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Lesson 5 of 5
  • Year 6

Exploring and engaging with themes in 'Shackleton's Journey'

I can identify and engage with the key themes in ‘Shackleton's Journey’.

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Lesson 5 of 5
New
New
  • Year 6

Exploring and engaging with themes in 'Shackleton's Journey'

I can identify and engage with the key themes in ‘Shackleton's Journey’.

Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and

Copyrights help

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. 'Shackleton's Journey' includes themes of leadership, resilience, hope and exploration.
  2. Shackleton is recognised as an excellent leader, who remained determined in the face of adversity.
  3. Ernest Shackleton set an excellent example to his crew; he was an inspirational role model.

Keywords

  • Theme - A theme is a big idea, topic or message that recurs within a story.

  • Convey - To convey means to communicate a message to the reader directly or indirectly.

  • Legacy - Legacy is the long-lasting impact of particular events and actions that took place in the past, or in a person’s life.

  • Inspire - To inspire is to motivate or encourage through positive influence or example.

Common misconception

Pupils may only consider themes that are universally understood.

Highlight that there are many possible themes that can be drawn out from a text; readers may interpret these differently.


To help you plan your year 6 English lesson on: Exploring and engaging with themes in 'Shackleton's Journey', download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

In order to deepen discussion in Task B, you can create a list of points with pupils that link to Shackleton's leadership and another that links to how he was inspirational.
Teacher tip

Equipment

You will need access to a copy of the text 'Shackleton's Journey' by William Grill, published by Flying Eye Books, 2014

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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