This text is a fictionalised recount. Davy Lowston was among a group of sealers set down on the Open Bay Islands (off the west coast of the South Island) in 1810. The ship that was to pick them up sank in a storm, and the men were marooned for four years. Their story is the basis of one of the earliest folk songs in New Zealand.

This pack contains wide range of response activities including:

• A guided reading plan exploring key literacy elements including inference and deduction, language use, making connection and text organisation, along with key questioning to promote emotional intelligence, metacognition and compassionate inquiry. 
• Independent learning contracts including: comprehension and inferencing, text organisation and exploring author's use of language, responding with compassion and empathy, developing self regulation and co-regulation skills, understanding feelings and needs, higher order thinking skills and metacognition, complete with explainer videos for activity clarity
  
• A wide range of response activities to support developing and embedding key literacy skills including sentence and word work, spelling, and cloze activities. 

Themes explored include: castaways, folk songs, New Zealand history, sealers, seals, shipwrecked, survival, whalers, English, Social Sciences