Odblog

Fairtrade Facebooking. A tired and late entry for #pedagoofriday

2012-01-23T21:43:00.001Z

When you teach rotations in the lower year groups, its sometimes hard to surprise students (their pals have told them what you cover and how they'll do it). It's even harder maintaining teacher motivation if, for example, you have 3 second year classes and are teaching the same lesson for the 6th time. This was a dilemma when we swapped rotations at Christmas and I found myself teaching fairtrade again in quick succession on Friday past. Instead of following a lesson looking at its impact on individuals through character case studies, I asked the class to create their own characters. We were able to start this via a rather excellent show and tell from a couple of the girls in the class which started to give us an idea of the location of fairtrade producers, the likely demographic, what they might be producing and how they benefit. We mapped some of this in the centre of the class and I then distributed mock Facebook profiles found on Tony Cassidy's ever useful http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk . I listed the criteria on the board (see the image above) and, in twenty minutes, the class created some really nice summaries of typical fairtrade producers and its positive impact. I've shared some examples, which I meant to include in #pedagoofriday but a Burns Supper and general fatigue at the weekend put paid to that. If I had ict access, it would have been nice to make these look more professional or use Russel Tarr's Fakebook as originally intended but, in the time we had, I thought this was a nice productive use of it.

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Cities of the future

2012-01-19T20:32:00.001Z

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I had a bit of space with one class to experiment a little today. I thought it was a good opportunity to share this http://www.glasgowcityvision.com/ . I had already summarised the main desires of this vision last night and thought it would be a great opportunity for some geography in the news. We started the period with a rolling Flickr slideshow of Glasgow images and discussed the likelihood that as the students became more independently mobile and their own needs and tastes changed that the nearest big city would become more important in their lives. Indeed, some would probably end up as residents. As this was their future and not mine, I asked them to imagine their ideal city of the future, specific to Glasgow. At this point, I showed an image of Coruscant from the Star Wars films. We tried to link as closely to the themes in the vision document as possible, for example, making more use of the River Clyde, promoting healthier lifestyles, creativity in the use of space and sustainable development. I employed a 'runner' to bring developed ideas on sticky notes to place on the board and told the class we would try to create our own survey return from these. The results were fantastic and the enthusiasm with which the students approached this, particularly as this was last period in the day, was outstanding. The pictures offer only a snapshot of a rich range of suggestions. A very simple lesson, introduced by the teacher but driven by the students.

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More fieldwork discussion

2012-01-16T20:45:00.001Z

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Rivers fieldwork discussion

2012-01-16T17:27:00.001Z

hypothesisrivers.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Methods discussion

2012-01-16T09:58:00.001Z

methods1.mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Analysing data discussion

2012-01-16T09:54:00.001Z

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Methods discussion continued

2012-01-16T09:52:00.001Z

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Hypothesis discussion

2012-01-16T09:51:00.001Z

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Hole in the wall learning? #pedagoofriday

2011-12-18T21:30:00.002Z

I'm sitting here trying to mark prelims for S4 and my thoughts are already turning towards the Higher. Anyone who has taught or is familiar with the structure of the Higher course will know that it is impossible to do full course coverage by January and there is a real pressure of time on teachers. Furthermore, we sometimes find ourselves in the situation of hurry-up teaching, where learning becomes lecturing and notes instead of engagement and thinking.
As such, I had been worried that a highly technical topic, atmosphere, would be fudged and would be barely understood in such circumstances. My solution (and it remains to be seen whether its right) was to create space for what Sugata Mitra might call 'Hole in the wall' learning. For those not familiar with this, as I myself wasn't until a couple of days ago, Sugata Mitra tried an experiment where a computer was placed in a hole in the wall of an Indian slum. The natural curiosity of children led to self tuition, the central assertion being that children learn best by collaborating with one another as opposed to adult led tuition.
Mitra tried the same with a class in the UK, who were given GCSE problems they had no content knowledge of, grouped them into 4 and gave them one computer, encouraged free movement between groups and even copying. The average grade on the responses was 76%. To prove deep learning had taken place, he assessed the same group later in a formal exam and the average grade was exactly the same. I have mirrored this with my higher and included some of their resulting work. It will be interesting to see if a seed has been planted when we revisit both the topic for a brief pre prelim run through, and the questions themselves.

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Climate in Jos Chris Nelis.docx Download this file

Liam Callie Emma Catriona.docx Download this file

Tropical atmosphere question.docx Download this file

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Another Fair trade roleplay: Mr Wal Mart meets Mr Bean

2011-12-02T15:21:00.001Z

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No litigation, please, I didn't choose the names!

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Fair Trade broadcast

2011-12-02T13:57:00.001Z

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My S2 are doing roleplay for fair trade. Here is an example of their work.

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U shaped valleys as a Dylan card sort

2011-11-27T20:18:00.001Z

VIDEO0053.3gp Watch on Posterous

Another presentation from the learning event generator of John Davitt. Check over at http://www.twitter.com/marrgeog for the same task fed back through hanging mobiles, children's books, board games and more. A great way to engage learners

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Talking with the geographers

