Historical Gower Key Stage 2

Park Wood

Education Resource Notes for Teachers Contents

Page

Information for Teachers 1

How to use this pack 1

Risk Assessment 1

Equipment List 2

Curriculum Links 2

Cross - curricular work 3

Before you go activities 4

After your visit activities 4

Activities

1. Park Wood (Parc le Breos) 5

2. Giants Grave 6

3. Cathole Cave 7

4. Park Wood limekiln and quarries 8

Park Wood trail leaflet 9

Credits

This education pack was written and designed by Audio Trails Ltd (www.audiotrails.co.uk) on behalf of Gower Landscape Partnership.

The Gower Landscape Project has received funding through the Rural Development Plan for Wales 2007-2013, which is funded by the Welsh Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, and also from the Heritage Lottery Fund under its Landscape Partnership programme. Other funding partners include the City & County of , Natural Resources Wales and The National Trust.

Images were supplied and are copyright of the following individuals and organisations:

Audio Trails Ltd © Copyright GGAT HER Charitable Trust Helen Grey Information for teachers

Gower’s rich varied landscape has made it an attractive environment for human occupation since at least c 123,000 BC. The peninsula has been home to Stone Age hunter-gatherers, farmers and warriors, early Christian immigrants and Norman knights.

This part of the Gower app around Park Wood explores the theme ‘Historical Gower’. The trail has four stops: Giants Grave, Cathole Cave, Limekiln and quarries and Parc le Breos. At each stop oral histories, stories, photographs, facts and information are used to reveal the areas fascinating historical past. Also at each stop there is an ‘Activity Point’ where text is revealed to engage children in independent learning.

How to use this pack

This education pack can be used on its own or to complement the Gower app. It contains information and activity ideas at key points along the Park Wood trail around the theme of ‘Historical Gower’.

The pack supports curriculum planning, highlighting how the activity suggestions are relevant to a range of learning outcomes in Key Stage 2. There are also additional activities that can be carried out before and after a visit to enrich your topic planning.

You may wish to follow the entire trail and carry out the suggested activities at each point of interest. However, the activities can be done in any order and you can take any safe route from one activity to the other. You may want to dip into the pack, picking and choosing particular activities and places along the trail. You may wish to come back on another day to carry out further activities in diferent places along the trail. The activities and app are completely flexible, allowing you to adapt ideas and routes depending on your needs. A route map leaflet is appended to the back of this pack.

Risk Assessment Teachers and group leaders are responsible for carrying out their own risk assessments prior to the visit, in accordance with guidance issued by local authorities. We recommend teachers undertake a familiarisation visit in order to write the risk assessment and plan activities before bringing a group on the walk. It is essential a thorough risk assessment is carried out before the trip.

Please follow the Countryside Code and consider the impact your visit will have on the environment around you. For further information go to www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk.

1 Equipment List

iPads (running iOS7+ and preferably with GPS) with the Gower app downloaded

Magnifying glass

Writing and drawing materials i.e. clipboard, paper, sketchbook, charcoal, pastels etc

Camera / video recorder – one can be found on the iPad

Compass – one can be downloaded for free on to your iPad

Torch – one can be found on the iPad

Tape measures

Curriculum Links

History Programme of Study

Skills

Chronological awareness: 1 & 2 Historical knowledge and understanding: 1, 2 & 3 Interpretations of history: 1 Historical enquiry: 1, 3 & 4 Organisation and communication: 1 & 2

Range

Study • the daily life of people living in the past • investigations into the history around them and into the life of people at diferent times and places in the past

Ask and answer the questions • what do you know about life at this time; how do you know this and how can you find out more? • what was life like for rich and for poor people, for men, women and children, e.g. houses, food and farming, transport, education, clothes, celebrations, pastimes? • what impact did people of this time have on their environment?

2 Cross - curricular work

The trail around links naturally to the history curriculum but there are many ways in which it can support and enrich work in other curriculum areas.

In PSE children will be: • Taking an active interest in the world around them • Understanding aspects of the cultural heritage and diversity of Wales • Using ICT safely • Understanding the range of jobs carried out by people in their community • Understanding that our actions have consequences

In Maths children will be: In ICT children will be: • Solving mathematical • Using the Gower app on a mobile problems device independently and • Collecting, using, collaboratively presenting and • Using the app to explore Park Wood interpreting data across a variety of subjects

In English children will be: • Responding to visual, audio and written material • Speaking and listening in pairs and in groups as well as individually • Gathering information about Wood from a range of sources • Using the visit as a stimuli for various writing projects

In Geography children will be: • Identifying and investigating the geographical location of Parkmill Wood • Following directions and routes • Using a map of Parkmill Wood • Asking questions about Parkmill Wood • Carrying out practical investigations

