As part of our Weaving A Way Through Braintree topic we have started to research John Ray and why he was famous. Our writing over the next two weeks will be a biography about John Ray. We started off today looking at a picture of John Ray and using our prior knowledge to see if we could make any sensible guesses about him. 

• We decided that he was probably already dead - we worked this out from his picture. We knew that it wasn't a photograph but a painted portrait which meant it was probably quite old.
• Some of knew that there was a school named after him in Braintree, and we decided that that meant he was quite famous for some reason as you don't get schools named after you unless you are famous! 
• We thought he was probably someone quite important and rich - people who didn't have much money or who weren't famous were unlikely to get their portraits painted. 

We then started researching John Ray using the ipads and working in collaborative pairs to find answers to questions such as:

Where was he born?

What was his early life like?

Where did he go to school?

What is he famous for?

What was his legacy?

Did he go anywhere during his life? 

We will use all this information we find to write our John Ray biographies. If you are out about in Braintree over the next couple of weekends why don't you see if you can find any of the buildings or roads that are named after John Ray? Take a photo and bring it into school to show the rest of the class.