Year 1 have been reading the book 'Look Up' for Black History Month. In the book, the little girl Rocket loves Mae Jemison, who was the first African American woman in space. In our History lessons we learnt about Mae Jemison. She is an amazing lady who not only became the first black female astronaut in space but also became a doctor and a scientist, and has dedicated her life since to helping others and to helping the Earth. We completed some timelines for her life, showing that she went into space in 1992, and putting her achievements into context with the other events that we have learnt about during our Flight topic.
One of the things that Mae Jemison took into space with her was a photograph of Bessie Coleman. We wondered why so we found out about Bessie Coleman. Bessie was the first black female pilot. She would not accept no as an answer when learning to fly so travelled to France to become a pilot. She became a stunt pilot during the 1920s and performed very dangerous tricks and stunts during air shows. These included wing walking, loops and barrels and moving from one aeroplane to another.
We made our own aeroplanes and tested to see whether the weight of a paperclip (which we pretended was a person) affected how the aeroplane flew. We found that it did, and what it would have been like to fly with extra weight on the aeroplane.
