Dustbins for Dorset

Categories: Rural Land Resources, Industry, s1 and s2, Advanced Higher

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. With Higher, we were trying to push on through the Coastal case study in Rural Land Resources. I felt this meant I hogged the floor a little, and although I asked plenty of questions, there was probably too much teacher talk. Tomorrow, I'll start the double period with a little game based on yesterday's work:-

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I have created a little drag and drop quiz around the social and economic opportunities you should have learned about in class today, and have added a bit about hard and soft coastal defences. I'll let people have a go at this while we finish some of the work, this game normally gets competitive so be gentle with my board...I'm going to spend only the first part of the double on Dorset, and I'll be moving swiftly on to the Hydrosphere, where we will do a little mapping from memory to start us off on the Water Cycle. I'm then going to ask you to work on defining some of the terms that will be placed in the diagram, but not explained. For supported study, I'm aiming to use some of the SQA exemplar answers, and some that I have from previous years groups to do a little marking of Rural Land Resources questions. I'm really keen for you to see that although I've probably nagged you senseless about it, good answers have to be full of named examples.

I felt that with s4 today, I really needed to recover work that I thought would have been completed when I was off. I'm glad I did-the mapping exercise that we completed at the start of the period also showed me that some of you had very sketchy knowledge of new industrial landscapes. If you want the powerpoint I used, I can make this available, but hopefully this has filled in some of the blanks.

S1 were a little hyper today. The period started well enough, as we spent a lot of time discussing knowledge of the rainforest. Several of the class brought up 'Tribe', and it seemed to really spark the interest. I was a little disappointed that we had to leave the video out at the end of the period and concentrate on some written work, but we can perhaps revisit this on Thursday.

Finally, Advanced Higher are working on some critical evaluation practice exercises. Students seem to be finding this quite difficult. I shared the marking information with you today, and will try to give you some guidance as you go tomorrow- I think it might be a good idea for me to have a look at your work after you think you have satisfied each competence. The way you will be structuring your essays should allow you to do this, as I'll be able to check your summary of sources, then your geographical evaluation, evaluation of exaggeration/bias and so on.