Classtools and Wikis

Categories: Rural Land Resources, Limestone, Coasts, s1 and s2, Games and Quizzes, Writing and Assessment
I have been experimenting with an excellent new tool for the whiteboard from Russell Tarr of www.activegeography.co.uk . Classtools gives a variety of flash templates which can be used-from living graphs. essay planners and Target Diagrams to Diamond 9's and my own favourite, lights out. I have been using the lights out feature with my s1 during the weather topic, and have added mini mysteries to the activity. An example would be the picture I used on Friday, where we gradually revealed a beach with sun loungers and palm trees. Pupils were asked to guess where the picture was taken. I then revealed that it was from an island on the west coast of Scotland. The next question was 'Why are there Palm trees on Island X?'. I have about five or six images to use with the classes which will hopefully encourage discussion about why different parts of Britain get different weather. I am also using the lights out activity briefly with higher, but this time, they have a limited time to spot coastal features of erosion and deposition, land uses and conflicts, as well as conflict resolution within a single image of the Dorset Coast. Finally, as my s3 move on to land uses in a limestone area, I am simply going to leave an image on the board, and allow them to use the 'post-it' function to get us started. This has fantastic potential, and also has templates for games-match up, manic miner, wordshoot etc, which will be good fro the lower year groups in particular. The wikis need some attention. I have added a mass movements question to the higher wiki, and have changed the password too. On the intermediate wiki, I have set up the password, and added two questions from the first two areas of the course. I will probably get these up and running in class tomorrow for some attempts.