One reason Reculver is so special is because children can get a real sense of the layers of history that go to create the landscape and how evidence can be found about our ancestors. The trip provides an ideal support to our history work on invaders and settlers, and next term’s study of coastal scenery.

The children were impressed with Charles Matthews. No longer do we utter “Yuck” - oh no. We are scientists - “Oooooooh”. I have a photo of them listening to Charles by the tower wall as our screensaver on the whiteboard. They took away so much excitement and enthusiasm from the visit. Reculver offers loads to see, so much to take in and touch.

In the end, the key thing was vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. Our children tend to shy away from adventurous descriptive writing because they struggle with spelling and lack a breadth of experience. Visits like this feed the children with so much to talk about and every day since we have recalled something.