Myanmar Cyclone

Categeories: s1 and s2, Environmental Hazards



This is just a short news clip that I'm using with s1 to introduce Tropical Storms. Hope to generate a bit of discussion to ascertain what you know already about these wild weather events.

My room, the fahrenheit trap

Categories: Geography General

The heat was definitely affecting performance levels today - and the students were lackadaisical too ;-) Seriously, it was hard to keep focused in my oven of a room, and tomorrow is apparently more of the same. If there isn't the planned mass migration from classrooms into the school grounds that was scheduled for today, I might push for some work outside.

I'm trying hard to keep revision fresh ( a contradiction in terms?) yet still manage the past paper revision that students demand at this time of year. I think with s4 and Higher, I'll split some past papers around the class in small groups and put forward the students as teacher. When answers are presented, I and others can put in their tuppence worth. I might also, if time permits, show the red pen black pen technique, which a few of my students two years ago used with a bit of success.

I think with the benefit of hindsight, I have allowed pupils to rely too much on written notes etc this year. In the past four years, I have consciously tried to make people think more and copy less, but this year with both Higher and s4, I have done this only to be asked afterwards for a note and have succumbed. This is partly responsible for the courses taking longer this year than before, and I have to say that I don't think my classes are any better prepared than before. I wonder what students or other teachers feel about this? Is it better to learn by solving a problem yourself or do you feel an extensive note is something beneficial for certain parts of the course? I will consider this more in my homely furnace (hot and stuffy in winter also) tomorrow...

Revision and Revision Breaks...

Categories: Geography General, Other
Should have done a lot more tonight, but spent much of my time looking at two things, one work related and one not (although I'm sharing both). Richard Allaway is a name which has appeared in these pages several times before, and he has produced a handy revision question bank. There are some sections that we don't do, but if both Higher and Intermediate look hard enough, you'll find some relevant options for your own revision. There are also command words highlighted, something I talked in detail about to s4 after recent problems with describe and explain commands, and therefore something which will help you in your exam preparations.
The other less relevant, but more time consuming discovery is something that you should certainly leave until you've got some downtime planned! Colleagues might be interested, and maybe students who have planned breaks in study...I know youtube is like a students' virtual second home, and I am also aware that some of you have used last.fm . I've been playing my last.fm profile through this youtube mashup, which basically allows you to create your own MTV channel. It's not entirely foolproof, as I got some strange results, some repetition and a couple of unintended gems, like Tony Blair doing The Clash. On the whole, I liked it, and it was funny seeing some of my old favourite bands in video . Give it a try when you've got some time to spare.

Favela folk song

Categories: s1 and s2, Geography General

This is another reflective posts, students feel free to ignore (must be the time of year...).There are lots of songs about Favelas in Brazil, several of them bleak, hard hitting and/or political. Seu Jorge is one such artist who wrote a song called 'I am Favela' (scroll down page for lyrics). Some of the lines such as 'The favela is not only a refuge of thugs', 'They only have the right to a low salary and a simple life' and '..truth doesn't appear in the newspapers' cover some of the realities and misconceptions that we carry. As part of our work on favelas, I have asked s1 to imagine themselves living within one, and to write a song about their experience in pairs. I showed some images from flickr, including the happy family scene above, and posed several questions. What do they see from their front door? Are they happy, frightened, hopelessly depressed, proud? Do they think about leaving one day? What do they imagine would be different about their lives? Although I shouldn't be, as they are world's apart in their everyday experiences, I am always quite surprised about how little some pupils truly appreciate the depths of poverty that people can live in. I am equally intrigued in the simplicity of the thought that if people are poor, they must be sad. Hopefully, this exercise will help lay the foundations for the rest of the work we do, particularly about Rocinha and Dona Marta.

