Survival – year 8 curriculum pack

Last updated: 15/11/2023
Contributor: Richard Durant
Survival cover
Main Subject
Key stage
Resource type
Teaching pack

Survival is an engaging and challenging curriculum pack, written for year 8 students and designed to develop their critical reading skills and their confidence working with unseen texts.

Featuring thought-provoking – and at times emotive – text excerpts and poems from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, the pack includes work by Primo Levi and Katherine Mansfield and stories of survival in extreme conditions.

‘I think teachers will be delighted by the balance between the flexibility of being able to dip in and choose, coupled with some suggested structures to help teachers make those choices coherent. I also think teachers will appreciate the active and imaginative approaches to texts. Collaborative exploration and the development of thinking skills are designed into the suggested approaches. Overall, I'm proud of these materials, and I hope colleagues find them useful and stimulating.’

Richard Durant, writer

Tasks include opportunities for drama, creative and persuasive writing and text conversion along with dictionary work and peer assessment.

What's included?

  • a six-week sequence of lessons including starters, main activities and plenaries
  • a selection of fiction and non-fiction text extracts and poems from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

What's inside?

Introduction (page 4)

Outline (page 5)

Route through week one: Introduction to survival (pages 6-16)

  • Work based on Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic and Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69
  • Work based on Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69
  • Work based on The Siege

Route through week two: Lighting fires (pages 17-25)

  • Work based on To Build a Fire – Part one
  • Work based on To Build a Fire – Part two
  • Work based on To Build a Fire – Part three

Route through week three: Suffering (pages 26-35)

  • Work based on ‘Jumping about Cookery’ from Endurance, An Epic of Polar Adventure
  • Work based on Sufferings in Africa
  • Work based on ‘The Quitter’

Route through week four: The guilty survivor (pages 36-49)

  • Work based on ‘Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash’
  • Work based on ‘The Survivor’
  • Work based on ‘Survivors’

Route through week five: Long term survival (pages 50-58)

  • Work based on ‘Alice’s Long Fall’ from Alice in Wonderland
  • Work based on ‘To Build an Antarctic Hut’ from Endurance, an Epic of Polar Adventure
  • Work based on The Diary of Lena Mukhina

Route through week six: Economic survival (pages 59-71)

  • Work based on ‘Pictures’ - Part one
  • Work based on ‘Pictures’ - Part two
  • Work based on ‘Pictures’ - Part three
The texts

Texts for week one: Introduction to survival (pages 72-75)

  • Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven
  • Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69 by Edward Whymper
  • The Siege by Helen Dunmore

Texts for week two: Lighting fires (pages 76-84)

  • To Build a Fire by Jack London – Part one
  • To Build a Fire by Jack London – Part two
  • To Build a Fire by Jack London – Part three

Texts for week three: Suffering (pages 85-88)

  • ‘Jumping about Cookery’ from Endurance, An Epic of Polar Adventure by Frank Worsley
  • Sufferings in Africa by James Riley
  • ‘The Quitter’ by Robert Service

Texts for week four: The guilty survivor (pages 89-92)

  • ‘Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash’ abridged by Richard Durant
  • ‘The Survivor’ by Primo Levi
  • ‘Survivors’ by Siegfried Sassoon

Texts for week five: Long term survival (pages 93-87)

  • ‘Alice’s Long Fall’ from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • ‘To Build an Antarctic Hut’ from Endurance, An Epic of Polar Adventure by Frank Worsley
  • The Diary of Lena Mukhina by Lena Mukhina

Texts for week six: Economic survival (pages 98-106)

  • ‘Pictures’ by Katherine Mansfield – Part one
  • ‘Pictures’ by Katherine Mansfield – Part two
  • ‘Pictures’ by Katherine Mansfield – Part three

This sample shows examples of main activities in week one of the Survival curriculum pack:

1. Surviving the text. Put students into small groups. Give each group one of the two texts for the week: Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic and Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-69. Stick each text in the middle of a sheet of A3. Ask the groups to annotate their text with ideas about the different ways the text is about survival (harsh landscapes, predators, physical hardships, mental challenges etc.).

Differentiation

The texts differ in their level of reading challenge, so make each group's starting text appropriate to their reading level. Alternatively, compose mixed ability groups. Give the most able reader/s the job of summarising the texts if necessary, and/or chairing the discussions. More confident readers could be given Whymper’s text cut up for added challenge. Ask them to reassemble the text, using language and narrative clues to help them.

2. Read, think, add. After a pre-set period of time (perhaps 5-10 minutes), move each group onto another table on which there is a different text from the one they have already worked on. Give the groups a few minutes to read their new texts, consider the annotations and where appropriate, add to them. Ask the groups to think about their text in relation to the two quotations of the week:

‘Without victory, there is no survival.’ (Winston Churchill)

‘If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.’ (Flannery O'Connor)

In what ways might the text illustrate one or both of the quotations? Ask for feedback.

Survival – year 8 curriculum pack
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All reviews

Have you used this resource?

5

01/04/2021

5

26/07/2020

5

08/04/2020

In light of what we around the world seem to be experiencing - it seemed to be an effective resource to use to have my students think outside the box re how they may be more capable than they think

Susan Tickner

22/03/2020

5

01/04/2021

5

26/07/2020

5

08/04/2020

In light of what we around the world seem to be experiencing - it seemed to be an effective resource to use to have my students think outside the box re how they may be more capable than they think

Susan Tickner

22/03/2020

5

04/06/2019

5

07/05/2019

I used this pack with a small SEMH Year 8 group and it went very well. Adding topical powerpoints and creating some differentiated resources kept their interest too. It caught the attention of boys and girls alike and I was able to find videos to support the Jack London story and Keopke's plane crash which made it all more kinaesthetic and fun to teach. We capped off the scheme with a trip to a wildlife park where the pupils were shown how to build fires in the wild and a few survival skills.

Steve Welsh

25/10/2018

This resource is being used for an end of year, into Summer school programme of study for students who are missing key skills in reading, writing and speaking and listening. The diversity of the texts, the starting points for differentiation and the possible activities mean that all Year 8 teachers in the department can offer a fairly uniform approach. In particular, the pack was chosen because boys responded well to the themes and focus of the texts, while the girls like that they aren't only texts about 'hairy men in the wilderness'. A good all-rounder.

24/06/2017

To introduce my international school students to a range of literature and enable effective critical thinking through analysis and discussion.

02/09/2015

5