Hello (Goodbye)

Categories: s1 and s2, Rivers, Urban
Whirlwind couple of weeks mean that I've not really had time to reflect on leaving one school to start in another. I should state on the record that my 7 years at St Ninians were a fantastic education as a teacher, and I feel very grateful to the students and the staff for making my time at the school so enjoyable. It's off to new pastures now as a Principal Teacher of Geography, but I already know that, while I am looking forward to the journey ahead, I have a lot of sadness about what I'm leaving behind too.
It's been straight back into work, and I expect the blog will be in regular use as I get to grips with the courses in my new school. Fortunately, some of my existing resources and lesson activities fit well. Tomorrow will be all about meeting the students, underlining what lies ahead this year and how we're going to get there. There will be a large chunk of the day devoted to recapping on what had been learned before the summer. I'll either use a revision quiz in teams or a walkabout talkabout exercise with 4D1 under the following headings:-
Growth of settlements
Order of service and sphere of influence
Function of settlement
Urban models & land uses
Urban problems
I'll try to bring a little bit of enquiry skills into the discussion that will hopefully ensue. It will feel strange teaching Standard Grade again after 7 years of Intermediate in s3 and s4.
With s3, it looks as though the class are in the process of learning about rivers. I have a little mapping from memory actvity, which will bring together river landscapes, enquiry skills and then some independent evaluations as to where certain land uses might be found. Also found a little bit of audio on the BBC website which might be useful. Second year start the session with an intro to Empty and Crowded lands, a little bit of video then a lot of classroom movement. I might then extend this out into a short exercise in literacy. This will precede introducing an investigation which students do as a major piece of homework. At the moment this is all written, but I see no reason why students couldn't be given an option on how to present their work as long as they are meeting the criteria. I'm a little apprehensive about a new set of students and a new school tomorrow, but it will also be nice to start teaching students after a combined 4 days of in-service between two schools! Now, when's that September break...