Session at GA Conference 2014, with extras in addition to the 10 minute circus session

1. Alan Parkinson
Teacher of Geography
King’s Ely School
Cambridgeshire
@GeoBlogs

2. Whole school Reading Festival
Every subject asked to focus on
a book or literacy focus during
one week in the Autumn term

3. 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

4. Touching the Void
Scholastic Edition

5. Siula Grande, Peru, S. America
Show on Google Earth….
Fly there and explore…

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

10. Touching the Void
Our Map
Key
Tent –
Walk

11. Chapter 1
• Setting the Scene

12. Emotion LineSadder/MorescaredLessscared/Happy

13. Emotion LineSadder/MorescaredLessscared/Happy

14. 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 ?

15. 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.

16. Observed lesson

18. 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…

19. Google Form to fill in at your leisure
• http://bit.ly/geogbooks
• QR CODE

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

21. 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

22. Cities
It 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

23. Tony Cassidy
‘A White Darkness’

24. GeoLibrary – hundreds of books
http://geolibrary2013.blogspot.co.uk

25. References
• http://www.kirkhallam.derbyshire.sch.uk/cont
ent/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