A world of your own

Categories: Geography General, Population, Rivers, Advanced Higher

Daniel Raven-Ellison spoke recently on one of the sites I visit about Planet 10. It's an interactive model of our solar system, good for Science and Geography, and I really liked the option to build your own planet. I'm sure I could have been taken to task by some of my population if they had managed to survive the 150 degrees daytime temps and various asteroid collisions of my first two attempts. See if you can do better than third time lucky.

Higher NAB is looming. I asked about supported study tomorrow, and a lot of people want to revisit mass movements. I saw an idea from a Miss Ellis recently for speed dating which just about fits the bill. Given processes, two minutes, one minute for each person to discuss their process and 'date' gives marks out of ten before moving on to the next person. I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes, but maybe do this during double period class time. You also asked for a Hydrograph worked question-we'll go for a 'twin peaks' example from the past papers. I was quite pleased with much of your short presentations on river features from Monday, but I think we should also do a worked example on this too.

Depending on how all of this goes, we might get to start the Population topic, and I'll probably do a little group work here too as a starter based around the Population Clock . Other things we might consider-How long would it take at current population growth levels to double the school population? What about Glasgow's? I really enjoyed teaching this topic to Higher last year, particularly a lot of the resources we used for the One Child Policy and Migration.

Finally, speaking of last years Higher, AH are doing some mapwork just now in among the stats and Issues Essay work. We are currently doing a map showing the site of Perth, drawn to scale. I could see people getting pretty irate at roads being slightly out of sync, river islands being mis-shapen etc, so we took a five minute breather today and did a little map from memory (woeful attempts!). I then tried to compare what you're doing to the type of thing you see in kids puzzle books-draw the map one square at a time if you're struggling. Remember, this piece of work is assessed and simpler but similar activities have come up in the exam in the past. Take your time to do it well, regardless of how frustrating you may be finding it.