Welcome to the homepage for our cross-curricular topic based on Beverley Naidoo’s award winning book ‘The Other Side of Truth’.
Click the links below for children’s work, information for teachers, and lots more.
About this topic - information for teachers
Beverley Naidoo's visit to our school
Before we began to read 'The Other Side of Truth' we needed to learn a little bit about Nigeria and, more specifically, Lagos (where the story starts).
After we'd done these lessons we then looked at three different front covers and read the blurb. Then we made our predictions about the book and went on to read Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is tragic and emotional; it also introduces a lot of characters in a few pages so we did some re-reading and followed by work on the characters, to make sure we knew who was who. We also did some writing of our own, using our knowledge of Lagos (from geography) and some of the story writing tricks used by Beverley Naidoo. (So we changed from past tense to present tense and then back. Mr Wallace thinks the writing we did was outstanding.)
Our work on Chapter 2 is here and our work on Chapter 3 is here. We followed these English lessons with a geography lesson on Ibadan because in Chapter 3 we learn that Sade's Grandma lives in a village near Ibadan. In ICT we looked at climate data for Ibadan and sorted charts by various fields to make graphs.
After reading Chapter 4 we did an Accelerated Reader quiz and then we did some detailed work on on Chapter 5, including writing about the characters Sade and Femi meet at Lagos airport and writing a cabin crew job advert for a Nigerian airline.
We read Chapters 6 and 7 and did an AR quiz. Then we thought really carefully about what had happened to Sade, Femi and Mrs Bankole in UK customs. As the customs officer, Pepper-Red Lips, cut Sade’s bag we were moved to write poetry.
Chapter 9 sees Sade and Femi abandoned at Victoria Station by Mrs Bankole. They desperately need to get to the London College of Art. Is it the 36 bus or the 38 bus? We went to Victoria Station to find on a special trip – ‘The Other Side of Truth’ trail.
We also did some work using 4 figure co-ordinates using a map of the area where the London College of Art is. We did some other mapwork too, plotting Sade and Femi's feelings as they travelled from Victoria to South London. We also did some mapwork using an aerial photo of the area where Sade and Femi were walking.
By Chapter 16, fiction combines fact and we read about a person called Ken Saro-Wiwa. Who was Ken Saro-Wiwa and why should we remember him? At this point we were also lucky enough to be visited by one of our school governors, the Reverend Tunde Roberts, who is Nigerian and had to leave Nigeria quickly during the rule of General Abacha. We made notes about what he told us.
After we’d read Chapter 18 (Hawk Lady and Hawk Man) we did some writing to explain what we thought about the way Sade and Femi were treated in the Immigration Office.
We had to answer Sade’s questions and more by devising factual statements using maps and atlases.
Chapter 20 describes Sade and Femi starting school in London. We had to do the same, making reference to the text to support our opinions. As we read Chapters 21-26 we noted several examples of Sade and Femi being bullied. We read definitions of bullying from a source provided by Childline and linked these definitions to the things that happened in the text.
One of Sade’s new friends, Mariam, is also refugee – from Somalia. In Chapter 27 she tells Sade her story. We pretended to be Mariam and retold this story from her point of view.
Chapter 30 sees Sade writing to Papa in the detention centre. We predicted what her reply might have been to Papa’s second letter. After Chapter 34 we wrote a newspaper article explaining Papa’s case.
To end our work on the book we learnt about Damilola Taylor, the boy whom the book is dedicated to. We wrote poems about being a refugee.
To return to this homepage please click this link (which is on every 'The Other Side of Truth' page).
