Eisteddfod

Pupils, parents and staff enjoyed a busy and eventful week with a range of celebrations during Welsh Week. An excellent St. David's Day eisteddfod was held in school with a variety of art, cookery, instrumental, recitation and singing competitions. Many of the children took part in the art competitions which included creating pictures and collages of famous Welsh people and landmarks and decorating the National anthem of Wales. Local artists and supporters of the school, Colin and Tina Lewis, had the very difficult task of judging all of the art entries particularly since the standard was so high this year. Colin and Tina gave special awards to pupils Osca Llewellyn, Magda Singh, Jasmine Strzelecki and Samuel Underwood whose work particularly impressed them.

Staff members, Mr. Henton and Mrs. Winship were the adjudicators for the instrumental, recitation and singing competitions. The singing and musical performances entertained the whole school, with many children competing from all year groups, whilst the recitations provided excellent examples of the very good standard of Welsh bilingual skills currently evident in the school.

Mrs. Emanuel, Welsh coordinator, said: "I have been really pleased with the standard of entries this year. The children are using their Welsh with more confidence and enjoyment and greatly increasing their bilingual skills."

The eisteddfod culminated with the traditional ceremony to announce the 'Crown' and the 'Chair' of the eisteddfod. This year's winner of the 'Chair' was Owen Filipovic (Year 5) with an excellent poem entitled 'What Wales means to me.' Cerys Jones (Year 2) wrote a wonderful called 'The Welsh dragon,' successfully winning the 'Crown.' The poetry was judged by former Tavernspite teacher, Miss Wynne Jones, to whom we are all very grateful.

Mr. Phelps, headteacher, said: "It was a very enjoyable and exciting eisteddfod this year to celebrate St. David's Day. The efforts and talents of the children were outstanding and they clearly enjoyed performing. My congratulations to the winning house 'Ty Goch' whose captains Morgan Lewis and Evie Morris-Julien collected the winning house shield."

World Book Day

On Thursday, the whole school took part in World Book Day celebrations with everyone dressing up as a character from their favourite story. Costumes and entries were judged, with one member from each class having the winning prize of a £5 book token. Mrs. Arthur, deputy headteacher, coordinated a number of activities throughout the day including a special assembly based on favourite books, a book swap whereby all children were invited to 'swap' and change their old for new and different books and paired and shared reading workshops, with the older children reading to the younger children throughout the school.

Mrs. Arthur said: "World Book Day celebrates the joy and value of books and reading. The day's events created a great opportunity to build the children's enthusiasm for books well beyond World Book Day itself - reading together whilst enjoying and sharing books - key objectives that we have for all of our children."