The Biggest Swim by Susan Paris is a reflective non-fiction text that weaves personal determination with environmental advocacy to explore the extraordinary endurance challenge of New Zealand swimmer Jono Ridler. Through first-hand narrative and biographical detail, the text follows Jono’s record-breaking swim from Aotea Great Barrier Island to Auckland’s North Shore, highlighting his goal-setting mindset, physical resilience, and ability to push through fear, exhaustion, and self-doubt. The story situates Jono’s achievement within the wider context of ocean health and marine conservation, showing how personal challenge can become a powerful platform for raising awareness and inspiring collective action. Dramatic, motivating, and deeply human, the text supports students to understand perseverance and purpose through lived experience and voice.

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy, health, and social sciences, supporting inquiry into resilience, leadership, environmental responsibility, and the power of individual action in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This pack contains a range of response activities complete with activity explainer videos for exploring thinking skills and developing emotional understandings and compassionate inquiry including:

• Blooms Higher Order Thinking activities
• Book Club guide for deepening text discussion
• A range of activities to explore emotional understanding, compassionate inquiry, empathy development, vocabulary and developing skills for self and co-regulation.

Curriculum Phase: Phase 3
Year Level: Year 5

English (NZC Levels 3–4): reading for meaning and critical thinking, analysing author perspective and voice, understanding biography and personal recounts, synthesising information, exploring descriptive and persuasive language

Health and Physical Education: wellbeing, physical endurance, goal setting, resilience, emotional regulation

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: identity and belonging, community action, continuity and change, environmental responsibility, personal stories within social contexts

Text type: Non-fiction, personal recount, biographical narrative, informational text

Key words include: Aotea Great Barrier Island, campaign, challenge, conservation, endurance, goals, Great Barrier Island, Hauraki Gulf, marine conservation, ocean, pollution, record, sea, Tīkapa Moana, training, ultra-distance swimming