Grandad's Island

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Reading Grandad’s Island by Benji Davies allowed my inquiring Year 2 class to explore a fascinating new world and prompted me to remember two very special men…

Katie Morag - Media Centre - BBC Katie Morag - Media Centre - BBC

Family: Katie Morag lives with her parents Isobel and Peter, her little brother Liam and her baby sister Flora Ann. Mr McColl is the shopkeeper in the village shop and Mrs McColl is the postmistress.

Filming is brilliant! I really like my own bedroom in the studio. It's not real though. I get to run up the stairs and flash my torch to Grannie Island. Her house is a different set in the studio. They were impressed too with Grandad’s painting and expressed their own longing to visit the island and play in the tumbling, cascading waterfalls with Syd. Which means you don’t have to go all the way to Borneo (East Malaysia) to see orangutans! As Orang Utan Island is close to Taiping, Ipoh, and Penang. So it’s worth your while to visit it! How to assess and analyse ways in which pupils respond to stories, poems and plays’ by Michael Rosen I'm totally not looking forward to seeing myself. I'll have to watch though, but I might hide my eyes! Main cast

The Telegraph Sean Scanlan, Scottish actor – obituary - The Telegraph

Somewhere in Perak is Bukit Merah Orangutan Island Malaysia. This is a rehabilitation center of 35 acres just for orangutans! A few months ago, I was completing a series of lessons with my Year 2 class on Benji Davies’ wonderfully moving picture book Grandad’s Island. Never in a thousand years! With the first book, I was given a brief to write and illustrate a picture storybook. My own children were teenagers by this point and so it was a self-indulgent nostalgia re-run of my children’s upbringing on the Isle of Coll. I was reading to the class and had reached the part of the story where Grandad tells Syd that he is thinking of staying on the island. Up until this point, I have to admit that my reading of the book had been rather superficial, reminding me even now that revisiting a story, re-reading it and allowing ourselves time to slowly pore over the illustrations is vital and time well spend. I'm asked quite often which Grannie Katie Morag prefers but she likes them both the same. Katie Morag sees Grannie Island more often because she lives nearer but it is great when Granma Mainland to visit. She usually comes on the ferry. I’ve got a Grannie Island and Granma Mainland in real life too!

When I returned, under the expert guidance of my Mum and an LSA, my Year 2 class had begun to compose their letters from Grandad to Syd, writing things like: Up until this point, the sessions had been brilliant. The children had drawn colourful pictures to predict what might be on the island, written immersive descriptions of the jungle, developed their vocabulary (not many knew what an ‘attic’ was and enjoyed discussing what ‘an ocean of rooftops’ might look like). They had nudged each other and giggled over all the things they spotted in Grandad’s dusty attic and gasped at the beauty of the island – I had displayed the book on the interactive whiteboard for maximum effect. Where will the big metal door lead to? If you’re interested in whole class reading and using picture books in your own class, these resources, articles and books may be useful: Until then, like Syd, I shall continue to try and steer my ship safely home, weathering the storms, and filling my own attic of memories with laughter, music, art, books, love and maybe even a giant tortoise teapot. The biggest difference is that there are more episodes than there were stories. The scriptwriters have taken the characters, the locations and the relationships and created six brand new stories and six special episodes. They have come up with new original ideas while still being very faithful to the original stories. I have written one script myself which was a very different process because I had no illustrations to rely on.