Stone Cold - Homelessness!

This engaging and informative lesson helps students to understand one of the key themes running throughout Robert Swindells’ Stone Cold: Homelessness. Students use key information, research skills, and extracts from the text to understand how and why homelessness happens and who it can affect, before composing their own arguments about how they believe homelessness should be tackled.

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:
- Considering their own views towards homeless people, and thinking about how these were formed;
- Researching how and why people become homeless, and who it affects ;
- Reading an extract from ‘Stone Cold’ in which Link describes a night on the streets, to better empathise with those who are sleeping rough;
- Answering comprehension questions about the extract, considering the writer’s use of language and retrieving textual information to back up their ideas;
- Forming their own arguments about how homelessness should be tackled, using their own research and the information gathered throughout the lesson;
- Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts;

Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
- Research Template;
- Selected extracts - Stone Cold - Link’s description of a night on the streets;
- Writing to Argue Helpsheet;
- Comprehensive lesson plan.

There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with a year 8 class, however colleagues have used them for between years 5 and 9 with minimal adaptations. Please note that internet access/ use of research mechanisms is required for the introduction task.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.