In Cwricwlwm Cymreig children In Art and Design children will be: will be: • Inspired by images in diferent historical • Developing and applying their contexts knowledge and understanding of • Investigating how diferent cultures and the cultural, economic, periods can influence their own ideas environmental and historical • Experimenting with diferent techniques characteristics of Wales

3 Before you go activities After your visit activities

Research the Discuss how you think Park Wood should be people who built cared for so it is protected for future Giants Grave? generations? Write pages from a non-fiction book Use the photographs and sketches taken at with the following Giants Grave to create an enlarged site plan headings: How did for display. Write detailed descriptions to they live? What did accompany each image and to explain what they eat? What did they each picture shows. believe in? Recreate Giants Grave using various media Look at Parc le Breos on maps. Trace the park including clay. boundary. Make your own ‘rock art’. You could make Make a list of what you would expect to see natural paintbrushes out of collected leaves, as you explore the area. twigs or stone to paint simple animal outlines on your school playground or pavement or Research and create a timeline plotting when collected stones or crumpled paper. settlers lived in the area. Write a newspaper report about the day the Research the Le Breos family, the powerful carving was discovered in Cathole family who owned the land here. Draw their Cave. Interview the archaeologist who family tree. discovered it, Dr George Nash.

What does an archaeologist do? Research Write reports about the Stone Age hunter- their job. Write a job advertisement detailing gatherers under the following headings. What the personal qualities and skills required to do we know? What can we ‘guess’? What will carry out the job. You could even apply for the we never know? job by writing a formal letter of application in response to the job advertisement. Together Write a story about how one of the read the letters of application and shortlist hunter-gatherers died and what happened to candidates. Conduct an interview and choose them after. the new class archaeologist.

Use the Internet to search news reports and articles about the important archaeological discoveries found on Gower, or across Wales. Create a ‘Gower/Welsh Treasures’ timeline of finds.

Explore the route you will take to Park Wood using digital maps. Work out how far away it is and how long it will take you to get there. Re- search the modes of transport you could use to get there and how much each will cost.

4 1. Park Wood (Parc le Breos)

Read the app text and listen to the audio to Measure the distance. Compare your get more information about Parc le Breos. measurements with a friend and then try it again with another tree. How tall is the tallest tree? App text and activity Art & Design: Using nature and the outdoors History: Communicating ideas and opinions for inspiration. through talk. Choose the tree you think is the most interesting and sketch it. Take bark and leaf The powerful John Le Breos, of rubbings to help you identify the tree when Gower, established this medieval in you get back to class. the 13th century. The park had a secure fence all around it to keep the deer in and to keep Collect materials fallen from the tree and poachers out. Lords would mount their horse create a tree collage under the trees and hunt game here. Military training also took branches. Make a record of the wildlife you place with archery and horsemanship practice. discovered in the tree and any other Imagine you are a visiting Lord and have been interesting features. Do you have any invited to joint the hunt. Tell your partner what questions you would like to research about you saw as you galloped through the park. the tree back in class? History: Using timelines to sequence events and describing events within and across Further activities periods. After your visit, research the oldest trees on Maths: Measuring and solving maths Gower. Plot their ages on a timeline and add problems. key historical events that have taken place Use the trees around you to answer the during the trees lifetime. If the trees could following questions. speak what would they tell you about what they have witnessed. Write a story describing How big is your tree? one key event. Measure the distance around the trunk. Measure the height. Science: Investigating what is found in Measure the width and length of a leaf. contrasting locations. An easy way to measure the height of a tree is Use a torch and magnifying glass to explore to: what is lurking in the bark of a tree, in the Bend over and look at the tree between your roots and beneath the leaves. What do you legs. Walk away from the tree until you can think would live there? What are the see the top. The distance from you and the conditions like in each of the areas? Why are tree is the same as the height of the tree. the organisms diferent there?

5 2. Giants Grave

Read the app text and listen to the audio to Further activities get more information about Giants Grave. Art and design: Being inspired by historical sites and cultures. App text and activity In groups, with diferent media and from Use the site plan and locate: diferent angles draw Giants Grave in detail. Use the drawings to begin research back in 1 Coursed, dry-stone kerb revetment. 2 the classroom. Find out how Giants Grave was of rocks and cobbles. 3 Sill. 4 Passageway. 5 used in the past and draw an artist’s Transept chamber. 6 Forecourt. 7 Rubble from impression of it. collapsed wall. Art and Design: Experimenting with shapes created in nature.

