In Key Stage 3 Tim’s class have been studying the Earth and Beyond as part of the their theme work for the term and in History they’ve been finding out about the Swinging Sixties. They decided to combine the two and find out about the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the USA.
The class discovered that on 12th April 1961, the USSR would surprise the world by launching the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit around the Earth in a craft they called Vostok 1. Gagarin was dubbed the first ‘cosmonaut’, roughly translated from Russian and Greek as “sailor of the universe”and quickly became a national hero of the Soviet Union and a worldwide celebrity. To this day 12th April is celebrated as an official commemorative day in Russia and in 2011 it was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by the United Nations.
Working together the class have made a video re-enactment of that historic day when a person first went into space – you can watch it below. It’s a brilliant piece of class work and you should all be very proud! Well done!
