Season's Greetings to all

As part of Sharon Toner's Voices of the World Project, in which children from all over the world record messages in their mother tongues ( not easy in Welsh, as we learn it as a second language!!) - we recorded ourselves for December singing 'Jingle Bells', we decided to Voki it ..... enjoy


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For the previous month's task we were to record Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-we found it near impossible to find a translation, as a result we present a slightly bi-lingual version of Twinkl Twinkl Seren Fach !!!


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Thank You to Voices of the World for giving the pupils of Cefn Fforest Primary School the chance to take part in this great collaborative project :-)

A new start for Year 4 in 2008

As of this Friday (21st December 2007) Mr Harrington will be leaving Cefn Fforest Primary School, after 19 years at the school this will obviously be a big change, not one taken lightly.

Mr H would like to thank all his current class of Year 4 pupils for their willingness to go on the online journey this year with him, and he is sure that you will continue this with your new teacher in January 2008.

This blog will be kept live for a few months, as Mr H is interested in knowing how those embarked on the Myst3 Exile game are getting on - Mr H will post when he completes the game also...... always remember the most important part of any school is not the building, the teachers or, the pupils .................... but the school as a whole community working for each other....................keep blogging.

Mr H signing off. ( for now!)

Myst III The mystery continues.....

In Class 4H we have had a double helping of Myst 3 Exile this week. Due to some additional time in the curriculum as we head towards Christmas, we squeezed in 2 Myst sessions this week.
We agreed many of our moves collaboratively as we explored the world called J'nanin. Above you can see the book that we found inside the tusk which we had to roll the barrel into. The book is called AMATERIA ( it has a distinctive bird design on the cover) we had to work out the combination for a lock first, in order to allow the book to come down for us to look at it.Above you can see a view of the Amateria landscape, it is quite different from the bleak island of J'nanin... several pupils thought it appears have a Chinese feel with many red wooden structures connected by gangways and paths.
We explored Amateria for as long as we could today ..... we were distracted from our set task today, to find out if the tusk with the light gather in front of it contains a book also!Mr Harrington has been doing his own research on this particular tusk - above you can see the tusk door with the coloured lights shining on it. On the door are 5 buttons they have to be pressed in the correct order and you may get inside, if you are lucky!
The order of the buttons is the order in which the lights link is shown below-
yellow
blue
green
red
yellow
purple
red
Take a look at the book inside and visit a new island (or age!).... good luck and we will meet to discuss how you get on on Monday.

Who in the World is looking at us in Cefn Fforest?

The above map depicts: 1,355 visits from 28 Apr 2007 to 18 Nov 2007

This map is normally updated daily (latest: 2007-11-18 07:33:17 GMT)

Sadly in school due to Caerphilly CBC's blocking we cannot see where our blog visitors come from as our ClustrMap is unavailable to us. However this is our most recent map. showing not only that we have had 1,355 visitors since we started on 28th April 2007, but more importantly showing the spread of visitors from around the globe to our small classroom here in the South Wales valleys.
To anyone sceptical about the use of blogging just consider the worldwide 'real audience' that we have for the news and views that we post from our classroom - now that is truly mind blowing.... we hope that Cefn Fforest Primary School will keep on blogging and podcasting in the New Year, after all we do have people out there who follow what we are doing :-)

2 New Voki's

We are part of the Voices of the World Project, started by Sharon Toner from The High School in Dundee. There are now 55 teachers from around the world embarked on monthly projects in which our pupil's voices are heard, many speaking in their own languages. We have recently added 2 contributions - ( a late entry to November- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star -Twinkle Twinkle Seren Fach which we sadly failed to translate into Welsh )


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Also we have recorded our December contribution which is Jingle Bells ( also a voki - also recorded in English rather than a complicated Welsh translation!)


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NADOLIG LLAWEN A BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA

MYST III

We are at present in the middle of an investigation of Myst III The Exile. Over the past 4 weeks we have been using the strange world of Myst's parallel times to help with our creative writing and also our exploration skills.

We have been into the 'tusk' you can see above - going up in the lift to the room at the top , after re-arranging the lift controls.
We saw again the person who stole 'RELEESHAHN' in this room before he teleported again. He told us strangely that he had reset the 3 symbols needed to take us further.Mr H has had a Myst evening (Friday) and has the following information for the pupils who have been so keen that they have gone out and bought their own copies of the software ( at between £3 and £5 excellent value).

* Go back up into the room at the top of the tusk - each of the 3 lights when you approach will allow you to focus on a tusk and fit a symbol into the panel each tusk door (1 for each of the 3)
* Outside focus each of the colour topped lenses - now go back to the point near the shore where you turn the control until the sunlight is focussed onto the sender unit - When yo go to the tusk door with the focus device in front of it now it should be coloured by a rainbow of light from each of the lenses.

