30 Jun 2015 | Cricket
Robert Croft has been the focus of another entry in the Ashes Partner Schools Project, run by the Community Department of Glamorgan County Cricket Club with primary and secondary schools throughout Wales in the lead-up to the opening Investec Ashes Test to be staged at the Welsh county's headquarters in Cardiff starting on Wednesday, July 8th.
The career of the Glamorgan legend and his involvement in Ashes cricket has been the centrepiece of the activities of pupils from Ysgol Pencae in Llandaff. As outlined by Ian Williams, the teacher at the Cardiff school, a group of pupils from Years 5 and 6 began by undertaking a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of the SWALEC Stadium, where they learnt about the history of the Ashes and undertook research into Robert's outstanding career.
The pupils from Ysgol Pencae then studied different literacy genres associated with sport, before returning to the headquarters of Glamorgan Cricket where they interviewed Robert himself in the CC4 Museum of Welsh Cricket - the place where all of the videos from the Project will be available for visitors to watch in the future.
Crofty's interview really inspired our pupils, added Mr. Williams, and it gave them a real boost as they started to create a video documentary to celebrate his successes. We used the green screen at school to help the pupils to narrate the video in both English and Welsh. The pupils also decided to use images of Wales and the national anthem at the beginning of the video, which was created on iMovie and had crowd cheers as well as the iconic BBC Cricket theme tune running throughout.
The pupils from Ysgol Pencae, along with others from throughout Wales who have taken part in the Project will also be in attendance during the Test Match itself, forming the daily guards of honour, besides playing on the outfield during the luncheon interval.
All in all, the Project has been a great opportunity for the pupils, and Richard Thomas, the Headmaster of Ysgol Pencae is delighted by what has happened. The project has perfectly fitted several of our curriculum areas for the pupils in Years 5 and 6.
One of our key targets during the course of the past few years has been the improvement of literacy skills of boys, and this Project has presented a fantastic and unique opportunity for us to meet these targets, besides making a decisive improvement to the academic progress of all of our pupils. We have been thrilled to participate with Glamorgan Cricket in this Project, and the chance for our pupils to be in attendance at the Test Match itself is the icing on the cake!