FArTHER

Product Information

This three-week Writing Root begins by introducing the concept of dreams and how important they are in our lives. It continues by exploring the text through a range of activities that include explicit grammar teaching, opportunities for shorter written outcomes and book talk. Children create a story-map of the key events from the book to write a sequel and create a set of instruction to describe how their own flying machine works. Children finish by writing a longer story about an adventure in a sequel to the text. Synopsis of Text: FArTHER is the story of a father who dreams of flying. However, when he goes to war and does not return, his son attempts to finish where he left off and makes his dream come true. Winner of the 2012 Greenaway award, this truly is an inspirational story showing how any dream can be fulfilled with love and motivation. More recently he's worked on a monumental project for Walker Books about life on Earth called Life! The First Four Billion Years. Also a four-book series for Templar, the first of which is The Rhythm of the Rain, and the second is about the wind.

Ancient Greece The story of Daedalus and Icarus. Explore how this story runs in parallel with part of the story (where the Father builds wings etc.) Design and Technology Exciting book display- copies of book, audio recording of it being read, images of Ancient Greek myth Through the unit, the children focus on characterisation and make inferences about the author’s perspective on a particular character and finally write a new version or scene for the story in the style of the author. Introduce gravity, resistance' ...'Understand location and interaction of Sun, Earth and Moon' ...Use understanding of Science as criteria for creating the wings in D&T MathematicsAncient Greece, Icarus, Greek myths, Da Vinci, flight, World War 1, World War One, The Great War, dreams, aspirations, invention, family Use research and criteria to develop products which are fit for purpose and aimed at specific groups' Different types of wings hanging from the ceiling... alongside aspirations hanging from the ceiling as well Grahame taught himself to paint and draw whilst living in Oxford in his early twenties. Drawing had been a great interest to him as a child but as a young adult it flared into a passionate and all-consuming activity. He was offered a place at Berkshire College of Art and Design and joined the course in the third year as he'd already covered the first two years independently. This book tells the story of a father and son and a dream to fly. The father is possessed with an unrelenting desire to fly which he never achieves. When the father goes off to war and doesn’t return, the dream of flying passes on to his son.

Children's thoughts about the book- picture of front of book and children to add post-it thoughts as book is exploredThe starting point for FArTHER was an image that came into my mind’s eye during the course of an ordinary day. I saw a figure, a man, sitting at a workbench making a pair of wings. At the time, as I went about the various tasks and demands of the day, I did not know who he was or what he was really trying to do. In the evening, the house grew quieter and the family retired to bed. I felt there was a story somewhere in this image and so sat downstairs (with a glass of dark English ale), took out a notebook and pen and the first line just appeared: ‘Poppies lined the path to my father’s house.’ From there on over a period of about an hour and a half I wrote the story line by line, as if it were being dictated. I didn’t really know exactly what was going to happen or where it was all leading to – the things that happened in the story were a surprise to me – but I had a feeling of something being ‘right’ and a sense of exploration and trust in the work, that all will be OK! Notes: Based for a year 5 Linguistic features. Use the New National Curriculum to focus on: Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation / The winning book, Farther by Grahame Baker-Smith, tells the story of how a son takes up his father’s unfulfilled dreams of flying, and finally takes to the air. On leaving college in 1986 with portfolio in hand he went to London to look for work. Commissions from magazines, design groups and publishers soon followed and his career in illustration began. However, a growing dissatisfaction in executing work only to commission led him to writing ideas for self-initiated book projects. This, and a desire to expand his media skills incorporating digital techniques and processes, ushered in many months of sessions with a computer - often cradling his new-born daughter in the other arm.