Words from the experts

Categories: s1 and s2

I've been thinking about using excerpts from Ernest Shackleton's writings and Hillary's 'View from the Summit' with s2 tomorrow before we attempt to look at the qualities of a polar explorer. The idea is appealing because there is plenty of other information about the landscape and climate in the texts. As we have already thought about the climate through looking at survival essentials, it's also a logical extension of the work. Hillary's journey in particular is very revealing about the physical geography of the Antarctic from a mountaineers perspective (albeit one crossing the continent in a tractor!) and I also think that this type of activity could really extend some students too. I think we'll start with this clip which introduces Shackleton and his crew to the class. This gives a nice introduction to the type of men who accompanied the explorer on his journey, as well as giving good insight into the character of the man himself. I think with the excerpts we could look at a number of things. Some students could look at vocabulary about the landscape or climate which they would like defined, we could look at descriptive words for the climate (and maybe wordle this?), we could do back to back with one student reading the text and the other sketching the scene, labelling as they go. There might be the opportunity for students to look at the passage and do a 'weather or climate?' type activity (classtools quiz for the class once they have established the answers?), and at the same time, we could repackage the wordle idea for our explorers personal qualities, as while doing the activities, students would also be noting down these to share with the class.