Looking around the school

Today we spent time looking around the school at things we liked and what we would like to improve. We liked the reception area now it has been changed and think the school is nice and bright and very friendly. We like the interior as there are lots of displays and photo’s on the walls.
We would like to improve the junior playground, the cloakroom in the junior side looks a bit old and some areas need painting.
The garden area at the back of the school needs a bit of work and we would be interested in starting a gardening club possibly run by parents where the produce can be sold and the money can go back to the school and the club. We don’t think it would take too much to improve the area and it could be ready in time for spring when we can start planting.

First day back

We were all happy to be back working with the PDA's again. Clare was thrilled about how much everyone remembered. We talked about what we are going to do this term we are keen to re visit the patti pavillion as we have learnt that it is not going to be a restaurant but now a children's activity centre. we revised some of the PDA functions. We took photo's, video and sound recordings (and played the game of course!)
When the children joined us we were really pleased how much they remembered too.
In our next session we hope to go out to the patti pavillion, so lets hope for good weather!

End of term

We are very pleased to have an extension on our PDA course and will be starting again in September. We put together a list of questions about the park and interviewed each other using video and sound.
We have also put together a list of things we would like to look at next term, including looking at the differnt buildings and their uses on St helen's road, interviwing shop keepers, Change of use of the area e.g churches now restaurants, flats etc.
we also spent a bit of time consolidating our knowledge so we practiced video recording, taking photo's, sound recording and microsoft word. We think we might need a recap in September after the long break!

Victoria park

We started the lesson off by talking about the history of the Patti Pavillion. It was named after a famous opera singer called Adelina Patti. The paviliion was originally in her back garden in her house and it was moved in 1920 to Victoria Park.

We walked down to the park. On the way we saw the highest recorded tide level in 1846 and we imagined what it must have been like.

The gardens were beautiful and well kept. The trees were lovely and unusual. We were upset at the state of the Patti. It used to be used for weddings and other important functions. There was a drunk on one side and a pile of clothes on the other side. It was boarded up and fenced off. We thought it was strange contrast to have such beautiful gardens with the building falling down. We took photo's but didn't find anyone to interview as the weather wasn't very good.
We think we will go back next week as there were things we din't get to see.
we would like to see the pavillion renovated and used again.

On the beach

Before we went to the beach we looked at photo's of the area that we were going to visit. The photo's were taken over a hundred years ago.

We decided to try and look at what had and hadn't changed. The bay view hotel hadn't changed and the wall along the front was the original wall. We think we stood where the old train station had been. Now the cars are where the track used to be. On the beach there is now a playground which the children enjoyed!

There weren't many people on the beach today but we think that is because there aren't any toilets and people travel to the gower. Paking can be a problem in the area as well, it is easy to park at some of the beaches on the Gower. We looked at the old bridge and it looked very sad and not attractive for people to come to the area. We would like a new bridge to make it easy and safe for children to cross the road. We need good clean toilet facilities and beach shops and cafe's for families. Somewhere to buy buckets and spades, ice creams and kites etc. We were impressed that the beach was nice and clean with not much litter and even saw someone cleaning the beach. The area has so much potential to be used to bring people to the beach, we feel that it wouldn't take much to change it into an area like Mumbles

Video of Playground

Here is a video of the school playground taken by the Family Learning group a few weeks ago.

Rained off!

Even though the rain prevented us from going to the beach as planned we learnt a lot on the PDA and viewed videos and pictures from last session.
We learnt how to copy pictures into word so we were able to write a little text.
We also wrote a letter to the Council about the dog mess in the area. We looked up on the internet what the laws were about dogs in the area and we may email Environmental Health next week.