The Way Back Home

The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers

When a boy discovers a single-propeller airplane in his closet, he does what any young adventurer would do: He flies it into outer space! Millions of miles from Earth, the plane begins to sputter and quake, its fuel tank on empty. The boy executes a daring landing on the moon . . . but there’s no telling what kind of slimy, slithering, tentacled, fangtoothed monsters lurk in the darkness! (Plus, it’s dark and lonely out there.) Coincidentally, engine trouble has stranded a young Martian on the other side of the moon, and he’s just as frightened and alone. Martian, Earthling–it’s all the same when you’re in need of a friend.

Main Focus: Alphabetical Order

Your Year 1 / Year 2 class will use the extract taken from the book and place the chosen words into alphabetical order.

There are four resources and the level of difficulty progresses in each alphabetical order resource. We’ve also included a reading resource that doesn’t have any words chosen so your class can complete it with 100% choice and choose their own difficulty.

Main Focus: Capital Letters and Full Stops

This whole class reading resource focuses on adding in capital letters and full stops to the sentences.

Your class must identify where the capital letters and full stops must go in the sentences/passages.

There are different levels of difficulty so children can use prompts to help them. E.g. extra spacing and underlined capitals.

Main Focus: Comprehension

This comprehension resource for Ks1 can be used to check your children’s understanding of the story The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers.

A range of questions have been asked linked to retrieval and basic inference. The resource has been differentiated 4 ways to cater for Year 1 to Year 2 children.

Main Focus: Phonics

This is a phonics resource linked to the story. We’ve taken a few extracts that compliment the different phases in phonics to help your class depending on the phonics phase they are currently at.

We have also included a blank resource so that your Year 1 / Year 2 children can choose their own words using the sounds they are familiar with.

Main Focus: Questioning

Your class will work on their questioning skills by reading the answers and writing a suitable question.

The kids will then ask a few of their own questions to the martian and the boy.

Main Focus: Sequencing

This is a sequencing activity that encourages your class to think back to the events within the story and place them into chronological order.

Your KS1 class can even cut out the sentences and arrange and rearrange accordingly. If you have numerous copies of the book they can cross reference using the book as and determine their accuracy for self assessment and reflection.

Main Focus: Word Class

This is a resource that focuses on word class. Your children must read the passage from the story and identify the nouns, verbs and adjectives.