2011-11-22T22:15:00.001Z

I had an insightful discussion with my advanced higher class today which was really broad ranging. I had asked first of all for some of their thoughts on why they had carried on with geography through their school careers, as we are currently trying to structure our new S3 courses to attract interest for potential S4 choice and content coverage. It was interesting to hear that several students miss the opportunity to focus study around a single country, something they were afforded in the lower school, and something which many geography departments seem to be phasing out. They also liked "old fashioned" skills like using the atlas and had noted its absence from nearly all of their geography until advanced higher.
In terms of certificate classes, I was intrigued by how local geographies influenced enjoyment. Coasts, for instance, and glaciation (Arran lies just a short boat trip away) were very popular, yet in my previous school, senior students usually focused their study on human geography, a product of their urban environment.
The most surprising product of the discussion lay in the attitudes and opinions around advanced higher. I have had several students in the past thank me after they had completed the course, but in one case, the thanks came two years after! Many previous students have simply not been prepared for either the level of independence or the volume of work and, unfortunately, its occasionally the teacher who is viewed as the root cause of this injustice :) Only with hindsight have students realised the benefits, but this group seem very aware of them. One student said they felt it had been the best possible grounding for what lay ahead next year- not geography, but medicine, I believe! They had qualified this by talking about the realisation that the folio would not complete itself (70% of the overall grade) and as a result, they really had to organise and motivate themselves in a way they hadn't previously. Home study had been different too, as it had been commented on that, although high expectations had been put on the students in terms of workload, unlike higher, the teachers were not chasing for it as the onus was on the student to manage it. Contrary to what I may have thought, students appreciated front loading the course with statistical, sampling and graphical techniques as they now felt well equipped to include these in their own work. Most importantly, every student, even the one candidate who had questioned whether she would have chosen the course if given the choice again, were pleased that they had the greatest amount of control over their learning, their chosen interest and how they explored it, moving away from the prescriptive content in other years. The small group dynamic makes this an enjoyable class to teach, but also allowed a rich discussion about geographical learning that is sometimes not even possible with colleagues within the constraints of the school day. As The Jam once said, or to paraphrase at least, the kids know where its at :)

Test post

2011-11-20T22:03:00.002Z

Open Space Web-Map builder Code

Conflict and co-operation

2011-11-13T23:35:00.002Z

Categories: Geography General, Urban
Just a short post to keep everything together for tomorrow. I thought the water conflict mapmight be useful for Higher tomorrow, as we move from the need for water management schemes to the benefits and problems of their implementation. Before we do this, I'm going to adapt an exercise from Richard Allaway's site. It's a little revision exercise and I'm going to use some of the terminology and examples from the past few lessons e.g. seepa ge, multi-purpose scheme, Bureau of reclamation etc and do a taboo type exercise in four parts. I'm going to use the map to introduce some conflicts around dam construction and then will try to simulate a debate, with two groups in favour of management and two groups opposed. It might even be useful to bring in alternative examples which highlight issues, such as this, also from Rich. If we are able, I'd like to have some IT access for this activity. I also might try to pick up this for my own teaching.
With Advanced Higher, I'm going to do a bit of base mapping using the map table in prep for the Geographical Study and then tiptoe around the rest of the folio. Finally, with S4, I'm beginning to realise we are in the dash to the prelim and, although I'll start with this as recap on inner cities, I'll need to rattle through the suburbs tomorrow if possible.

So, were we right?

2011-11-02T18:07:00.001Z

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Here are some class attempts at placing people within the urban area, a follow up to a twitter/Facebook info haul taken from friends to inform this lesson. The statements are all on the photos and some examples of work to complement them. The discussion and reasoning part of this task was very pleasing.

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So, were we right?

2011-11-02T14:20:00.001Z

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Why it pays to be social

2011-11-01T21:20:00.001Z

I suppose this is a bit of an advert for what twitter can offer for learners experiences, as I currently find myself in the situation where I'm looking to state a case for our departmental account adding value.
Context
My S4 classes have been looking at land use in towns & cities, primarily through a streetview tour of the mean and mild streets of Glasgow (I may have shown some bias in the choice of location). I wanted to assess the class understanding of the expected pattern of land use through real life examples. I needed to source these quickly while the topic was 'hot' and also wanted to extend thinking skills by using some examples which didn't exactly fit the norm. Enter the networks...
Social Services
I put out a tweet, more in hope than expectation, asking for any people in my network, if they had time, to share in 140 characters a little clue about their own urban environment - simple things such as the type of houses, services, transport, recreational space immediately surrounding them. My twitter timeline is public, but I also sought some help through good friends on Facebook, who had a little more room to express themselves. The response from my social network was quite staggering and in a very short space of time I had a rich source of lesson material.
Where am I?
I decided to keep the lesson simple for now with a possible follow up. I provided a blank urban model with clearly defined zones; the central district, inner town/city, suburbs and the rural/urban fringe. The students worked in pairs to put my friends names in the correct urban land use zone. For example, 'Andy' stayed next to a golf course, a lough and a convenience store but in a mostly residential area. Students quickly decided he was in the suburbs. This was correct, as Andy stays a few miles out of Belfast. Others were harder. For instance, 'Max' stayed in a pretty tree lined area, but also talked about the Southern mainline and the 5 takeaway shops on his doorstep. This kept the class occupied for most of the period but inevitably, students being full of doubt for my good intentions, they wanted proof that these were indeed real people. Which brings me to the potential follow up. I aim to put some students work out via posterous to let those who contributed see where their clue put them, but would also like some element of personal response to a selected few from the students.
Conclusions
This lesson was spur of the moment, quick to source but now sustainable as I have a permanent resource from it. I have been able to share the resource with the department, giving others the opportunity to use, adapt, create from it. My students interest was sufficiently sparked by the characters that they effectively engaged with both the activity and the learning intentions. The exercise required students to be critical thinkers and make decisions where the result wasn't always obvious and justify it. Finally, the lesson was created by drawing on a wide population sample giving a relevance and reality to the work that the class have been doing. Once again, a huge thank you to all who participated, without you, the lesson wouldn't have existed and, I suspect, the topic that bit more distant from the learners.

Test

2011-10-23T18:11:00.001Z

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Playing with stop motion makers

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Can you help 2P?

2011-10-07T10:38:00.001Z

Let's try that again, had an error with code first time:

Could you please help us fill our map up? We are looking to see if there is a pattern to where our electronic goods originate from. We think that there will be a far greater spread than there used to be, with Japan in particular previously dominating this market. Simply click on 'edit map' click on the tear shaped marker and drop it wherever you like. Remember to tell us what the product is and remember to save (blue button on the right hand side). If you are feeling more generous with your time than you are already being, you could tell us where the product was made. Again, we think this might be different from where the company comes from. Many thanks in advance.

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Can you help 2P?

