£5.00 (inc. VAT)
KS: Upper KS2
Year Group: Year 5
Literary Theme: Power vs. Principles
Author(s): Gillian Cross
Speeches (proclamation, persuasive, soliloquy), diary entry, dialogue, missing scene, postcard, advertisement
Epic adventure story
20 sessions, 4 weeks
This four-week sequence takes children on an adventure with the greatest of heroes - Odysseus - as he battles great monsters, gods and mortals on his voyage home to Ithaca. Through the sequence children discover multiple reasons to make a speech: to make a proclamation, for persuasive purposes, and for personal reflection. They will write in role as Odysseus himself, as well as record dialogue and their own take on a key scene in the style of the author. Following research into the Greek Gods and a variety of ancient Greek monsters, the children will complete the sequence by writing their own epic adventure story based on their own invented character who encounters multiple trials on their journey home.
Homer’s great story is retold with simplicity and style by award-winning children’s writer Gillian Cross, and vividly brought to life in Neil Packer’s stunning illustrations. It charts the ten year epic voyage of Odysseus as he returns from the Trojan War to the island of Ithaca. On his journey he encounters all manner of perils, from the man-eating Cyclops and the evil sorceress Circe, to the deadly lure of the Sirens and the wrath of the sea-god Poseidon. Neil Packer’s striking imagination, and his extraordinary use of colour and dramatic silhouettes, capture the terrors of Odysseus’s travels as well as the dangers faced by his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus at home. The illustrations are a perfect complement to Gillian Cross’s beguiling narrative, which transports the reader effortlessly into Homer’s world.
Links:
Ancient Greece, travel, voyages, battle, monsters, gods
A Spelling Seed is available for The Odyssey.
This is a three-session spelling seed for the book The Odyssey by Gillian Cross. Below is the coverage from Appendix 1 of the National Curriculum 2014.
Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement the Literary Curriculum by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning.
Spelling Seeds work alongside the texts within the Literary Curriculum and, as such, will also reflect the suggested number of weeks spent on a text, as well.
ancient, competition, lightning, mischievous, relevant, physical
Use of the hyphen
Words ending in –ant, - ance/–ancy
View The Odyssey Spelling Seed
