St David’s Day

by James

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Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus! (Happy St David’s Day!)

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonvscanon/

This Sunday, March 1st, is St David’s Day in Wales. St David, or Dewi Sant as he is called in Welsh, is the patron saint of Wales. St David lived in the sixth century and travelled widely on pilgrimages, including to Jerusalem where he was made an archbishop. He eventually settled at Glyn Rhosyn (St David’s) and established a  religious community which became influential throughout Wales and the Christian world. He is alleged to have performed several miracles, one of the most famous being when he caused the ground to rise up whilst preaching so that he could be heard by a greater number of people!

The Welsh rugby team could mark the national festival by winning their Six Nations match  against France on Friday evening, and equalling the record currently held by only France and England of nine Six Nations matches without defeat. Of course, in the interests of maintaining sporting impartiality on this blog, we must also wish England good luck for their match against Ireland on Saturday

In the meantime, here is a video and a few resource suggestions that you might find useful if you are planning to do anything on St David’s Day in the classroom. The video is from the KS3 Geography Unit 1: Making connections section of the gallery, and is designed to assist students with describing the geographical context of an area. It is easy to see why Wales is renowned for its beauty, with magical castles and fantastic coastal and mountain landscapes.

Elsewhere on the web, and primarily for Key Stage 1&2 pupils, Activity Village has a range of printable resources, including colouring pages, craft ideas, and puzzles. If you want to give your students a challenge they could also attempt to do the electronic St David’s Day-related jigsaw puzzles!

For an overview of the life of St David and the background to the national day I would recommend the National Museum of Wales page, or that of Woodlands Junior School for the children to look at themselves directly.

Finally, try Newsround’s St David’s Day Quiz – after doing a bit of research for this post I was able to get 5 out of 6 correct, but slipped up on whether St David was a vegetarian or not?!

Title of clip	The Beauty of Wales
Curriculum location	Geography (secondary)  >  QCA  >  Key stage 3  >  Unit 1: Making connections  >  Section 2: How is our place connected to other places?  >  Learning Objective: to describe the geographical context of the local area
Description	A series of images to give a broad perspective of the landscapes and scenery of Wales: clouds billow over silhouetted peaks of Snowdon; clouds shadows traverse rocky outcrops on Mount Snowdon; Green Bridge of Wales (natural archway formed by coastal erosion), Pembroke Peninsula; Skokholm Lighthouse perched high over coastal cliffs; ruins of Cardiff Castle surrounded by moat, the Welsh flag flies from the tower; flock of sheep grazing in meadow; government and other buildings on Cardiff’s waterfront; Severn Bridge spanning between England and Wales.
Duration	1 minute 56 seconds

 

Please note that this is an example clip provided through our YouTube channel and does not reflect the actual quality of clips in the gallery