Describes Animals and environment - ask children to think where they may be or places that have similarities to the one in the book

Links to role play

Small activity to get children on their feet and involved Teacher to Role play and children copy walking through the forest, ducking under the branches and vines and push through the forest

part of book the boy 'watches and listens' could get rainforest sounds to play - increasing engagement especially for Key stage 1

Links Photographs

Pictures/Photos of the type of forest in the book called an 'aboriginal forest' - links to history - look at aboriginal people maybe artefacts they use/used.

End of book reveals it is based on the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland Australia this could be start of new topic of work about rainforests etc.

This may be linked to learning about different countries and where different things they wear/have around them/ eat are from and made.

It could also be linked to learning about fair trade.

It may also link to map work as children can see where the countries are that different things are from.

It can also link to learning about climate as it states throughout how different foods e.t.c need certain conditions to grow.

You can discuss the environments that the family travel through to get to where they are as well as discussing the habitat of the bear with the children. You could take the children outside to a grassy field and use role play to act out the different parts of the story.

You could also use the local geography and ask the children if they know of any of the features of the book such as rivers, muddy patches and thick forests around the local area.

Adding to this, you could use mapwork by identifying these areas on a local map.

They could think about the landscape and compare that landscape to their local landscape and spot similarities and differences.

Find and study the Isle of Struay on the map. Use aerial photos to learn about the Isle of Struay and spot landmarks or human and physical features. A range of different maps including an Atlas and globe could help pupils develop their knowledge about where the Isle of Struay is situated.

A map of the Isle of Struay could be displayed and pupils have to label the display with important information. They could also use symbols with a key.

The book could be used to promote thinking about how far away they think the Island is off England and the different ways of travel.

With photos and maps, show the children Scotland and the islands off the Scottish coast. Explain because they live on an island and everything has to be delivered by boat from the mainland, talk to the children about the distance their shopping has travelled to get to the island. The difference it is for us to ‘nip’ to the supermarket and pick up food from all around the world, but for Katie Morag it would be harder and would need to be ordered especially.

Talk to the children about the size of the island. Katie Morag went by herself across to the other side of the island delivering parcels, get the children to think about if we could do that? How long it would take us? What transport we would need to do that etc. Compare the different types of accessible transport.

I would use this book at the start of a sequence of lessons, but refer back to it throughout the sessions on how it is different for Katie Morag than it is for us and to compare, could get the children to evaluate the pros and cons of living on such a small island and where we live. Encouraging the children to think about where they would like to live.

It allows the individuals to start thinking about where their food comes from as well as different materials that they may use on a daily basis.

This book may be combined with the shopping bag activity explained earlier. foods and products brought in and then discussed and pictures of the products could be placed on a map to show the wide spread of product sources all over the world.

These features strongly link to Key stage 1 human and physical geography. The features in the story could be looked at more closely within a sequence of lessons. Each aspect could be examined e.g where would you find this, what characteristics does it have, how would you recognise one, does anything live there?

The book could also be linked too music as each feature has a sound, this again could be further explored during the sequence of lessons. Perhaps how/what you could use to make these sounds

Gets children using maps so they could point out the environments along the way as the story progresses on a map.

Artifacts can both be linked to history and get children discussing where things come from and thinking about both natural and man made resources. Children could be encouraged to find artifacts in their environment.

It is based on a real forest which could become a focus of interest and the children could research and learn about the physical world.

Lesson 1

Play the story. Then reveal own bag of 'artefacts' (some shopping). Pass round the class. Who can tell me where this comes from?

Set a homework task for every child to bring in an item from their kitchen.

Lesson 2

Do a research lesson on their items. Could fill in a fact sheet:

What country

Continent

Climate of country.

Miles from UK

Method of transportation.

Use by date.

Get chn to draw their items and put it on a map on the board or one as a table. Just like the picture on the last page of the book.

Lesson 3

What food grows in our country and where do we get it from? Similar activity.

This story also gives lots of images and description of tropical rainforest environment so could be used in line with music and ask the children to compose a piece of music which depicts the character's journey through the rainforest.

To make this seem more relevant to the children could maybe ask children to research more into Natural England and see what our own country does in order to protect the environment and restore the natural world - this could then delve into more local organisations.