How is our natural world diverse and dynamic in Wales and across the globe?

Autumn Term 2025

Four Purposes

European Languages Day

Dosbarth Arian researched and explored Bulgaria. We got to find out some of the most interesting facts about the country, culture and language.

FINLAND

We couldn't wait to find out about the country of Finland. We researched the country, listened to their National Anthem and even had a go at a simple conversation in Finnish.

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Shine!!

'Shine' came into Dosbarth Arian to discuss self-esteem. They engaged with a few different activities and really enjoyed the self-esteem games.

Show Racism the red card!

Dosbarth Arian and Dosbarth Gwyn wanted to enter the 'Show racism the red card' Cardiff City FC competition. In order to win and receive some fantastic prizes, we needed to create either a poem, poster, short story or artwork that promoted equality, diversity and friendship, whilst also saying no to racism. Here are some of the beautiful work that was produced. The children loved working collaboratively.

Bryngarw Country Park

What an excellent day we had exploring Bryngarw Country Park in Bridgend. We were greeted by park rangers as soon as we exited the bus and began our adventures! This included hunting for mini beasts and fungi, feeding the ducks and the birds, identifying a variety of trees and their leaves. It was a fantastic day and everyone loved exploring the park with the added treat of playing in the park at the end of the day.🌳🐌🦆

BBC Children in Need 2025

To celebrate 25 years of Children in Need we completed a variety of exercises in 25 seconds. We were all exhausted by the end of the workout!

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We also completed a money challenge. We worked in groups and discussed our reasoning behind the decisions we were making. We were given 5 notes and needed to show the different ways we could use the 5 notes and the total that they would add up to. Some of us came up with a system however, some of us choose random notes every time.

Lean on Me

As a class we entered the 'Lean on me' Christmas card competition. We created a Christmas card design and sent them off to the 'Lean on me foundation'. This charity is very close to our hearts as it supports young people in our community who are going through loss. A young, brave girl in our class did a Q&A about the charity, as her, and her family, are very closely linked to the cause. It was an emotional, yet amazing discussion. We are very proud to announce that we even had two winners in our class! Their card designs were copied onto cards and were being sold to the public, to raise money for the charity!

Mud Run! 🏃

A mud run was organised to raise money for outdoor equipment for our school. We had to first of all run around the school 5 times and then complete a muddy assault course. The total raised was nearly £6000 - WOW!

Remembrance Day

We created silhouette paintings in honour of Remembrance Day. The children took their time and created some beautiful pieces.

Christmas crafts

We used clay to create our Christmas craft baubles. We got to decide our own design and shape, which made it even more exciting! Does it get any better than homemade, Christmas baubles?

The Chaos of a Cwmlai Christmas Concert 🧑‍🎄🎄🎁

This year we did things a little different by letting both classes choose what they would like to perform for the Year 5's Christmas Concert. A lot of suggestions were given, a lot of resilience was shown and finally we came up with an audition style concert with...

* judges *comedy act *singers

*presenters *commercial break *rappers

* dancers *bouncers

Writing our own script was certainly a challenge and we displayed resilience in collaborating to finally produce "The Chaos of a Cwmlai Christmas Concert". The performance was such a success and one in which we all thoroughly enjoyed writing AND performing.

Llongyfarchiadau Blwydyyn 5!

Language, Literacy & Communication

Ieithoedd, Llythrennedd a Chyfathrebu

Class Book

Our class book links in nicely with our topic this term. 'Diary of a young naturalist' is a book based on the life of Dara, as a young, autistic boy living in Ireland. He finds a way to connect with the world through nature and discusses the challenges he faces.

Inference and deduction.

Just by looking at the front cover of our class book, we used inference and deduction to depict what we thought about the book. We looked at the illustrations, title and the name of the author. We came up with some fantastic ideas.

Inference/ Questioning

We came up with a variety of structured sentences that we formed from using inference when analysing the front cover.

What is Autism?

A very important aspect of our class story is the fact that the author and main character, has autism. We had a class discussion about what we believed autism was. We learnt a lot from one another, paticularly from the children in our class that are neurodiverse and/or children who had siblings that were neurodiverse.

The five senses

Our five senses help us understand the world around us. Using the image of Pen Y Fan, the children had to describe what they believe they would be able to see, hear, smell, taste and touch, if they were in the setting.

Descriptive writing

The children then produced a descriptive piece of writing based on the same image and used the 5 senses work to support this.

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Dosbarth Gwyn were given the choice as to where to sit or indeed lie down whilst completing their descriptive writing and also listened to calming, relaxing music.

European Languages Day

Dosbarth Arian were given 'Bulgaria' as a country to explore. We looked at a number of things including simple greetings in Bulgarian, the flag, landmarks, currency and so much more. We wanted to link this day to our topic as it offered great oppertunities for cross-curricular activities. We researched the rainfall in both Wales and Bulgaria in 2024 and created a graph. We then analysed the data by answering questions relating to the data.

