New Year and a Scilly visit …

After an exciting and largely successful past year, we started our 2019 programme with a visit to the Scilly Isles, which is located 28 miles off Land’s End in Cornwall. With a population of around 2300, the Scilly Isles is comprised of 5 main islands and around 50 smaller islets. As the passenger ferry does not run from October to March, we had to fly in an 18-seater Twin Otter aircraft from Newquay in Cornwall to the main island of St Mary’s, where the Five Islands Academy is based. We spent two days at the academy, and were joined by Year 5 and 6 pupils from the smaller islands of Tresco, St Martin’s, St Agnes and Bryher, who all travelled over by water taxi to join us.

During our two day visit, we spent the first day working in the secondary department with Years 8-11, and the second working with Years 5 and 6 in the primary department. We managed to present a good selection of workshops, including cosmology, robotic telescopes, and a first run out of our’ Destination Mars’ module, which looks at ways of getting to Mars, and of how we might build a future colony on the red planet. Although the weather wasn’t ideal, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Scilly and received a great welcome from staff and pupils.