Space Day

Space Day has been just great! I loved it – especially the planetarium! It was so cool - travelling beyond our Solar System and back all before home time. You can’t get much better than that.

By Patrick B, Year 5 pupil  

Learning at Glebe Primary is simply ‘Out of this World’!

Last week, Year 5 were immersed in an exciting Space Day as part of their Summer Term topic: Lost in Space. The day began with the children formulating questions to research: Who was the first person to go into Space? Which animals have been sent into Space? What is a black hole and how are they formed? Is there life on Mars and how did the ‘Milky Way’ get its name? So many brilliant questions were generated to ignite the children’s learning at the start of the day – some of which we found answers to by the end of the day – though not all!

Apart from books and the internet, the children had the expertise of astrophysicist, Jarvis Brand, from the Science Observatory at Herstmonceux to call upon too. He knew an awful lot about space and had an answer for virtually every question - but possibly the best question of the whole day was one he didn’t know the answer to – and that was ‘How big is the Universe?’

“The answer,” Jarvis told the children, “is that we don’t know… yet” Apparently, we only know about observable space – and that itself is ‘mind-boggling big!’ In fact, Jarvis thinks that all the best questions are ones that we don’t know the answers to yet – because those are the questions that keep us enquiring and wanting to know more.

Each of the classes in Year 5 had the opportunity to learn about outer space through a visit to the Mobile Planetarium. As the children (space cadets) entered the huge material dome, they were taken on an almost magical adventure through the night sky and beyond by Jarvis and his team. The stars and planets whizzed by as the children gasped in awe and wonder.

Mrs Davies, one of the lead astronauts, said, ‘Wow! What a thought-provoking day! The children have been so engaged in their learning - it has been wonderful to watch. Just listening to all the answers to their brilliant questions has been so informative. It has certainly been a fantastic launch to our new topic!’