2011-10-07T10:30:00.001Z

We are looking at the electronics industry, for years a Japanese dominated field. Could you please consider dropping a marker on the map telling us what your favourite electronic gadget is and where the company who make it come from? For example, I have an HTC phone, so I dropped a pin on Taiwan and listed the product. Also, if its easily visible, within the marker text, could you say where it was made? We think these might differ. Placing a marker is easy. Just click on 'edit map', click on the tear shaped symbol and put the marker wherever you like. Remember to click save on the right hand toolbar afterwards. Many thanks for your help in advance.

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Settle the argument

2011-10-05T15:36:00.001Z

VIDEO0045.3gp Watch on Posterous

Had a fantastic period with S4 today. We have just started the Settlement topic and were discussing site, situation and function. I'll post more of these later, but this argument about a city's natural boundary was a good snapshot of the work, showing a good awareness of limiting factors in a settlements growth. Apologies for the strong Scottish brogue. Kenny Dalglish eat your heart out :)

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Geography as Science

2011-10-04T21:32:00.001Z

I am a human geographer at heart. I've always linked Geography to the other social subjects and studied it in conjuction with, first of all, history, politics and English, before finally specialising in Geography and Politics for my honours. I do, however, think it is important at a time when Geography seems to be losing some claims on its territory (in my opinion, particularly in the way CfE outcomes are divided across the curriculum) that we sell ourselves as a scientific discipline too. Our strongest tool here is geographical enquiry.
This relies on being able to conduct studies in the field. Although we weren't able to do that today, my S3 class had a really productive period drawing conclusions about the value of enquiry. We have been studying river landscapes and started the period, which we titled "Researching Rivers", with a simple question- Why? This triggered a broad ranging discussion where I suggested that I could send out groups of students to research rivers and, without me directing them, the students would be able to frame their own enquiry. This brought the discussion round to science and I asked why scientists conduct experiments. I was surprised that many students thought that it was to make the subject more practical and enjoyable, while some others thought it was to learn through experience. While elements of this may be true, I was pleased when a very astute member of the class suggested it was about proof of assumptions.
This gave us the opportunity to discuss the events at CERN, Einstein's theory about nothing being faster than the speed of light and science always looking for the answers. I then asked the students why they should trust everything I tell them about rivers when theories which have shaped the nature of modern science are being questioned. It would be reasonable to test the way that I had modelled rivers against real research and first hand data.
I then presented the class with a bag of props. 2 metre sticks, a ruler, a bag of corks, a stopwatch, a clinometer and a measuring tape were there, as far as I remember. The class were asked to determine 6 ways in which they could confirm or challenge the assumptions that I had encouraged in teaching rivers. They were reminded that their methods would have to be as rigorous as those of the scientist and they could only use the props given. I had some outstanding descriptions of fieldwork techniques presented which considered the need for accuracy, consistent sampling and showed a real awareness of expected changes along the long profile of a river and how these could be verified. It is the first time I have taught a Standard Grade class the theory behind geographical enquiry where the learning did not feel forced or removed from the reality. I also feel that placing enquiry with scientific research in this way gave students a far better understanding of the why and how of the techniques. Overall, a very pleasing outcome to the lesson.

No Problem

2011-10-04T20:30:00.001Z

If you can see past the tired board and actually read the words, this was a surprisingly successful exercise which was supposed to last 15 minutes or so in preparation for a future activity. It ended up lasting the full period with an enthusiastic S2 class who relished tackling the problem. We had suggestions which led to landscaped eco-housing which utilized space on the mountains enclosing the city (for so long seen as a barrier), a hi-tech bike train and monorail powered by solar and tidal energy, underwater colonies based on actual pilot developments, Bi-level cities separating traffic to the lower level and leisure space to the sky level and a number of other great ideas. We are going to collect some bits of audio where the students can talk more about their suggestions and can come back to this afterwards. The lessons for me here were 1) that students can surprise themselves with the level of their thinking 2) that it pays to come off a timeline to explore student creativity and 3) that even supposedly 'tired' topics can have some mileage if the learning is opened up to student interest. This is a unit I have been thinking seriously about sidelining, but activities like this and some of the associated content should be brought to wherever we go next with our curriculum if we want to keep it relevant and engaging.

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Memorise a place #ME0074

2011-10-02T21:13:00.001Z

Going to use a variant of this tomorrow with my S4 group, who have just started settlement. I'm going to ask each student to memorise their journey home, map it and then re-examine it the next day for accuracy. We will then use the resultant memory maps to first of all discuss the nature of our settlement. Does it have a recognizable start and finish? What kind of services does it provide? Are there clear areas of housing separate from shops and industry? What does our place have that others don't? What's it missing that other places have? This will lead quite naturally into settlement hierarchy and function. We will then use these later to develop an idea of land use organisation which will help when we look at urban spaces. I'm going to supplement this tomorrow in class by looking at the site of Glasgow on the OS map and asking students to identify the centre, account for its location and subsequent growth and then ask students to draw a notional boundary for Glasgow and explain their choice. Hope to record some audio and post with images of student choices.

Culzean Trip

2011-09-28T12:49:00.001Z

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This is a small collection of images from today as our final S3 Culzean trip draws to a close. What a marvellous place to study geography! In the morning, our group split in two and moved between the Culzean coast and the visitor exhibition. The coastline offers excellent opportunities not just for erosion studies, but also to look at the effects of isostatic uplift (raised beaches) and the effect of meltwater (gorges) on the landscape. Chuck in a bit of geology and it ticks a lot of boxes.
We spent the rest of the day looking at tourism and its impacts, with environmental quality and attractiveness surveying. A really full day, very useful for understanding not just geographical themes, but geographical enquiry.

