Touching the Void Literacy Work

Alan Parkinson

Teacher of GeographyKing’s Ely SchoolCambridgeshire

@GeoBlogs

Whole school Reading FestivalEvery subject asked to focus on a book or literacy focus during one week in the Autumn term

Other work in the Geography Dept

• Display in the department of relevant books• Teachers pictured with their favourite books• Following migrant stories from an article in

‘Geographical’ magazine• Descriptions of homes from Lynsey Hanley’s

‘Estates’ book

Touching the VoidScholastic Edition

Siula Grande, Peru, S. America

Show on Google Earth…. Fly there and explore…

Starting point…How would you feel setting out to climb this mountain ?

George took his grankle out of the docujeb where he’d left it the night before. He unjeckled the dawb and

carefully started to climb the hickyhick.

George took his grankle out of the docujeb where

he’d left it the night before. He unjeckled the

dawb and carefully started to climb the hickyhick.Vocabulary

7 minutes

Touching the VoidOur Map

KeyTent –Walk

Chapter 1• Setting the Scene

Emotion LineSa

dder

/Mor

e sc

ared

Less

sca

red/

Hap

py

Emotion LineSa

dder

/Mor

e sc

ared

Less

sca

red/

Hap

py

Activities

• Suggesting chapters for the titles• What is ‘the Void’ that is referred to in the title

of the book ?• What did Joe and Simon do next ?

Prep

Find out more about the book / film• Come up with 2 ‘spoilers’: things that are

coming up that I didn’t want you to know before we read them

• If you don’t want to spoil the story, then I’d like you to create a better map to show where Siula Grande is.

Observed lesson

Adaptations of the task for other contexts…

Stories of:• Migrants – crossing deserts / arriving

in cities• Explorers – biomes / environments• Formation of natural landscapes (Old

Harry as a person… )• Food stories – Banana diaries and

Following the Things…

Google Form to fill in at your leisure

• http://bit.ly/geogbooks

• QR CODE

Other recommended reads

• The Ice Man – see GeographyPods unit• http://www.geographypods.com/the-ice-man.html

Other recommended reads• The Ice Man – see GeographyPods unit• Games of Thrones – Castle Pyke – coastal

scenery• Africa Diary – Kibera with its flying toilets• The Snail and the Whale – what is Geography ?• Clear Waters Rising – mountain landscapes• What is the What – refugee camps• Shantaram – description of Dharavi• Inferno – Dan Brown – Malthus and resource

depletion• One more river – Lynn Reid Banks - conflict

CitiesIt wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole lives nevertheless spent their life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed……and gave back the dung from its pens and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also its clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and something which if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That’s what civilization meant. It meant the city.

‘Night Watch’ – Terry Pratchett

Tony Cassidy‘A White Darkness’

GeoLibrary – hundreds of books

http://geolibrary2013.blogspot.co.uk

References

• http://www.kirkhallam.derbyshire.sch.uk/content/files/OfstedReports/Literacy/files/assets/downloads/publication.pdf - with thanks to Tony Cassidy

• http://www.geographypods.com/the-ice-man.html - with thanks to Matt Podbury

• Thanks to Claire, Jane and Tom from King’s Ely Geography Department