From Argyll street to Amundsen-Scott

Categories: s1 and s2, Urban
Hard day today. I thought the lesson with s2 went OK, lots of good class discussion, but maybe just a bit too much- I could have probably broken up the work a bit better with hindsight, with a better variety of activities. Things that seemed to work quite well were the illustration of the scale of the journey, the size of Antarctica and the difficulties in travelling to the continent. Tomorrow, we are looking at the idea of what essentials we would take and what qualities an expedition leader would need. I'd like to use 'March of the Penguins' in short clips for both climate and adaptations at some point this week or next. I think we'll complete a climate graph before we do this for two or three points on Antarctica, and use this as a recall exercise for why the temperatures vary so much across the continent. I really liked the idea from Pauline Wright of the sln forum (link in sidebar) for extracting information from the film clips. To quote,
"to evaluate different forms of taking notes - have one group jotting down key words /linear notes- another group doing a spider diagram on A4 sheet/ spider diagram using A3/ using colours/drawing pictures/control group making no notes but have to recall at the end. Plenary - in groups compare method or use it as a stimulus for a piece of creative writing - life of a penguin!"
We might not do all of this, but certainly, this would be a good example of students 'learning to learn'.
s1 last period was very draining. I don't feel I've really established myself as the class teacher here yet as I've been sharing duties with Miss MacKay. I need to get to know the pupils better and set out some routines, and tomorrow while we complete the ICT work we started today on the Amazon, I think I'll take the opportunity to have a look at some work and a chat to some of the class.
Finally, it was unfortunate that my first period back with Higher was going over the prelim paper. I compared the results to last years prelims and they are much of a muchness, but there are definitely areas for improvement across the board. The hydrograph and energy balance questions were particularly difficult for some. Tomorrow, I'm going to, given the chance, do a moving activity to place images in city zones as a recap on the class work on urban models. Next up will be an exploration of the CBD of Glasgow using the presentation above