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Testing new posterous update

2011-09-17T22:23:00.001Z

Been having some bother with the app, just seeing if this posts with a photo. This is from Portmeirion, taken in the summer

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Lo-Fi learning

2011-09-17T13:23:00.001Z

Looking back over this weeks lessons in my planner, I'm struck by how little technology I've used. Here is a snapshot of the learning
Monday
Advanced Higher, on returning from a fieldwork weekend, mind mapped hypotheses, methodology, results and conclusions in stations for psammosere, hydrology, coastal and slope studies. It was the easiest way to share understanding with a tangible, visible result. It also prepared the students perfectly for the subsequent NAB assessment for Geographical Methods and Techniques later in the week.
With S4, we made a concession to technology and used Google Earth to introduce an area, including layers and streetview. However, the main focus of the lesson involved a whole class post it sort under defined headings followed by groupwork on diamond 9 templates to prioritise solutions to physical, social and environmental problems of developments in the tundra.
Higher used post its also to label a blank hydrological cycle in sequence. Although the topic was new, the cycle was not, and this was a quick way to establish strengths and development areas and cut dead time from the learning process.
Tuesday
The main interactions today which were not linked to Monday's lessons involved introducing an assessment task to S2. We are trying to move away from the idea that assessments are sit down, silent, solo exercises and this involved a paired card sort on a Japanese natural disaster, followed by a 100 word summary of the event (students found this incredibly difficult, particularly as we also imposed a lower word limit which they had to exceed). The options thereafter involved using the card sort to either write or storyboard tsunami causes and the specific impacts of this event. Again, the criteria for this introduced significant challenge. It will be interesting to hear students self reflection on this.
S3 had been given a single term each and had to pool these together as a class to distinguish between cause, effect and solutions for river pollution. David Walliams Thames trials were the focal point for introducing this topic, proof that students do heed at least some of the news
Wednesday and Thursday mostly involved giving time over to students to complete some of the learning activities from earlier in the week and present their findings. One S4 class did, however, begin looking at the Mediterranean Climate. We sources information in 30 second slots, working individually, then in pairs, then groups and presented these on a spider diagram for all to see. Brilliant outcomes, as the image of the typical package holiday was screaming out from the board and allowed us to both suggest this image could be challenged and begin to look at the pros and cons of tourism.
Conclusions
As many people before me have said, technology should be a vital component for today's students, but it shouldn't be a crutch and it shouldn't be used just because its shiny and new. I think I could probably have used elements of tech to deliver similar lesson outcomes, but I'm not sure the lessons would have been more effective. In many ways, having access to less technology in my current school has forced me to be a more resourceful teacher. The important thing is to take it off that planner page and continue to share it. This, for me, is one of the truest values of technology and is central to how we are also trying to promote our students work, paper or electronic.

Pecha Kucha: a hard sell

2011-09-05T15:31:00.001Z

This is a no frills post about using Pecha Kucha with my Higher class. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is basically 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide and no text to deliver a talk on a topic. We tailored this slightly amongst groups for explanation of coastal feature formations and then gave the opportunity for peers to question or feed back after each presentation. The activity was peer assessed also, as marking grids were used during the talks.
Some observations: students found this very difficult as they felt rushed and therefore prone to mistakes. I related this to the exam and the same problem of time and organisation. We also discussed why groups were running out of time and I suggested it was due to the repetition between speakers. This is easy to extract in an oral exercise, but is also a common complaint of teachers marking exam scripts.
I asked how the class were as teachers. Some students felt they had excelled, but in reality, they had all at some point been hesitant, checked for approval, mumbled through points of uncertainty and doubted themselves. I stressed I wasn't assessing their ability as teachers, but it is important to speak with authority and confidence on your given topic. Again, in examination terms, I've marked scripts, given them back with suggestions only for candidates to tell me they were thinking of writing something but doubted its relevance. If its not on the paper, it can't gain the marks.
Not everyone felt they understood their own topic and less again felt others did. Students felt that the focused nature of the task was good but others said they had not taken enough responsibility for their learning. Again, the teacher doesn't sit the exam and I think its important to address this early.
Finally, we talked about how to make it better. I gave an example from a few years ago of a question were rote learning of the topic didn't give enough to answer the coasts question in the exam well. It was more important that students understood how their learning was linked e.g. what links a cliff to a wave cut platform, a headland and bay to a stack. We talked about how not to study, but haven't resolved the best method as it will differ by pupil.
In summation, I am sure that some students saw the value of the activity, but am equally sure that some still won't see it as a bigger picture. I think I would use this again. Presenting the first part took me out of my comfort zone. I can't help thinking that the experience will be less important to students in the end up than the marking grid which came with it. Please let me know your experiences using pecha kucha and share them in the comments.

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Stepping Stones

2011-08-30T18:46:00.001Z

This was a simple, but enjoyable activity which could be used for just about any subject. In this example, we were using it to help teach feature formations. I did the same type of activity with S3 and S5 for rivers and glaciation respectively. The general premise is to spread some key terms around randomly and ask students to 'walk' through an explanation. For each stepping stone, students must develop the relevance of the term in respect to the overall explanation.
For our example above, students were asked to walk through drumlin formations. This was useful exam practice as the knowledge was fine, but the order of the response was a little muddled. It allowed me to link this to organisation of exam responses. For S3, it was really a really useful piece of knowledge assessment and allowed us to identify a river feature which we would need to develop and one where whole class knowledge was secure. An activity I will definitely be using again.

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Really lovely hungry man and sauce dips (do not adjust your sets)

2011-08-22T21:42:00.001Z

While the above sounds like a most forgettable scenario, it is one that I remembered easily from a students jotter this afternoon, exactly the purpose of the statement in the title. This was Michael creating a revision mnemonic for his work on climate graphs. The class were finding memorising the important parts of the graph for inclusion in the description difficult and we set this as a short exercise in the class to be finished at home. So what does it mean? Although It's not in order, it refers to

R- range of temperature

L- lowest and

H- highest precipitation and temperature

M- the months when these occur

A- annual precipitation, if easily quantifiable/ available

S- seasonal variations

D- descriptive words e.g. hot, dry, mild etc

This is a technique I've used before, but had completely forgotten about until the opportunity presented itself today. A very simple and, hopefully, effective way to memorise key ideas and content.