People as moving sand dunes

Categories: Biosphere

At last, the Higher course is finished. I was pretty pleased with our sand dune activity today, which I'm just going to detail here should I want to use it again next year:-

Three groups of terms on cards, starting with Dunes

Embryo, Fore, Yellow, Dune slack, Grey, Climax vegetation

Then, another group of cards with conditions,

Highest/Lowest PH, Windblown sand, Highest humus content, Little/ Complete ground cover, Dry, On/Near Water Table, High Soil moisture content

etc etc. Final Group are plants:

Restharrow, Couch Grass, Marram, Buckthorn, Sea Rocket, Reeds , Creeping Willow, Bluebell

and so on. Task begins with organising pupils with 'dune' cards into a 'transect' from sea to shore at the front of the classroom. After the correct order has been established, the 'conditions' are invited to attach themselves roughly to the correct 'dune' and finally the 'plants' card holders have to do likewise. When this is done, I put the Embryo and Fore Dune groups together, the Yellow dune and dune slack and the grey/climax as a pair. The groups were then asked to appoint a scribe who would also be allowed to question group members to create a summary of their area of the transect ( considering things like PH, salinity, humus, water content, plant adaption etc) before a member of the group then presents the summary to the class. It was a quick and easy way for me to see if the class got sand dune succession, which thankfully, they very much did! Well, the past papers tomorrow might tell me a little more about this...

An Unfortunate Correlation...

Categories: s1 and s2, Advanced Higher, Biosphere

I didn't think for a minute that my s1 Google Earth exercise was very original, seems that lots of people want to tell the world their favourite places, link courtesy of one of my latest web discoveries, Lifehacker. Mixed bag tomorrow, introducing the favelas task with s1, extensive revision of some rather confused s4 assessments :-0, and moving people as a sand dune transect with Higher if time (will explain later). Rather regrettably,I have been in a fuzz all day about Advanced Higher Geographical Studies. I'm very unfortunately going to have to apply the logic below in terms of how I prioritise the remaining help I give you. For those of you who have handed me your study, I'll do my best to critique it and return with any suggestions in plenty of time for the SQA deadlines. For those of you who didn't turn up today, or didn't submit anything. I'm afraid I can't guarantee the same help, as time is now extremely limited. Sorry to others for using the blog to air a gripe :-(

Psammoseres, Polorix, Past Papers and Plane Crashes

Categories: Other, Biosphere, Geography General

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Finished marking last set of (very late) NABs for higher, and they were on the whole extremely good. There are some responses which are picking up full marks by going all around the houses, and we'll need to have a look at how to make your points more succinctly, but I'm very pleased with the results at a critical time. Today was an opportunity to consolidate the work you had completed on soils, and tomorrow we look at succession. May steal a colleague's idea, weather permitting, but last year I used a lot from Val Vannet's presentation. There's an awful lot of detail here, and I think the sections illustrating why certain plants colonise parts of the dune transect are key to writing a really strong exam answer. Don't be overwhelmed by the dunes, plants etc that you have to remember- Practice will get you there with this one...
s4 had the bonus of missing out on my ramblings today as I was attending a course on WorkIT, something I'm having a look at for Work Experience organisation-fingers crossed it makes sending out 300 pupils more manageable! I left some past paper questions and I'll split the class into some groups tomorrow for IT/Written revision.
I have suddenly had that sinking feeling, as I've remembered I have s1 jotter marking which somehow evaded my bag at the weekend. Having had a look at some of your Amazon plane crash stories, I'm impressed (distressed!) by your imagination ;-) More on the Amazon tomorrow, or rather how it's disappearing.
Finally, Advanced Higher students of late have been getting round the recently mentioned IT restrictions in a novel and pleasing way. As students cannot use a memory stick from their own accounts, some s6 have started uploading their Study files to Polorix Uploader, setting them as private and downloading them again at school. This was a host I hadn't heard of before, but there are so many more with privacy options, and as today my higher all registered with scribd, if any take AH next year, I'll maybe pursue this a bit more. 2 days till your final drafts.....