Go on a nature treasure hunt and collect dead or dying materials, for example, fallen leaves, petals, twigs, bark and stones. Select objects displaying difering textures, shapes, patterns and colours. Use the objects to create nature floor art.

Or go on a nature scavenger hunt and collect something: smooth, sharp, prickly, warm, bright, important, beautiful, strange, stretchy, old, new, fragile.

Take photographs at each point to help with further research and displays back in the classroom.

6 3. Cathole Cave

Read the app text and listen to the audio to get more information about Cathole Cave.

App text and activity

English: Communicating clearly and confidently. Presenting ideas through drama and role-play.

Cathole cave was used as a shelter for hunters and later as a resting place for the dead. Flint tools, the oldest rock art in Britain, animal bones and a hyena tooth were all discovered here.

Imagine you are either an archaeologist who has just excavated some amazing finds here or the journalist who has been sent to interview them. Stay in role and act out your part and make a record of your questions and answers.

Further activities

History: Investigating the history around us and the lives of people living in the past.

If you were an archaeologist and could dig here in search of evidence of how the caves were used, what would you expect to find? Draw objects you would expect to unearth and label them with descriptions of what they are and how they were used.

Discuss: If we were a group of hunter-gatherers how would we make a shelter? What would we eat? How would we keep warm?

Art and Design: Using a sketchbook to experiment with process and media. Experimenting with diferent techniques.

Without moving your pencil of the page of your sketchbook draw the cave. Include as much of the rock detail as you can.

7 4. Park Wood limekiln and quarries

diferent senses. E.g. In the north I can hear… Read the app text to get more information When I look north it makes me feel… about the Parc le Breos limekiln and quarries. ICT: Communicating text and images using app software. App text and activity Select ‘Postcards from Gower’ from the app History: Organising and communicating ideas sliding menu. Follow the steps to create a through drama and role-play. virtual postcard to send to your friends or family. Take a photograph, write a caption, Locate: The limekiln drawing hole and add a message and share. charging hole. Working at the limekiln was an important but hard job. Harsh fumes, choking smoke and intense heat filled the air. Imagine you worked at the limekiln. Act out the roles you would carry out.

Further activities

English: Choosing and using appropriate vocabulary. Writing in response to a wide range of stimuli.

At each stop use your compass to establish north, south, east and west. Write one sentence to describe what you can see as you look in each direction. E.g. In the north I can see trees swaying in the wind. Or, if you look north you will see birds swooping in the trees. Or, I look north, I can see birds, trees, roof tops and clouds. When you get back to class you can use these sentences to write a descriptive poem of Park Wood. This can be developed further if diferent groups of children concentrate on

8 Parkwood Route directions Trail info

From the car park cross over the road and head through the Distance: 0.8km metal kissing gate next to the information panel to learn about Allow: 30 minutes Parkwood (1). Continue ahead, along the track, towards the large mound of stones on the left - Giants Grave (2). Standing opposite is Park Woods limekiln (3). Further along the track, Start: This accessible walk begins from the where the track bends left, look up to the right to see the Forestry Commission car park (free at the time mouth of the Cathole Cave (4) through the trees. of writing and limited to approximately 10 cars), which can be found along the lane from the The entrance to Cathole Cave is along a short but steep climb 4 up a very uneven and sometimes slippery track. Please note Gower Heritage Centre (Parkmill, A4118). that the cave is not accessible to the public and is gated of, Terrain: The route is level, with a wide stone track but you can peer into it from the cave’s entrance. and is accessible to push/wheelchair users. The places of interest are located between 5 and 25 metres of the track, across the grass. Parkwood Giant’s 3 Grave Public Transport Information: 2 0871 200 22 33 (Calls cost 10p per minute plus The powerful John Le This burial chamber any charges your network provider makes), Breos, Marcher Lord of (also known as Long www.traveline-cymru.info or download the free Gower, established a Cairn) was discovered Traveline Cymru app. medieval deer park in by workmen building a the 13th century, called road in 1869. 1 Parc Le Breos. Safety First! • Take care when following any road as there are no pavements. Park Woods Cathole • Wear appropriate clothing and footwear © Crown Copyright and database rights 2014 100023509 limekiln Cave • Take extra care in windy and/or wet conditions • Always supervise children and dogs Managed by Natural In 2010, Dr. George • Leave gates and property as you find them A short walk packed with features Resources Wales, this Nash discovered cave restored limekiln is built art hidden at the back of great historical interest. against limestone clifs of Cathole. The abstract Gower App that provided the raw artwork is said to be a Download our ‘Gower’ app to your iOS or Android material. reindeer with an arrow device and discover more about Gower Distance: 0.8km Grade: easy in it. thisisgower.co.uk

Image credits: © Helen Grey