Competitions at St Mary's

Throughout the year, we hold competitions and contests to celebrate the strengths and talents of all of our children. 

Eisteddfodau

The Eisteddfod is a traditional Welsh festival for music, poetry and art. Every year, all children in our school enter the Eisteddfod in different categories. Independent judges give prizes for ysgrifennu (handwriting), celf (art), llefaru (poetry recital) and canu (singing). Children learn and perform in Welsh and we celebrate our Welsh culture. Pictures from previous events are below.

Houses Day

Houses Day is the culmination of our houses competition each year. Every day, children earn house points in their classrooms for showing good attitudes to learning, demonstrating gospel values or for producing outstanding work. We add all of these house points up and these are combined with points earned on Sports Day. These points are the starting points for Houses Day. Houses Day is a day full of competition in which all activities earn points for the house. There are general knowledge quizzes, spelling quizzes and other fun competitions for the whole school. In class, there is a variety of activities to earn points for each house. The afternoon is devoted to the house relay race - a massive relay race around school involving all children. Events include apple bobbing, three-legged running, no-hands donut eating, catching a hat on your head, locating countries on a world map, setting up chess boards, laying tables, going over the climbing frame, fancy-dress running, speedbouncing, balancing a pea on a grape, hockey dribbling, leading up to the final events of long-distance running and the water balloon pass. We have great fun! Pictures are below.

Rock Wrangles

Knowledge of times tables is a fundamental building block for success in maths. At St Mary's, we believe it is vital that children know times tables in order to make all other areas of maths easier. Having times tables facts at their fingertips allows children to focus their cognitive efforts on solving problems rather than working out the times tables themselves. We use Times Tables Rockstars (TTRS) to add a competitive element to the learning of times tables. The question-based games automatically adapt to each child’s unique learning needs, helping them to recall their times tables in record speed. TTRS boosts maths confidence and increases fluency and recall in multiplication and division, delivering better maths outcomes. Each year we hold Rock Wrangles, which are knock-out times tables competitions in front of a live and supportive audience. We crown the overall Rock Wrangle champion each year and that person takes home the coveted Rock Wrangle trophy. We encourage the children to dress in "rock star" clothing to get in to the spirit of the rock star theme. See pictures from some of the events below.

 

Super Hives

All children in Reception and older have a Spelling Shed account. This allows them to play games to practise spellings set by their teachers in a fun way. Using Spelling Shed ensures each pupil's learning is focused on the words and spelling patterns they need to master in order to progress. This builds on the daily phonics lessons that children receive in school and supports the learning of new vocabulary in school. Each year, we hold three competitions (one for children in Years R,1 and 2; one for children in Years 3 and 4 and one for children in Years 5 and 6). Following a qualification competition, the finalists pit their wits against each other in front of a live audience to spell words as quickly as possible. Pictures from events are below.

 

 

Eisteddfod slideshows

Congratulations to our 2024 Eisteddfod winners! The quality of the entries was very high and the Criw Cymraeg had an extremely difficult job choosing prizewinners. Llongyfarchiadau!

Eisteddfod 2024

Times Tables Rockstars Rock Wrangles slideshows

Rock Wrangle IV - 2024

 Rock Wrangle IV saw the widest age-range of competitors in the history of the St Mary's Rock Wrangles. We had representatives from Years 6,5,4,3 and 2 qualifying for the live quarter finals and the final pitted Year 6 versus Year 2! In the end, it was Blue Cooper who finished the day victorious, beating the Beefheart brothers and Lemmy Hendrix with a score of 102. It was amazing to see the support that the children gave to each other and it was fantastic to know the pride the children take in knowing their times tables. Blue Cooper was presented with the Rock Wrangle shield by Daniel Rickly, who returned from St Richard Gwyn to celebrate. Llongyfarchiadau to all competitors!

Rock Wrangle IV

Rock Wrangle III - 2023

Rock Wrangle III was a great success! The speed with which the competitors were able to answer multiplication questions up to 12 x 12 continues to get faster each year. We had 11 Rock Heroes competing, compared to 3 in our first competition two years ago. This year, the average rock speed of the 16 competitors was 0.99, compared to 1.34 in Rock Wrangle I. This means that, on average, children are answering 60 multiplication questions in a minute (compared to 45 a couple of years ago)! The competition on the day was fierce and Daniel Rickly, the winner, scored 130 in one of the quarter-finals! He was the overall winner on the day and went home with a Rock Wrangle trophy and he’ll keep the shield for the year. Daniel Rickly was presented with his award by last year's winner, River Domino, who came back from St Richard Gwyn for the event. Llongyfarchiadau to all competitors. Da iawn!

Rock Wrangle III

Rock Wrangle II - 2022

Our second ever Rock Wrangle was a great success with some incredibly fast mental maths and phenomenal finger speed demonstrated by all of the competitors. Congratulations to River Domino, who will get the winner’s shield to keep for a year. River answered 110 questions correctly in one minute in the quarter final, 111 questions correctly in one minute in the semi-finals and 108 questions correctly in one minute in the final! That’s almost equivalent to answering 2 questions per second. An awe-inspiring performance! It was great to see so many of the children getting into the spirit of things by coming dressed up as rock stars and supporting the Rock Wranglers.

Rock Wrangle I - 2021

Our first ever Times Tables Rock Wrangle was a tremendous success. It was fantastic to see the children in their rock star clothing getting into the spirit of things. The top sixteen on the school leaderboard in November, when the 2021 Rock Wrangle was first scheduled, were entered into a knockout competition live in the hall in front of a very excitable audience. All of the competitors did themselves proud and the speed at which they could answer times tables questions was really impressive. We crowned our first winner after a very close final in which two pupils answered over 100 questions in 60 seconds. Well done to all involved. We can’t wait for the 2022 competition!

Houses Day slideshows

Houses Day 2024

Houses Day 2024 took place on the hottest day of the year up to that date! It was a great competition won by Tegid.

Houses Day 2024

Houses Day 2023

Houses Day 2023 had to take place indoors due to the heavy rain we had on the day. This meant that the big houses relay race could not take place. Nevertheless, there was fierce competition inside and the eventual winners were Dinas.

Houses Day 2023

Spelling Shed Super Hives slideshows

Super Hive II - 2024

Our second Super Hive Spelling Bee was a great success. The speed of the answers in each competition was impressive and all three competition finals were very close, particularly the Year 3/4 competition where three of the finalists got every spelling correct! The lead changed hands a number of times and it camedowntowhocouldtype fastest in the end. Congratulations to all of the competitors who took part. The point of doing the Super Hives is to celebrate accurate spelling and also to give spelling a high profile in school. We encourage children to improve their spelling using apps that make it easy to self-assess their progress. On one hand, as parents, we are very wary of encouraging children to have more screen time; weknowthat too much screen time is a bad thing. However, when used wisely to impact learning positively, we think it is worthwhile.

Super Hive II

 Super Hive I - 2023

We had a great time at our first ever Spelling Shed Super Hive. The children looked resplendent in their yellow and black and everyone in the hall supported the competitors enthusiastically. The competitions were very close, especially the finals in which almost every word was spelled correctly by everyone competing.

Super Hive 1