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'Thunking' Skills

2011-08-21T20:10:00.001Z

Tried using some thunks (http://www.thunks.co.uk) with classes last week with mixed results. I like the idea of a question which seems inane but, when used in the right circumstances, can provoke disagreement. I'll share one instance which worked well and one which didn't.
With two S4 classes, I was ready to begin looking at hot deserts. Two things had been playing on my mind. One was how strictly we as teachers define natural regions in geography. Most teachers, myself included, start looking at natural regions by mapping them. This adds to a notion that such regions are easily contained by boundaries, something we then turn on it's head when examining desertification and the vulnerable fringes of such zones.
The other factor foremost in my thoughts was the difficulty in describing a climate evident in some students earlier work on rainforests. I wanted students to think a little more deeply about what makes a hot desert just that.
The period with my large S4 group went well. They are a class where discussion usually flourishes not only due to the number of potential opinions due to the class size, but also due to the confidence of some of the individuals within it. I started the period with some pre-picked thunks - is it ever ok to cheat? Can days have a colour? Which weighs more, lined paper or blank? This set the tone before we moved on to the subject specific. An ex colleague of mine, Kevin O'Hagan, had drawn my attention to a story about the Ataxama desert in South America. Part of this desert had received 32 inches of snow in 24 hours. I asked the class if it was possible to still call the Atacama a desert. This led to discussion of what constitutes a desert, how a desert climate may be typically viewed in terms of temperature and precipitation, why freak events shouldn't distort an overall pattern and how we might describe that climate in geographical terms through temperature range, annual and seasonal rainfall patterns etc.
The second question I posed was after I had asked students to re-examine their natural regions maps for desert locations. As these gave very set boundaries for deserts, I asked if it was possible to say that deserts had a beginning and an end. One of the most interesting discoveries from this part of the discussion was that a number of students thought they did. From this, we could set about discussing why desert boundaries may be in a constant state of flux, thereby introducing desertification. For this class, thunks were a valuable tool in reaching the aims of our lesson.
With my smaller class in the same year group, the lesson could not have been more different and was down to a miscalculation on my part of what might engage the class. Despite, or perhaps because of the smaller numbers, I have always found it very difficult to engage this class in discussion. There are some very able students in the group, but students who are much more reticent to air their view or, in some cases (and not a bad thing) want to know the purpose of an activity before engaging fully in it rather than seeing where it takes them. I had thought that perhaps the random nature of the starter questions might relax the class into the subject specific part but, in hindsight, thunks only delayed my teaching input here rather than enriching it. I would use these again with the same class, but maybe as an anonymous vote or as anonymous written returns which could then be brought into the lesson at the appropriate point.
So, overall, in terms of the success of the strategy, a score draw. For the way in which it worked with the first class, I would encourage others to try it, but think carefully about who you might use it with and how. Please let me know if you try/ have tried thunks with classes and how it went by leaving a comment below.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Seeing through the crowds: How to analyze a riot

2011-08-21T19:21:00.001Z

So far, my new Advanced Higher class have been thinking about the Geographical Study, the part of their portfolio which involves independent fieldwork. I have previously been guilty of giving this less prominence early in the course as we tried to equip classes with the techniques that they would need for field study, and am pleased that topics are in place for most candidates already. With that in mind, we are changing direction tomorrow as I focus on Geographical Issues. I'm planning on using current events as a trigger again, just as we did with local issues surrounding the school when introducing how to conduct fieldwork around a hypothesis. This time, I'm going to look at the London riots.
I realise that the riots have split opinion with regards to their cause(s), and a number of colleagues directed me to some incredibly biased reporting of events. I have my own strong views on this, but am stepping back from this to see a) whether students can make decisions based on the strength of evidence and argument and b) whether any actually conclude that a source at odds with their own opinion might actually present the most convincing case.
This link is a good starting point for a variety of different perspectives on the riots, but I'd rather discuss our way in to the topic by seeing what students perceptions of the riots and rioters are. Afterwards, we will take one of the articles and, after a brief read, discuss the merits of the authors argument. At this point I will probably play devils advocate to opinion presented as fact, bias presented as authoritative and will try to encourage students to look beyond the words to, for instance, the author, the target audience and more. After this, we will spend some time using Russel Tarr's source analyzer for some of the other articles.
In as much as this is not entirely geographical, it will introduce early in the course key skills of critical evaluation. The geographical issues element of the course is worth 30% in marks but, in my opinion, worth a lot more in developing transferable skills which will help the students beyond their school careers.

The sound of Scottish summer

2011-08-11T11:36:00.001Z

The sound of Scottish summer.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

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Are maps becoming more introspective? #maps #mapping #geography

2011-07-27T21:51:00.001Z

This is just a short throw down of some thoughts based on a discussion I had today while doing some extra work that's come my way. We were talking about international boundaries and the shape of the world map, in particular, some of the more regular or straight line boundaries. The discussion reminded me that as a youngster (and still to this day) I was absolutely fascinated by the atlas, the location of places, the assembly of boundaries and the likes. However, in thinking about the curriculum in Scotland, it would almost be possible to have a very minimalistic mapping input to Geography education, and in feedback, certainly over the last 5 years, it seems to be an element of geographical learning that students enjoy less.
I used to find this puzzling as mapping has never been so in vogue. Students on facebook will check in to locations, creating their own little footprints on maps. Some will tweet with geotagged ramblings. Many web apps have location functions. On top of that, many cars and phones will have navigation. However, this is clearly a different type of map than the ones I was brought up with. I think there is maybe less curiosity about far flung places because of the huge amount of accessible material (although recently, some of my own students challenged me on this). To ask about a place is to initiate a google search for information which may be quickly forgotten. I think students do respond to the maps which are more personal to themselves - showing friends where they are, sharing cool places, those to bodyswerve, those to be endured. However, we seem to be looking more and more at a map centred around ourselves and our own movements. We might share this
map with the world, we might even be helping to crowd source a bigger one, but effectively, it's our pin that matters. I don't claim this as a truth, just an observation and would happily be proved wrong. What do others think? Sent from my iPod

