Our latest selfie video is coming out this week – I will share it via the blog. It’s so fantastic to see you all enjoying things at home – and we most definitely can’t wait to see you all very soon! A hook letter about the real-life inspirations behind the novel is available here: Rewilders Letter

It started with the huge excitement of my son Matt being on television, playing Limbo in BBC1 and Synchronicity Films brilliant adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies. Then Johan appears, he needed someone who could read the letter and map, and he finds Bertha. They can't understand each other but miming helps! With a new friend, Madge, Bertha sets up her own detective agency to try and solve the mysteries onboard, but they have no idea that disaster is looming for Titanic. During the last week of term I will be uploading a summer challenge, which will lay out some activities you could complete over the holidays. These will all be short tasks which will just help to keep your skills sharp in preparation for you starting in Year Six in September.Here are the uploads for this week. We are continuing with our exploration of St. Lucia, and this will be developed in our topic and English work this week.Our maths work on Fractions will also be continuing, and you will have another arithmetic challenge which you can mark with the video answers later in the week.I have developed another video explaining the tasks for the week ahead, and you will be able to find this on the Video Resource Centre. This is an exciting historical novel featuring characters based on real passengers on the Titanic. Lindsay Littleson brings the danger and terror of that night to life through the eyes of her young characters. With mystery, excitement, adventure and danger, I’m sure this is a book kids will love. The author rounds off the story beautifully resolving all the mysteries and explaining what happened next to the significant characters in the book. I particularly liked the photos of the passengers we read about, which really brought home that they were real people, not just characters in a book. First class children’s fiction. https://portobellobookblog.com/

Finally, thank you to everyone who sent recipes, and photos of themselves for our projects. The class video, and recipe book are on their way, and I will share them with you as soon as they are ready! We are finishing up our Titanic project this week, with a final piece of writing and a craft challenge! I’m hoping to put together the pictures of your work into a project book to show off everything we have studied about the ship, so please feel free to send pictures over to me. But no-one is expecting to be woken up in the night....for the unsinkable ship to be sinking...for so many lives to be lost. Our Maths this week has some calculation based activities, and then a longer investigation. The instructions for this are there to help you through each ‘stage’ of the activity – most importantly DON’T PANIC!

You can download this week's pack here...

The class divisions are writ large throughout the book as well, making it difficult for the protagonists at times. Bertha is hoping that in America girls can do whatever they want. She wants to be heard, she wants to do something dramatic like fly planes or be a polar explorer. On the ship there are few children and she befriends Madge Collyer. Whilst looking for something to alleviate the boredom, Bertha and Madge start the Collyer-Watt Detective Agency. Their first case is the strange Mr Hoffman and his two small boys. Why doesn't he want anyone to talk to them? Is their mother really dead? I will be online this week between 10am & 12pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and through the day on Thursday and Friday around meetings etc.