Kate writes: 'I asked my Y5/6 children to make a "model" of a village by placing pieces of screwed up newspaper underneath a large piece of cloth, creating hills and valleys. They then draw features of the village (e.g. buildings, trees animals) on small pieces of paper and place these on the village.

I then told the children that they were going to meet one of the villagers and took on the role myself. The villager they met was very scared because she had seen great balls of fire(!!) in the sky, the "great light" (Sun!) had gone out in the day time, and their ships kept falling off the edge of the world!!! The children had great fun trying to explain these events to the character in very simple language which she could understand.

This project was then continued with a series of letters from the villager about the mysterious "Earth", "Sun" and "Moon", to which the children had to reply by researching the topic and writing clear explanations to send back. '