Teaching inspired by astronaut friendship
They also had a themed space day where pupils could reach for the stars and dress-up as anything connected with the solar system. This created a colourful congregation of astronauts, aliens and even someone dressed as Laika the Soviet space dog, one of the first animals to go into space and orbit the earth in 1957.
Lorraine met Tim and many other lifelong friends when they were all based at RAF Gutersloh in Germany in 1993. By this time it was run by the British Army and Tim was an officer while Lorraine was a teacher on site.
“I always remember him as an incredibly hardworking and dedicated person. I’m not surprised he’s made history becoming the first British astronaut to complete a spacewalk bearing the Union flag. I’m immensely proud of him, it’s a well-deserved and well-earned reward for all his hard work and on top of all that he’s had to learn to speak Russian!” Lorraine told the Herald.
Lorraine and the Wootton Wawen team of teachers signed up to a special space education project last summer which was open to primary schools. As a result, pupils at Wootton were allowed to let their creative imaginations run wild with anything to do with space during their week-long Tim Peake space project.
“The children have been totally engaged. They loved making water rockets, they’ve written letters to Tim and created an astronaut’s diary. They’ve even painted a picture of Tim in space,” said Lorraine.
“I still have contact with Tim and his family and we normally exchange Christmas cards but I wasn’t able to speak to him last December because he was a bit busy at the time,” Lorraine said.
On Friday 29th January children at Wilmcote Primary School will be taking part in a space day. Pupils will take part in a workshop about the International Space Station and dressing up in space themed outfits for the day. The school has recently received an award recognising the quality of its science teaching called the silver primary science quality mark.