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The Amazing Story of Brody

2011-06-28T14:50:00.001Z

The Amazing Story of Brody.amr Listen on Posterous

Last river story, at request from Rachel and Emma :-)

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Showing Callum how posterous works

2011-06-28T06:30:00.001Z

Callum says hello.amr Listen on Posterous

As it says

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Naomi and Lucy - a river tale

2011-06-24T09:43:00.003Z

Naomi and Lucy - a river tale.amr Listen on Posterous

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Gillian appearing as Delta Lake

2011-06-24T09:43:00.001Z

river way gillian calder.amr Listen on Posterous

Another river story

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Rachael does Rivers

2011-06-24T09:21:00.007Z

My life's journey.amr Listen on Posterous

The journey of a river as an autobiography

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Kyle and the Nile

2011-06-24T09:21:00.005Z

Kyle and the Nile - The Story of a River.amr Listen on Posterous

Looking at a river from its upper to lower course through a narrative. Kyle is 14.

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Kyle and the Nile

2011-06-24T09:21:00.003Z

Kyle and the Nile - The Story of a River.amr Listen on Posterous

Looking at a river from its upper to lower course through a narrative. Kyle is 14.

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Rachael does Rivers

2011-06-24T09:21:00.001Z

My life's journey.amr Listen on Posterous

The journey of a river as an autobiography

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Cavern timeline

2011-06-22T09:56:00.001Z

>
> <p align='center'><code><iframe scrolling='no' src='http://classtools.net/widgets/timeline_8/twXYI.htm?400?300' width='408' height='320' frameborder=0></iframe></code><p align='center'><a href='http://classtools.net/widgets/timeline_8/twXYI.htm'>Click here for larger version</a></p>
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Rock Garden

2011-06-13T23:18:00.001Z

I was on the way to work this morning and found myself (as I often do) lamenting the state of some part of my house, in this case the garden. As the photographs show, the path is in a pretty poor state and the wall is being colonized by tiny ferns. In this instance, however, at least my annoyance and phone obsession married to complement my double period of advanced higher first thing.

We are trying to incorporate fieldwork around a real live local issue to give context to the geographical methods and techniques that students must be conversant in. Any Troon local would tell you that the future of Marr College, an old listed building whose green dome dominates the back end of the town, has been a highly contentious issue. There has been significant local opposition to the idea of a move to a new campus, with the preference given to a refurbished school, something which I think the consultation is now leaning towards. The amazing thing for me is the strength of feeling the students themselves express. One of the students in class today linked generations of her family to the school and others in the class were so very aware of things such as cost implications, issues which sometimes turn off younger interested parties. We decided to mobilize this interest by asking the class to consider the need for refurbishment/ relocation, if there was one at all.

This morning, before we started, two members of the class were sent out with trundle wheels to measure the perimeter of the old and 'new' buildings. We adapted Rhan's weathering scale and first of all looked at the external fabric of the building. This was really useful as, although we sampled the whole school, we were able to explore the intricacies of stratified sampling techniques by splitting an even amount of sample points between both parts of the school, important as the student perception was one of the new building being less fit for purpose. After this, we systematically sampled 15 points on both sites, therefore introducing another type of sampling. Students really embraced the task, got busy with their phones and picked out some great examples of physical, chemical and biological weathering. Furthermore, I think quite a few were surprised by the outcomes. A real added bonus was that the systematic sample totally missed the worst part of the new building, a fact not lost on some of the class, opening up a discussion about accuracy, validity and justification.

Finally, we spent the second period indoors doing building decay surveys, again splitting the sites, but this time doing a random sample. We were able to identify the flaws in this method (for example, clustering) and were introduced to a very useful tool for urban studies. Again, much credit to the class who were once again enthusiastic in their pursuit of their results. I'm sure the councils estates team could have a few good recruits from this group! We just about managed to discuss hypotheses before we finished and have enough to introduce some simple descriptive statistics tomorrow. I found this a really enjoyable and relevant way to introduce theory heavy content. Into the bargain, my photos allowed the students to visualize chemical and biological weathering. I don't feel so bad about the garden anymore :-)

Globalisation races

2011-06-03T10:55:00.001Z

Over the last week, I have observed and then attempted a lesson from my colleague, David Marshall (@davie_marsh on twitter) which worked very well for the theme of globalisation. David had come up with a simple groups activity which perfectly illustrated what he called ‘time travel’, but in a wider sense, the ‘shrinking’ of distance due to a number of factors. David chose communication to approach this and I’m writing up how I used the same ideas in my lesson yesterday.
When I knew I would be observing David, I decided to send out a message on twitter to see how far it could go within 50 minutes, unbeknown to the students. The results were staggering, as the map above shows. We had 130+ responses and covered five continents. I’ll come back to this later in terms of how we used it in the lesson.
When the class arrived, I asked them to write down what they had for dinner the previous evening. We left this with the promise of returning to it later. I then explained the activity as set out by David. I asked for the fastest runners in the class to form a group. We then identified six students with mobile phones, fully charged, who could exchange each others numbers. Finally, the rest of the class would form a ‘Chinese Whispers’ line. Each class would be given the same message which would be distributed outside, as we would need space for our runners.
When the class had decanted and reassembled on the front lawns, the message (a definition of globalisation) was distributed. The mobile phone group had to text the message round the group, the runners had to pass the message in a relay and the Chinese Whisperers, well, they had to whisper it along a line of people. The runners set off like the clappers, the whisperers quickly lost large chunks of the message and the texters sent, received and forwarded in a race which became quite competitive. First to finish were the whisperers, but only one word of the message had survived in its original state. We discussed how, pre-technological advances, word of mouth would have been a common way to share information, but also how some of the information became distorted and changed. The texters were a very close second. Of all the groups, they were the only ones who could relay the message back. They had quickly distributed information between each other and, really, distance was not an obstacle. The runners were last to finish and also struggled to recall what the message was.
This was ideal for illustrating how communications advances have revolutionised the way that we exchange information and ideas across geographical boundaries. The Arab Spring is a perfect news example of this, but we returned to the classroom and looked at where our tweet had gone. It was quite amazing that in the short time that we had been outside, our words could travel to Christchurch, NZ and back with many other stops, but the exercise was also useful for looking at some of the less desirable aspects of globalisation. We had one reply from Africa and none from South America, so we were able to talk about access to technology and how some people benefit but, in many ways, some people become further disadvantaged through the idea of this shrinking world. It set an absolutely perfect context for our exploration of this theme through football and fashion later.
Finally, we came back to dinner. The first two students I asked had macaroni cheese and chicken korma, the third had more traditional food, but had rice as an accompaniment. We were able to tie globalisation into not only the exchange of ideas and information, but also things like food, clothes and so on. A thoroughly enjoyable lesson to watch and to teach. Why not share your opinion with @davie_marsh ? ;-)

