Following World Space Week, I thought it would be a good idea for all the classes to share the activities they have been carrying out towards our own space project.

I tasked the Year 5s with producing a PowerPoint to introduce the assembly, suggesting that they explain the rationale behind WSW and then talked about what they had been doing to celebrate the largest space event on Earth. Helena took up the mantle and did a fantastic job. I had coached very briefly in the art of presenting and she had listened well: no reading off slides and just using the short bullet points she had made to remind her of what she wanted to say.

Year 5 showed a selection of the mini International Space Stations they had made last week with Mrs Malam and shared some facts that they had learned. Frankie read her excellent poem describing what it is like to take off in the Soyuz rocket and Izzy explained how she had made her 3d constellation of the Plough with Mrs Hesketh.

Year 6 followed with some inspired poetry and an informative biography of Tim Peake, whilst Oliver baffled everyone with his PowerPoint on solar energy. You will be able to read the poetry on the Out of This World website shortly. Year 4 demonstrated how maths is related to our space project by demonstrating, using a pie-chart, how an astronaut’s day on the ISS is divided up.

The Year 3 children were very entertaining. They had been investigating spacecraft and had built their own shock absorbing system to protect two marshmallow astronauts when they landed. The assembly was a chance for them to test their designs in front of a large audience. For the design to be successful, it had to prevent the astronauts from bouncing out of the cup and not tip over. After a countdown from Mr Randall all the landers were dropped from about two feet. Whilst a couple tipped over and the astronauts fell out, the majority allowed their astronauts to land gently. Well done Year 3.

Key Stage 1 were not to be outdone and again their work had a predominantly maths theme with Years 2 and 1 using tangrams to produce a picture of a rocket. Year 2 also produced some excellent shape poetry and acrostics. Finally, Reception showed us how they had used rockets to write numbers and count stars. It was an excellent set of work by all and demonstrated how space could be used successfully throughout the curriculum. Judging by the quality of the work, the children were also really engaging with what they were doing.

On Tuesday we met our Rolls-Royce mentor, Henry Simkin, for the first time. I spent 45 minutes giving him an overview of our project and showing how we have already spent our money in purchasing the 3d technology. He seemed to be suitably impressed by what we had achieved in a relatively short time and how organised we were. During a meeting with the team, he made some very useful suggestions, which has resulted in us setting up a new Twitter account @OofW_UK – thanks to Mrs Pheasey – to promote ourselves more widely and transferring our blog to WordPress. We now have the beginnings of a website devoted to our project: https://outofthisworldproject.com/

Later on in the week, having retweeted some 300 tweets, we received a #ff tweet from Libby Jackson, which I believe means that we are worth following. I wonder how many followers we will have by the end of next week . . .