Your maths work this week is based on some challenges – read the instructions and remember to read each of the challenges TWICE before you start work! You can use diagrams, models or anything else that you need to help you make the challenge clear. You may need to try several different answers before you find the correct one – try to use Trial and Improvement to help you find the correct answers! 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.

I have uploaded some more videos to the Video Resource Centre, the end of The Titanic Detective Agency is now there, along with a Memories video to go along with our work on The Piano.We are continuing with our work on The Piano this week, and I can’t wait to see what you all come up with. You sent across some beautiful pieces of work last week, and I was really impressed with the way that you all managed to capture the emotions of the video. The Titanic Detective Agency is a really great piece of historical fiction. I loved the interweaving of fact and fiction. Bertha, Madge, Johan and some of the other characters in the book were actual passengers on the Titanic. At the end of the book there are photographs and small biographies of some of the passengers, letting you know more about the lives of those that survived. I also really loved Bertha’s realisation that she had completely underestimated her mother’s bravery and strength. The scene where Bertha recognises that bravery isn’t necessarily about daring deeds and intrepid adventures but that it can be something quite understated is really powerful and very moving. The exciting storyline, short chapters and young leads make The Titanic Detective Agency a hugely appealing book for a middle grade audience. Rating: https://getkidsintobooks.wordpress.com/

Titanic Virtual Tour (Shorter Version)

Thank you all for the amazing hard work that you have put in to the online learning over the last 3 months. You have made me so very proud of you, and while this isn’t the end of the year that I would have wanted for you all, I can honestly say I am incredibly proud to be your teacher! skilfully woven together to create a meaningful and moving account of events aboard RMS Titanic. Ideal to tie in with the most popular Social Studies topic in Scottish primary schools: The Unsinkable Ship. My publisher, Anne Glennie at Cranachan Books, asked me to write a story set on the Titanic, with a Scottish twist. I searched the passenger lists for a Scottish child and found 12-year-old Bertha Watt from Aberdeen. She was perfect, being both the right age and travelling in 2nd Class with her mother. Bertha’s father had travelled to America six months earlier to start a new job as an architect in Portland, Oregon and this was good news, both for him and for my plot, as only 8% of 2nd Class male passengers survived the sinking and it wouldn’t do to have my main character suffering such a close family bereavement at the end of the book. I was well aware that my audience are young children and while there is no avoiding the fact that the sinking was a terrible tragedy, I didn’t want The Titanic Detective Agency to be a harrowing read. 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/

By buying your books directly from Cranachan you are helping support a small Scottish business and our authors – thank you! Lindsay Littleson has four grown-up (ish) children and lives in the village of Uplawmoor near Glasgow. Her younger son is studying drama and Lindsay is unfailingly supportive, not wanting to repeat her faux pas of nearly thirty years ago when she tried to talk a young Ewan McGregor out of becoming an actor. She’s a full-time primary teacher and loves her job. Before becoming a teacher she spent eight years as possibly the worst PAYE auditor ever to be employed by the Inland Revenue. This week I will be online at the times below. I am still teaching Year Six at the moment too, so I will be replying, but it may be a little slower than normal! The period detail is meticulously researched, the characters utterly compelling and not a word is wasted.

My European adventure was followed by Unicorn Weekend at Stirling Castle, which was tremendous fun. I did four creative writing workshops and four readings in the Great Hall over the weekend, all themed around wild unicorns. This week I am collecting selfies to make another video – feel free to send some pictures across which show what you have been up to! I can’t wait to see you all!

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. The setting up of the detective agency and The Mystery of the Strange Boy and the Treasure Map are the only parts of the story which are pure fiction, and while the adventure creates an exciting and entertaining plot, I didn’t allow it to interfere with the real-life timeline of events. The other mystery which Bertha’s detective agency attempts to solve, The Case of the Mysterious Mr Hoffman, is completely factual, and proves that the truth is often stranger than fiction! You provide resources to support teachers using your books. Could you tell us a little more about the types of resources you provide and what their objectives are? This week our English tasks are based on a video which has also been added to our Video Resource Centre. It is a video I have used many times before in Year Five, and it always gets everyone’s imaginations going! I have many plans! My retirement from teaching in the summer will hopefully mean I have more time and energy to focus on writing. My seldom-used dining room is about to be transformed into a magnificent writer’s room, probably with help from Ikea. I’ll have time to start work on redrafting my YA novel, The Reader of Caledon, a dark fantasy with echoes of The Hunger Games, set in an alternative Glasgow, and on redrafting The Superpower Switch Off, a MG adventure about four young superheroes who lose their superpowers after a misuse of powers incident in school, and have to continue to battle a Supervillain without them. There are some shorter challenges included here, and some longer challenges too! I will upload the video for you to mark your arithmetic work towards the end of next week. As always, you can send over things that you have finished for us to look at and enjoy!

Teachers’ Resources

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. As a reviewer said “It is refreshing to see a book recently written that is based on the real-life people who experienced these events and emanates with well-researched historical facts and information not just from what is widely known of the Titanic such as the class divides but also the more minor details that are often overlooked or missed entirely including the staggering humiliation of the medical examinations for third-class passengers and the recognition of the difficulties in communication for those foreign passengers on board.” 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.