Flotsam: 1

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Whole Class Reading resources and planning for Year 2, in a zip file based on David Wiesner’s ‘Flotsam’. This book will link well to any seaside topic and has links to the KS1 Geography curriculum of continents and oceans. Vocabulary, Prediction, Clarification, Retrieval and Inference and are all covered in this unit. This unit could easily be extended into numerous more lessons including many incidental writing opportunities for descriptive settings, diary writing and letters. The book has endless possibilities. Using a camera with roll film, photograph close-up details of well-known landmarks in your neighbourhood, or views seen from an unusual angle.

Again, use the images (and messages, if there are any) to generate ideas about who these people could have been. Make a glossary of sea-themed words, including vocabulary from the book’s title and blurb (e.g. flotsam, floating, ashore, barnacle). Its playful sophistication conveys a complexity of ideas that linger in the mind long after the book has been closed, encouraging discussion and inspiring all kinds of responses. Wave by Suzy Lee – a wordless picture book to encourage thoughtful exploration, discussion and the development of visual literacy.

Identify the geographical features of beaches and coastlines. Can you create a report about some of them? In time, the young Wiesner began exploring the history of art, delving into the Renaissance at first — Michelangelo, Dürer, and da Vinci — then moving on to such surrealists as Magritte, de Chirico, and Dalí. As he got older, he would sit, inspired by these masters, at the oak drafting table his father had found for him and would construct new worlds on paper and create wordless comic books, such as Slop the Wonder Pig, and silent movies, like his kung fu vampire film The Saga of Butchula.

Look at the items of flotsam shown on the inside cover. Could you choose one and write your own story about it?Talk about the idea of ‘six degrees of separation’. How many countries are your children connected with, via holidays or links with family and friends? How might you present this information in charts or diagrams? Look at a map and find your closest beach. How far away is it? How could you travel there? How long might the journey take? You’ll need several copies of the book, so that children can follow the illustrations in small groups.