuesday we had some post. We received a package which contained a photograph and a letter from a soldier. When we used the aurasma app on the photograph it told us that we had a challenge.
Also in the package was a number of artefacts from WW1. We decided to investigate them and try and work out what clues we had.
After school today we had our first session of 'App Club'. We found out all about apps and explored different types of apps working out why they where made and for whom they are targeted. We cannot wait to start developing our own apps. We are very excited.
We explored the start of WW1 on Wednesday and interrogated military records to try to find out what we could about the soldiers of the local area. We have found out lots of interesting information and by looking at military records and census returns from 1911 we found a soldier who said he was 18 when he enlisted but according to census he would only have been 16 on that date. All our information is going to go on a special website called 'Cwmclydach Remembers'. The information will be uploaded over the next few weeks.
Our Code Club began on Wednesday too. We had lots of new faces, plus lots of older children wanting to further develop their coding skills. We found out that we were going to be a 'Star Code Club' which means we are one of 20 code clubs from the UK who will promote code clubs and help others set up their own clubs. We were very excited. We got straight to work by using 'Scratch' and 'Kodu' and began developing those new skills.
On Thursday we had a theatre company visit us. The play gave performed was called, 'Your country needs you!' which told the story of the start of WW1, life in the trenches and the first Christmas. It was very moving and we learnt a great deal about WW1.
We have also been looking at lots of source materials and we have been exploring what information is important. We decided that we wanted to create a TV news report so we have been reading information for the main idea and composing notes on WW1. We cannot wait until next week when we create our newspaper reports.