That's all for now.... more later.....

Henry Tudor and his wife.

A new video podcast from Class 4H at Cefn Fforest Primary School. This video shows a finger puppet show linked to our study of The Tudors.
Teigan and Daryl spent two sessions carrying out their own research on the internet before planning and filming their presentation

Well done Teigan and Daryl.

Kingswear Primary School - Halloween Poems

Some friends of ours down in the West Country have produced a wonderful array of Halloween Poems - give them a listen they are fab :-)


Click here to get your own player.

Cefn Fforest Podcast Y4

Cefn Fforest Year 4 began podcasting this afternoon. Mr Harrington finally remembered to set up his laptop and load up Audacity for Maia and Shayana - hopefully this is the first of a series of podcasts this term. Watch this space.....

VisuWords Dictionary

VisuWords have come up with an excellent tool for the writer - an online Dictionary/Thesaurus - it is brilliant for searching out interesting words to put in your creative writing.

It works by building in front of your eyes a linked network of related words - it is inspirational, go and check it out, it's well worth the effort.

Moturoa's Money, Money, Money Voicethread

Cuddly Kiwi's Welsh Adventure Voicethread

We would like it very much if you add comments to our Voicethread.

Miriam shares her voice with The World

This was posted by our friends at Appleby School near Nelson, New Zealand last week and contains Miriam singing - a Star in the making. Follow the link above to Appleby Airwaves podcasts.
"Miriam Shares Her Voice
Today for our homework we shared the music that we like- either talking about it, listening to it, playing it or singing it.

We all knew that Miriam took singing lessons but we had never heard her sing before. Today she brought along a CD that she had recorded with her singing teacher.

We knew real talent when we heard it. Awesome, Miriam. Thank you for sharing your voice with us."

The Tudors

King Henry VII

Why not get one step ahead of your friends and visit the Tudor Research Pages created here by Mr Harrington.... get up to speed ahead of the rest, find out your Tudor Tasks for the next few weeks and get your research going... good luck and we will all meet again on Monday 5th November ( the night of a Stuart related incident!)

Spell and Donate

At Free Rice you can not only test your spelling ability but donate Rice to those worse off than your self through the United Nations Food Programme.

About FreeRice

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

Go on test yourself and help others less well off than yourself as you do it ....

Cuddly Kiwi's new friend

To all of our friends at Appleby School, New Zealand ( and Miss King - welcome back ). Just to let you know that in the hustle and bustle of a new school year, we haven't forgotten about you - in fact Cuddly Kiwi got a new friend the other day - Miss Watson (Tiny Ted's original owner) bought a kiwi locally last week and the 2 kiwis have been sat on our window sill chatting ever since ( Cuddly K still has his voice.... just about) - no sign of any nesting yet though, we will keep you posted on any developments.

Compliments make you happy :)

As part of our 'PATHS' PSHE sessions in school this year we are giving each other compliments. This works by every pupils name being written on a piece of paper - one is selected towards the end of the day - we sit on our carpet at around 3.20pm, and come up with personal compliments for the chosen person ( of course we will all be chosen ..... eventually).The compliments are written very quickly by Mr H onto 'Post-It' Notes which are usually stuck onto the recipient at home time.... I guess some parents think it a bit odd, however we love it and will certainly miss the opportunity to praise each other when we are all complete ( unless Mr H can come up with another ingenious way to enable us to give each other compliments)

" The compliments make me feel really happy, it is nice to have friends"

Voki

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Voices of the World

We have been invited along with schools from around the world to record a simple message in our own language - the message is "Hello, we are from (school) in (country) you are listening to voices of the world. Here is our message recorded in Welsh and turned into a Voki...


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A Voki of the Winning Poem from Eisteddfod 2007

Down in the Darkness



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Year 6 Film Project 2007

This year we ran a transitional Literacy Project between all of the feeder schools and our Local Comprehensive School ( High School). Our oldest pupils (Year 6 - aged 10-11), worked on the project producing a variety of presentations.
The project had just finished when a small group of pupils who are involved in some of my digital media work approached me with a film project based on the book Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti.
They had a very clear idea of how they wanted the film to look, in the event we only had lunch time in which to squeeze in rehearsals, shooting, cutting, editing and post production. They were an excellent group to work with - in fact they only needed a quick 'how to' on iMovie and they were away.
We had as you expect in a film many hurdles to overcome - one for me was supervision, I had to be on hand just to know where they were and what they were doing ( at all times - school policy ). One of their problems was the variable weather that we had through May and June, so continuity became an issue.
Thier technical skills improved hugely during the project, from learning how to shoot scenes avoiding huge waste and re-shoots, to adding post production sound ( we have a group of pupils now who would make good Foley Artists - they taught me some things as well which was excellent :).
Their final piece of work was shown at their End of Year Presentation Awards and the Director, Producer and main driving force behind the film rightly became our first "Young FilmMaker of the Year".