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Untitled

2011-05-30T22:19:00.001Z

I'm seeing a new Higher class tomorrow for the first time. I've always been critical of the jump to non-experiences when pupils enter the senior phase. There is such a temptation to force feed content and hope that students pass the memory test at the end of it all. I think that Geography in particular, due to the vast amount that the course covers, can often be delivered in this way. It acts as insurance for the teacher who stresses about their ability to get through the course, but dulls development of critical skills which are needed in both S6 and beyond.
A couple of years ago, I spent an introductory period pretty much telling students what we would be covering without providing any context. Weeks later after a couple of homework exercises and having had a bit of time to get to know the class, I realised that they could reel off learned responses, but had absolutely no idea what the lithosphere actually was, for example. So, how can I ensure that proper context has been given, firstly for this Physical Environment topic which can be so relentless in its new terminology? The easiest way I can think of is through cake...
When this idea was forming, I thought the pitch might be too low, but I've reconciled myself to it. Firstly, most of the students I see tomorrow will be just off the back of the most intensive rote learning of their lives as they prepped for exams. Secondly, the idea, for me, makes links clear. Imagine a cake without the sponge or the icing/ topping. It wouldn't quite work, would it? So imagine that the foundation of the cake, that sponge is laid out as the lithosphere. It's pretty solid, yet changes in conditions can lead to it being put under pressure - temperature, pressure etc. On its own, its bare, barren, almost lifeless. Can the students think of any areas of the earths surface geology which fits this description? Where are they? What are they? Why are they like that?
To make the cake enticing, to make it come alive, if you like, the decorative layer is important. Much thinner, but where its all going on. This gives the cake its flavour, character and can be influenced by what's beneath it and also, I suppose, can influence what's above it- what compliments those flavours. For instance, would jelly diamonds or chocolate buttons go best on chocolate icing? This layer is a little like the biosphere. Different types of geology in the lithosphere influence the development of the biosphere and that, in turn, influences the vegetation which develops at surface level.
Bring in the cream, pour it on the cake. Where does it go? Can we see 'watersheds'? Does it all stay on the surface and, if not, where does it end up? Is any lost? Does it change the surface of the cake in any way? Surely this is a perfect in for study of the actions of water in the hydrosphere.
Finally, for the Physical Environment topic, we could explore atmosphere through asking about the perfect serving temperature, how its attained and regulated and what happens if its varied.

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A captive audience listen to @GeoBlogs explain the origin of @missionexplore #TMbeyond

2011-05-29T17:31:00.001Z

VIDEO0028.3gp Watch on Posterous

More to come on this later

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Ignore again. Need for parents info eve

2011-05-16T12:18:00.001Z

See the full gallery on Posterous

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For class use. Please ignore

2011-05-16T12:04:00.001Z

See the full gallery on Posterous

For open night

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Simples: The easiest lesson in the world

2011-05-14T20:56:00.001Z

Sometimes, technology is a great thing, but other times, the best lesson comes from a simpler approach. Last week, we were teaching about rural change, particularly depopulation and repopulation. The lesson started with every student having a small pink piece of paper on their desk. We posed the question at the outset of the period - 'Where will you be in ten years time?'.
The response had to be anonymous and had to include a physical location and a little about life, especially careers. The replies were incredibly illuminating and sometimes, a whole life map was unfolding- precise career destinations such as marine biologists, RSAMD trained singers and taking on family businesses amongst others. The really interesting geographical pattern was the desire of many to get out of the small town. We spent some time discussing the reasons and then applied the same principles to rural villages - boredom, lack of jobs, few services (and some which had closed) etc. Depopulation covered.
From taking this trend, I suggested that, based on preferred locations expressed, Glasgow should be rapidly expanding (agreed across the class). Yet, it isn't. In fact, I ventured, there is a trend in the opposite direction. We took Troon, our location, as an example. When I asked the class to describe a typical resident of the town, the immediate reply was 'old'. We tried to explore the appeal- quieter, more quaint, a little more money in the bank from retirement etc. The next most common reply was families with kids. Again, the reasons flowed- better quality of life, less crime, less noise and so on. Apply to rural village and add the vital ingredient: jobs. Almost all of the students in ten years see themselves in high flying, high earning positions. It was agreed that Troon, despite its attractions, is not a cheap place to live. So, now we had the perfect profile for the new rural residents, retirees with money, well salaried professionals with families. The classes are now working on mock Facebook profiles of rural to urban and urban to rural migrants, the nearest to technology the lesson took us. Easy to manage, powerful messages, students leading their own learning. As the title says, simples.

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Recycled Shanty Town Task

2011-05-08T21:20:00.005Z

S2 shanty towns

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Categories: s1 and s2, Urban
A good activity should never be wasted and, thankfully, found a space at my current school for our old favelas activity (above, minus the clip, which doesn't seem to have embedded). We are studying India and the students themselves in one class had indicated a desire to learn more about the rich/poor divide. I'm showing this class selected parts of Kevin McCloud's 'Slumming It', which is available in ten minute chunks on youtube. Some of it is quite graphic in its portrayal of slum life, but sets the tone very well for the activity we later do. The rest of the activity is outlined above. It actually takes a period to discuss the task, as few lessons seem to spark the curiosity and enthusiasm of kids in quite the same way. The 'building' period is manic, but worth it.

