Odblog

Little Fluffy Clouds and literacy

Following on from the cloud homework we completed with S3 recently, I wanted to see if it aided the understanding of the passage of a depression. We spent the start of the period talking about the unusually warm weather and decided we must be in the warm sector of the depression (confirmed by the met office synoptic chart). We had a little go at predicting the weather before I randomly distributed some of the clouds that the class had observed.
With these, the class worked in pairs to create a cloud 'profile'. I compared it to a celebrity/ football magazine which has a movie star/ player factfile. For this exercise, we thought about location (in relation to weather fronts), distinguishing characteristics, travel plans and temperament. Although some of the class stayed safe and did very formulaic profiles (perhaps a failing of mine in terms of promoting the aims of the activity fully), some were very creative.
Some examples of really good characterisations might include the nimbostratus cloud which was "slightly overweight", "laying low" and "sweating profusely", an excellent description of the low cloud and persistent rainfall at the warm front. We also had obese cumulonimbus clouds, the "tallest in their class" with "anger management issues" and other such descriptive accounts.
I liked this exercise, but would give it more prominence than 15 minutes at the end of the lesson. It has a lot of scope if given a fuller introduction to further develop both subject and general literacy while placing subject knowledge in a different context. I wonder if something like this would be valid assessment of learning in the new qualifications?

Labels: weather

Map tig and cloud appreciation

While I wait on possibly the most frustrating laptop in the world to reopen (nicely shut down while I was working on video clips), thought I would blog two ideas I've developed a bit this week. The first is a way to illustrate globalisation through communication. We had been discussing our take on what globalisation meant in the S2 rotation and the idea that the way we communicate can shrink distance came up. I decided to try to incorporate this idea into a piece of homework which also established the links we all have to other places. I used scribblemaps and introduced the idea of mapping where our favourite possessions, our most memorable holiday destinations or our far flung Facebook friends came from on this. The exercise would be completed on the map by an individual who would then 'send to a friend' for further editing adding their own input. This had to be shared by at least 4 people. No face to face discussions were allowed except for the initial class discussion. Any communication would have to be by text, email, messenger, Skype etc It will be interesting to see if we can facilitate 'faceless' collaboration, which would ve excellent in demonstrating the 'information economy'. Hopefully, more to come.
The other exercise I'm quite intrigued by involved setting 'cloud homework' after looking at the passage of an Atlantic depression I'm Britain. It was a very simple piece of work involving students cloud spotting at the time of their pleasing over the weekend. They had to record the time, date and cloud type using the Cloud Appreciation Society guide. I'm intending randomly redistributing these 'clouds' as a tag and asking students to place them on a depression as a starter or plenary. Simple idea, but hopefully it connects students with the topic by actually absorbing what is around them.

Labels: globalisation, weather

Shared Responsibility

It seems incredible to someone who found it difficult to study even at University level that Study Skills are introduced in the lower secondary now. However, when discussing a lesson that my PLP (Personal Learning Planning) class were involved in today with a colleague, I think he is right in saying the earlier the better, because its not really about exams, its about taking responsibility for learning.
We had been discussing Study Skills and thought it would be interesting to take some familiar and less familiar techniques to revise the same block of text. It was a silly news story from the day about an accidental gunshot incident which resulted in some embarrasment for the person committing the crime. To indicate some of the variety of techniques, we had mindmaps, wordmats, mnemonics, audio memos, creating questions alongside reading notes and summary cards. The vital element here was that no one was working alone, which students had confirmed that they commonly do.
I left the exercise with the thought of coming back to it the following week. One thing led to another and, with Higher prelims interrupting my time with this class, I had to postpone. Two weeks and a half term later, I feared the worst for any retention. How wrong I was!
I was informed today that a 29 year old male, whose name escapes me, but not the class, had been practising with his girlfriends fathers gun for a forthcoming camping trip. This was in Loch Earn. Two men were on a nearby boat, Kyle Walker and Thomas Gilmour according to the class. A shot was fired by accident and hit the hull of the boat they were on. The perpetrator deeply regretted his actions but Sherrif Brown was not impressed and fined him £600! I couldn't believe how much had stuck and it was noticeable how confidence grew among the group as contributions were offered. I think the class were quite chuffed with themselves. I asked them if they thought they had been taught the content well. At first, a few nodded and then the realisation came that I had only facilitated their learning through my involvement in steering the groups. They had shown themselves to be successful learners despite no teacher led work and despite all taking different paths to recount a story. This led us into a discussion about whose responsibility it is to ensure achievement in academic pursuits. While teachers can clearly make a difference and have a huge responsibility to those that we teach, it was evident from the exercise that perhaps the person with most influence and, via this, the greatest responsibilities for learning are the students themselves. More than this, that responsibility is apparently best brokered when divided amongst the peer group.

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Fairtrade Facebooking. A tired and late entry for #pedagoofriday

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When you teach rotations in the lower year groups, its sometimes hard to surprise students (their pals have told them what you cover and how they'll do it). It's even harder maintaining teacher motivation if, for example, you have 3 second year classes and are teaching the same lesson for the 6th time. This was a dilemma when we swapped rotations at Christmas and I found myself teaching fairtrade again in quick succession on Friday past. Instead of following a lesson looking at its impact on individuals through character case studies, I asked the class to create their own characters. We were able to start this via a rather excellent show and tell from a couple of the girls in the class which started to give us an idea of the location of fairtrade producers, the likely demographic, what they might be producing and how they benefit. We mapped some of this in the centre of the class and I then distributed mock Facebook profiles found on Tony Cassidy's ever useful http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk . I listed the criteria on the board (see the image above) and, in twenty minutes, the class created some really nice summaries of typical fairtrade producers and its positive impact. I've shared some examples, which I meant to include in #pedagoofriday but a Burns Supper and general fatigue at the weekend put paid to that. If I had ict access, it would have been nice to make these look more professional or use Russel Tarr's Fakebook as originally intended but, in the time we had, I thought this was a nice productive use of it.

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Cities of the future

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I had a bit of space with one class to experiment a little today. I thought it was a good opportunity to share this http://www.glasgowcityvision.com/ . I had already summarised the main desires of this vision last night and thought it would be a great opportunity for some geography in the news. We started the period with a rolling Flickr slideshow of Glasgow images and discussed the likelihood that as the students became more independently mobile and their own needs and tastes changed that the nearest big city would become more important in their lives. Indeed, some would probably end up as residents. As this was their future and not mine, I asked them to imagine their ideal city of the future, specific to Glasgow. At this point, I showed an image of Coruscant from the Star Wars films. We tried to link as closely to the themes in the vision document as possible, for example, making more use of the River Clyde, promoting healthier lifestyles, creativity in the use of space and sustainable development. I employed a 'runner' to bring developed ideas on sticky notes to place on the board and told the class we would try to create our own survey return from these. The results were fantastic and the enthusiasm with which the students approached this, particularly as this was last period in the day, was outstanding. The pictures offer only a snapshot of a rich range of suggestions. A very simple lesson, introduced by the teacher but driven by the students.

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More fieldwork discussion

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Rivers fieldwork discussion

hypothesisrivers.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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