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Topic planning

I thought I'd do a bit of cloud-sourcing, ask my PLN to help me with some planning ideas that I've got milling around my head.

The topic is, rather morbidly, DEATH, and I was hoping that some people could help me with enough ideas to last a term. Please have a look at the topic web below. It is in its infancy & will develop over time, but feel free to add ideas to it, I'll upload them as soon as I can.

Thanks in advance!


Read some of the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Comments

  1. forms that childrens writing ..
    letters to someone already dead 'my .. will be joining you soon'
    Maths - when i was in junio4 we did our stats fieldwork in local graveyard - age at death, no of people per grave, age differences etc - that beat the hell out of counting lorries

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  2. You could look at death rituals, funeral rites etc. Early Stone Age burials giving hints to present-day about prehistoric society.

    Sacrifice/martyrdom - death as a religious act

    Death as an end, as a transition, as a rebirth

    Poetry/songs/art/music related to death - obviously requiem masses, Christian icons of saints and martyrs, but also pop culture - reworking of candle in the wind for Princess Di, etc...

    Should be enough to get going, Jim!

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  3. Thanks Mike, love the idea of going to a graveyard for statistics!!

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  4. You'd have to be careful how to tread but i'd really recommend PSHE wise going into loss the children have had in their lives, pets, grandparents etc. It's something everyone in life has to deal with but very seldom do children get the chance to talk about it and learn skills to deal with loss and grief. Assuming there was nothing 'major' in your class you could extend loads into Literacy work. Could create some great flashback stories. Or more controversially you could create diaries of the last days of someone's life, or even have the narrator of their story being the dead character playing through the story of someone else’s life. Although that could be a little morbid!
    Could go into any war with it, current ones in Afghanistan for example.
    You could set up a ‘CSI’ department for Science / History. Could link that to your Literacy story work. I.E. CSI investigations show various plot elements, children piece together (so it’s more enquiry based).
    I’ll add more later if I think of any :)

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  5. If it was me I'd have to include the village of Trunyan, Bali.

    A cave you can only get to by boat with bodies in bamboo cages, an altar with skulls and bones piled up under the shade of an immense banyan tree on the shore of a lake which is overlooked by a volcano. The most amazing burial ground I've ever visited! Do a google image search for 'Trunyan'.

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