Click To Play

* After filming and DVD making I made the fatal error of deleting the working files from the film !!!!! I then had no way of converting the file for upload - Step in the EduBloggersphere - thanks to David Warlick who posted my a link to a conversion download Handbrake which having used I would recommend you to download ( one for the Toolbox - you never know when you may need it.)
Apologies for the quality of the final project - the DVD is 350MB while the Blip.TV file is 53MB hence there is bound to be a loss of quality, I hope that this doesn't spoil your enjoyment of the film.

Tiny Ted Goes back to School

Tiny Ted will begin 3rd grade with Noah on Thursday at Paine Intermediate School in Trussville. His teacher, Mrs. Childs cannot wait for her new students to come. Pictures from the first day of school will be posted on Mrs. Childs' website for everyone to see and learn more about this special students. More to come soon!

Tiny Ted's Summer Vacation in Alabama

Tiny Ted is happy and well in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, with the Chamberlain Family. Because it is summer in America all of the schools are on holidays (vacation). April Chamberlain and her family have taken Tiny Ted on holiday with her family. Here is Noah and Luke with Tiny Ted.


Noah and Luke are taking good care of Tiny Ted and showing him the town and state. Tiny Ted even spent all night at the Birmingham Zoo with Noah for the Harry Potter Zoo Snooze.Here are Noah and Tiny Ted getting ready for the Harry Potter read!
WOW. I hope there is strong glass between Tiny Ted and the white tiger! The white tiger came extremely close to see Tiny Ted up close.

They made troll boggers, petted animals, took a night-time tour of the zoo, a midnight train ride, and fell asleep to Noah's mom reading from the new Harry Potter book. It was great fun!
Here is Tiny Ted making a troll bogger.

Luke was able to visit the zoo during the day with Noah and Tiny Ted.

The Butterfly Encounter was everyone's favorite part of the day.

The Chamberlain Family spent the last weekend before school starts in Mobile, Alabama visiting the USS Alabama. The USS Alabama is a huge navy ship. Look at all those guns!!!!! AK
We can recognise that flag! AK
Tiny Ted got to go in all the cool places. This is the control seat for an anti-aircraft gun. AKTiny Ted needed to get in close to look through the gun site.Tiny Ted sat on this mine. A mine is like an underwater bomb- like those ones in Finding Nemo when Nemo and Dorrie met the sharks. AK
They took a ferry ride.
And explored Fort Gaines and played on the beach.

These are some huge oil rigs they saw off the coast.Tiny Ted will begin 3rd grade with Noah on Thursday at Paine Intermediate School in Trussville. His teacher, Mrs. Childs cannot wait for her new students to come. Pictures from the first day of school will be posted on Mrs. Childs' website for everyone to see and learn more about this special students. More to come soon!
It was great to see Tiny Ted again. Thanks Mrs Chamberlain for sharing him with us.
We will try to keep up with Tiny Ted's time in his new class :) Mr H

Summer Time Voki

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Summer Time Voki

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Cuddly Kiwis's Adventures in Wales

I like blogging and podcasting because....

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This is a picher took in my BIRTHDAY PARTY last week on the 28TH JUNE 07.If you have noticed that kiwi as got big. It was done by my Dad on Adobe Photoshop .All you have to do is take a picture of the thing you want to add in and of course add it in.

When I took cuddly kiwi home I wach some t.v. It was The sweet live of Zack and Cody and Hannah Montana. Than when to my awards evening. We done some good things it was really good.

Charlotte

Well Done Charlotte

Charlotte brought in the trophies that she was presented with on Monday evening ( sadly even though Cuddly Kiwi was there Mr H forgot to put batteries in the Cuddly Kiwi Cam!!! so no live pictures!!!). The award was for Charlotte scoring Top Points in the Girl's Brigade and the achieved 100% attendance. The trophies will be shown to the whole school in an assembly on Thursday, but you get to see them here first.
What a talented group of pupils we have in Class 3H...... news on that we heard today which teacher's we will be with next year in Year 4..... Class 3H will move on to Miss Edwards our Deputy Head, we will be blogging next year.
Mr Harrington will also be in Year 4 teaching Mrs Prescott's class - they already have a class blog, and will be very keen to carry on with some of our exciting ICT Projects next year : )

by Mr H

Jordan goes Voki !!

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Cuddly Kiwi and my Football ( Soccer) Trophies

Cuddly Kiwi came home with me on Thursday because it was my BITHDAY party I am 8 now. I had the medal in a tournament.I had the trophy on Cefn Fforest presentation the week before last. The trophy is for playing for the under 8 team.