Have students complete a ‘missing persons’ poster on the main character, Shane. As detectives on this case, students should aim to be as detailed as possible considering all the details and clues presented via his appearance, his speech and characteristics. Posters could then be displayed around the class and a ‘Chief Detective’ could come visit the classroom to see which posters would be most helpful for this case. Revise the language technique of personification and metaphor. Have students reflect and discuss the setting of Way Home (the city). Ask students to write a short creative writing piece in which they write from the perspective of the city (personification). This is quite a challenging activity but after several readings of this text the students will have a ‘feel’ for the city Hathorn has created. If necessary re-read the text before the writing commences. Summary: A narrative of a year without modern technology, and what it is like to live more directly and in rhythm with the immediate world of the author's smallholding and community.

The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology - Goodreads The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology - Goodreads

As tough as his new life was, it was good for his mental health as he had none of the stresses of modern day life. He rose with the sun, and life around the small holding was dictated by the weather and the seasons. Some days there were never enough hours in the day to do all the things that he needed to do. On other days he had the luxury of time to pursue projects like a homemade hot tub. His partner, Kirsty is there as almost an afterthought in the text.The author is either not a fan of music or prefers birdsongs (by thrush, goldfinch, bullfinch and magpie). He didn’t learn the tin whistle like his girlfriend Kristy told him to and he has to take her to a pub for her to tap dance to ‘electronic’ music. My wife and I have a Nature’s Head composting toilet in our Oliver travel trailer. And because we live in the trailer full-time the toilet requires at the very least bi-monthly maintenance. When that day comes I remove the two screws holding the toilet down to the floor and carry the entire contraption outside. I generally just dump the contents in varying parts of our forest floor to allow the coco coir to continue decomposing the accumulated mass. After wiping down the toilet I refill it with coco-coir, adding two one-gallon bags of expanded fresh coco coir to the toilet, mixing in some pine pellets and a bit of natural bug-deterrent. The exercise is not something I detest nor is it gross and disgusting. It makes me feel closer to the earth and more responsible for its stewardship. Flushing gallons of fresh water down the drain every day is something we no longer participate in. Revise with students the conventions of letter writing (correct layout, format, language use, etc.) for causes. Good examples come from various charities appealing for donations. These examples are highly persuasive. Have students write a letter to petition the RSPCA advocating for animal rights and why we should be protecting animals that might be homeless. Before beginning revise persuasive devices such as modality, logos and ethos.

On the way home - Books Alive! Read Aloud book for kids On the way home - Books Alive! Read Aloud book for kids

The author describes his life in a wooden cabin in rural Ireland, with no running water, no electricity, and no modern technology at all. No phone, no internet, not even anything battery-powered. As a result, the book was written using paper and a pencil. He describes the course of his life over a year, starting in winter, and dealing with the seasons as they change. Students are to re-read the text individually and as they read, ask them to chart the rise and fall of the action in the plot in their writing books. For example, students should consider how the story starts with action and what the effect of this choice by Hathorn is. Roughly two and a half years of taking in hardly any news. (The awkward bit was when acquaintances such as neighbours would say something like "Isn't it terrible about that plane crash?", and I would have to come out with, "I've not read too much about that yet, what's the latest?" to get them to talk instead. The writing and illustrations were both top notch. One could feel the time that went into creating both. There’s a real sense of isolation and frog-in-the-well mentality. I would have gone nuts like Nicholson in ‘Shining’ (and I suspect the author is on his way there too - or he’s extremely brave).

The book is peppered with the history of an Irish island community decimated by globalization and industrialization, clearly a community Boyle views as some sort of lost Eden. The lessons are clear: We live in an inhuman age. We make money to buy the things that keep us lonely, dependent, and addicted. We have very few skills and we long for authentic, immediate closeness, but instead find hollow substitutes in online forums. I think he's right - I know he is. Well, I don’t aim to insult/offend people within the first sentence of my review but I think I would not be overexaggerating if I said that about 80% of the modern, first world population – at the very least counting 70-80% of Europe- would NOT at all be able to follow in Mark Boyle’s footsteps. I am not fully cut out for that either, no matter how much I would like to be. Kudos, Mark- you’re my new hero!