Shwmae, Su'mae Day

First of all we used our prior learning of Helwpw Heddiw Questions to create a dialogue yn Gymraeg in pairs. We had time to practise our conversation and then recorded our conversation on SeeSaw.

Rosie Elliott - Shwmae Su'mae Day

Welsh Weather Report ☀️☔⛈️❄️🌈

We have been having a lot of fun playing games to help us write a weather report and started off with a simple game of how many types of Welsh weather we could remember from our daily "Cymraeg pob dydd" sessions and Harri and Isla were the winners with 17 types of weather patterns - archeddog!

Next, we wrote some sentences in the past, present and future tense...

This was followed by writing a weather report and recording it on Seesaw. Ryan won a Headteachers Award! Llongyfarchiadau Ryan! 🎖️

To write a diary entry

We used pupil influence to decide what to write about in our diary and it was unanimous that it would about our fabulous trip to Bryngarw House. We saw so much and tried to record the whole day in our diary, whilst also including Alan Peat sentences too.

Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters we found absolutely fascinating! We couldn't believe how may different types there are and we loved having a go a completing "quick writes".

Maths & Numeracy

Mathemateg a Rhifedd

Population - rounding

As part of pupil influence, many of us expressed an interest in the world's Population. We were given the challenge of rounding up to 1 million the countries of the World -with some of us working in groups and some working in pairs.

To reason in a group

In our reasoning groups we were given the task of decidind whether a larger Allosaurus dinosaour was capable of catching a smaller dinosaur. At first we were all so confused what to do and throught we would not solve the problem. However, we showed great resillience and perserverance to arrive at a sensible and logical solution!

Problem Solving - What is the real cost?

We worked in groups to consider the cost of a games console in 1986 compared to now. We were given questions to consider and the average earnings for one hour's work in 1986 compared to now.

We also researched house prices, weekly shop, tv and a family car. We were given the choice as to how we would record our findings. Most of us found it difficult at first but Arlo created his own table with his group. He went on to show the rest of the class by being the "teacher" and was even able to explain to our headteacher what his group had done. Well done Arlo!

Planning a Christmas Party

Humanities

Y Dyniaethau

Our natural world is diverse and dynamic, influenced by processes and human actions.

Diverse and Dynamic?

In groups, we discussed what we thought the words diverse and dynamic mean. We came up with some fantastic ideas! We used envoying around the different tables in the class to pinch one idea, from each table, and gave an idea to each table, before feeding back as a class.

Pupil influence - Questions about our topic

Rosie Elliott - Natural World Topic Questions

Using an Atlas

We used an Atlas to plot the Continents and Oceans of the world, followed by labelling the places, spaces and landforms in Wales. The majority of us loved using an Atlas.

Landscapes of Wales

We were given a variety of photos but we weren't told where they were taken and many of us could not believe how beautiful our country actually is with actual gasps from some! Following this task we were given the choice of researching and plotting on a map some of our own choices of landscapes in Wales.

ECOSYSTEMS

Ecosystems was an area of our natural world that we were very much interested in finding out more. We decided we wanted to work in groups or pairs and present our work on Google Slides.

Arlo Jackson Curnell - Ecosystems

Ecosystems

FACT FILE

We researched a variety of endangered animals in the United Kingdom and were shocked to find there were so many with the majority of us thinking it was just animals such as tigers in other countries that were endangered.

Hedgehog fact file by Isla B

Plastic Pollution

Science & Technology

Gwyddoniaeth a Thechnoleg

The Water Cycle

We studied the water cycle and loved learning about precipitation, condensation, evaporation and accumulation.

Monthly rainfall comparison

Rainfall in Wales was compared to rainfall in Finland and we created a table and a graph on Google Slides.

Harri Bugler - Monthly rainfall comparison Wales v Finland

Analysing the data

Harri Bugler - Wales v Finland analysing data

Health & Wellbeing

Iechyd a Lles

Expressive Arts

Y Celfyddydau Mynegiannol

Art - Landscapes of Wales

We were given the option as to what landscape of Wales we would like to capture and were given a choice of paints or pastels or pencils.

Some of us captured our favourite place in Wales, whilst others decided to choose somewhere we have never visited but would certainly like to.

Vincent Van Gogh

We studied Vincent Van Gogh and we were given a variety of Van Gogh pictures to study. As a class we voted to recreate "Starry Night" 1889. It depicts the view from his asylum window in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, but with an imagined village and expressive, swirling brushstrokes that create a powerful contrast with the tranquil village below. The painting is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. What do you think of our interpretations of Van Gogh's masterpiece?

Aberfan Disaster

To commemorate the Aberfan Disaster, we read a poem called "Just a little boy from Aberfan" followed by a drawing to portray our emotions. This was followed by self assessing our work.

Leaf Art

We wanted the opportunity to be as creative as we wanted with leaves and anything else we could find that was natural in our nature area and these are some examples of our creativity...