Where it's at...

Categories: s1 and s2, Geography General, Urban, Rural, Industry
I will probably spend tomorrow trying to readjust to school life and my new timetable after another excellent trip to the French Alps with four schools. My favourite parts of the trip, for the record- 1) Sixt fer a Cheval. With the exception of coasts, I could probably teach the whole Physical Environments unit from here. So much to illustrate a point, and visually unbeatable. 2) The Bosson Glacier- If ever anyone doubts the impact of climate change, they should visit this place yearly, as I have for the last three. We were talking to a French TV crew at the viewing platform who reckon its retreating at 20 metres a year. It looks a lot more than that to me. The whole left side of the glacier has really changed. I'll be putting pictures on the moblog-took the wrong plug to charge my phone, then had problems sending messages when I did charge it, so apologies that these did not go on during the trip. 3) Annecy, bowling and party. Just a great day, capped off by some very dubious singing talent by the staff. My biggest disappointments where both on Monday with the Mer de Glace tunnels being closed (I think it was for safety reasons), and then the luge being closed for another week-the opening times of this place seem so random. We went same week last year and this was on. Why don't you tell me here what you enjoyed?
Will no doubt spend a little time talking about this to classes, but here's the plans otherwise. I really need to go through course requirements and timelines with my Advanced Higher class. I think it's really important that we get organised early, and you should already have done enough to be assessed on some of your map interpretation (don't worry, not tomorrow). With Higher, you should have completed some of the lithosphere work that would have been less familiar to you, with weathering and mass movements featuring heavily. Show me what you know. I will use some word association, some labelling diagrams, some statement sort etc, before doing a pairs assessment task (answering, swapping, marking). s4 might benefit from this activity (thanks to Mez and Katharine from sln). It looks like a really good bridge between Urban, Rural and Industry, with our Indian case studies featuring. I will be able to introduce rural and industrial change in India as well as re-emphasising push/pull factors and urban problems. s3 will have a look at some images and link them as a course intro proper, while s2 will be asked to create Italy quizzes, a mini topic I used to introduce a lot of the s2 themes, before being asked to work on a poster presentation task. Lastly, I believe the p7 visits might be tomorrow, so I've created an introductory task above for download.