Way Home | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education - CLPE

I think it was fairly obvious early on that this is a course of action open only to a few people, who are willing to uproot themselves and make a lot of sacrifices, and who don't have too many ties or responsibilities to anyone else. I have a mortgage and kids to raise, so it's pretty obvious that I couldn't do what the author did - and I'm not sure I'd want to, either. I think he was a bit extreme in what he did, and in places comes across as a bit preachy and judgemental. Clearly that's the reaction a lot of people have to his work. I found it interesting that he wrote an entire book using paper and a pencil, but I thought he had a rather unnecessary crisis of conscience over his need to use a computer to type it up for publication. I'm currently writing this on an Alphasmart, a very simple tool for getting text into electronic form, so there's ways and means of doing lots of things more simply, if you have a bit of imagination. Honorable mention: "a friend…..met a small village-worth of women on the banks of remotest part of Pakistan, washing clothes together, laughing, talking, being playful." (I have to put a disclaimer here: clothes are washed like this IN EVERY PART OF PAKISTAN, not just remote areas, whether a community is together at it or just a help maid or single individual!) A total of about 4 and a half years, on and off, living in flats or houses that had no [working] TV aerial, some of this before the existence of BBC iPlayer. Can you find out about different types of snakes? What type might have wrapped itself around Claire in the story?Design a new playground for Claire to play in. Can you think of different safety features to reduce the chance of children hurting themselves? First of all, Mark Boyle's world view is the antithesis of my own. The Way Home was a free book on Audible read by an Irish voice I could understand. I was interested in the author's views on industrialization and technology and their influence on nations, communities, families, and individuals today. This book was easy to listen to and was almost poetical. It reminds me of On Walden Pond by Thoreau. I admire Boyle's willingness to put into practice the principles he taught for many years. There are many of his generation and younger who also have chosen to become more self-reliant and less dependent on technology. Boyle has taken it to the extreme. Despite all that Boyle has forsaken during this record of his first year of living off the grid, I don't believe he's found true reconciliation or lasting peace. He does not recognize the Great Creator and sees only the creation. The Way Home does, though, introduce readers to the old Irish writers of Blasket Island, an isolated West Coast community where old customs and a DIY spirit persisted into the 20th century whilst mainland Ireland gradually became more incorporated into industrial society, and where - this sounds rather like Iceland - an unusually high number of the small population were gifted storytellers. I especially hope to read something by Peig Sayers, and I never would have heard of her were it not for this book. That said, I think many of his ideas and efforts were admirable and worthy of attention, and it's certainly made me think about how many things I need to buy new, how much energy I use, and how much time I spend online, and whether all of things I do bring quality and enrichment not just to me, but to the world around me. At a time when I've just quit an extremely tedious and unsatisfying job in an office, it's come at exactly the right moment to help me think about what I do next, and how to achieve it, and I therefore found the book extremely valuable.

Way Home - Libby Hathorn, Australian author and poet.

So, hearing that Boyle is now using a bit more modern technology and going into cities to do talks and book signings, I can imagine the frustration with standard sleep hours, the obtrusiveness of bizarrely emotive pop music in public places; the strange lacunae one has with news after a long time away from it. (I'm glad my years off from news were doldrum ones; now is a bad time not to be informed. I caught up on politics long ago, but occasionally I still become aware of other gaps from those years: a few weeks ago I saw a report about a crime from 2014 that read like it was a huge story at the time, but I'd never heard of it before; and until I read this a few days ago, I'd assumed "U ok hun?" was just a meme-based way to be bitchy.)Students are to complete a venn diagram in which on one side they write the characteristics of Shane’s home (where is it, what is it like, colours, decorations etc.) and on the other side of the circle, students make notes on their own home. For the part of the circles which overlap, students are to write the similarities that exist regarding their home and that of Shane’s. Where is home for you?