College Trip - A geocache placed in search of serenity

2011-05-04T21:59:00.004Z

Categories: Geography General, Other
I was having one of those days today and decided I needed to clear the head before the hour long drive up the road. Although I teach in Troon, it's sometimes easy to forget that we are a stones throw from the sea shore. I took a drive down to the coast and found a good vantage point. Arran cast a gorgeous silhouette against the greyblue horizon and the sun shimmered on the sea. My head emptied and things didn't seem so bad.
That's what I get out of being outdoors and is why geocaching appeals to me. Some time ago now, we discussed geocaching with some S2 and S3 classes. I was curious to know how many students had heard of it (since then, a couple of students have told me about cache finds). I wanted to involve students in placing a cache, so we canvassed opinions about where they would like Troon tourists to see. It was really a lesson about how they would like to see their town represented, but also required them to think quite logically about space and place - the secret geographies became important in a game of hide and seek.
With exams, followed by exams, and then some more exams, I put this on the backburner. Finally, today, in my little time out, I managed to place the cache. We couldn't place it in the most popular suggestion as some are already there and I also wanted to make sure the other locations were not wasted. We created a map, condensed into a QR code and placed it inside the cache, giving everyone who finds it the chance to explore our other suggestions. It'll be a relatively easy find, but we are quite happy with that as it gives the classes contribution a little more exposure. Geocaching site is down just now, but look for 'College Trip' if you're in Troon and at a loose end :-)

Sending words around the world - a response to using social media in teaching #tmayr

2011-05-04T21:15:00.004Z

Categories: Geography General, Other
I attended a teachmeet event recently. It was my first time at one. There were a range of speakers from a variety of different backgrounds. I learned some new things, remembered some old things and got to meet some people in the flesh for the first time, make new contacts and catch up with some old ones. One of the things which became clear early in the evening was the fact that social media is slowly finding its way into classrooms. There were presentations talking about using youtube channels, facebook and the compere, Bill Boyd, was vocal in promoting the value of building networks through these means, especially twitter. It was almost inevitable, then, that twitter would find its way into a presentation too. It's too flexible a tool not to be of use to the teaching profession. Stuart Hepburn of the UWS was explaining how it had been used to communicate with students in an interesting and novel way. For further education institutes, I think this has great potential, but during the presentation in the twitter backchannel at #tmayr , I commented that educators were perhaps missing a trick in not using it to create connections for their classrooms. Last week, in our S1 class taught by my colleague, Mr Marshall, there was a perfect example of what I meant,
Al Humphreys and an S2 class of last year at St Ninians had chatted live while Al was with the Catlin Arctic Survey. Through both Al and Jamie Buchanan Dunlop (on this years trip), we were able to do the same again through a dedicated Marr geography twitter account. The class were studying environmental issues and the scientists were studying one of the most fragile environments on earth. Despite a small hiccup, the communication was instant, encouraged curiosity in the students and gave them a real experience of the geography that they are learning about. Please take a look at our twitter account for the detail. The students are now working on an arctic climate survival exercise based on their responses. It is one of a number of link ups which have facilitated, I would hope, not just deeper understanding but a better appreciation of the subject and the students experiences within it. From using farmers as a sounding board for questions at the start of a standard grade, sourcing questions from around the world for students to respond to on volcanoes to bringing other educators into our class discussions on place, there are a world of ways to use twitter to improve your classroom.

Apparently, place does matter!

2011-04-26T15:09:00.004Z

Place matters

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Categories: Geography General

Well, that's according to the world view of 13 and 14 year olds. We had a wide ranging lesson today with an S2 group (you might want to read the previous post for a bit of context) which went off on some lovely tangents and really couldn't have happened without the assistance of an incredible professional network. I've tried to blog the lesson as close to actuality as I can remember. I'll state at the outset that, even as a Geography Teacher, I find the notion of space and place hard to define as it permeates everything. At times, this felt like I'd re-entered my 'Principles of Geography' theory class at Uni again.

We started off with a picture of a lone bench on the Ballast Bank in Troon (correctly identified by lots of the kids) and discussed the importance of this place to the person the bench is in memory to and also the photographer, who saw a sea view as a fitting epitaph. To the rest of the class, at most, this place is a nice walk and holds no particular importance.

This led on to the phenomenon that is Where the hell is Matt? I thought the class may have seen this before, but they hadn't and were very taken by it, so much so that I think I may have shaped a few future career paths :-) The point of using this clip was to spark curiosity about more than just the funny dances, but the places as well. A discussion followed about which places people would visit and why. What interested me was that, for example, one boy wanted to visit Vegas based totally on the images of that place that have been presented to him through television and other media ('The Hangover', mainly!). Although he felt familiar with Vegas the place, or perhaps because he was 'familiar' with it, he still wanted to experience the place himself. It's easy to forget that places aren't just physical, but have an ambience and a psychological connection too

I then showed the picture from Resolute Bay in Baffin Island and the accompanying quote from Sharon Somerville. The students asked how Sharon and I were in contact, which was a nice story about a place that links us both, The Catlin Arctic Survey Base. We discussed whether remote places lead to a more place aware view of the world. We talked about skype, facebook, msn and all he contacts we had that we had never connected with in their 'place', yet we could describe large parts of, for example, New York city with relative ease. Did our connections lead to a better understanding of place? Is the world so small that we can 'invade' a place without even stepping out the door? In fact, when everything is at the click of a button, is place important at all? The surprising answer to that last question was a resounding 'yes'.

With two exceptions, the class felt that place was vital in understanding world events,understanding connections between places, from something as simple as knowing where it was and how to get there to more cerebral reasons. Over the next couple of slides, a definite feeling from the class that our world view is very much influenced by our 'own places' was emphasised, something that Tony Cassidy had suggested as part of the original discussion. Even for those who felt that place wasn't important, there was a consensus that, watching life in an Indian slum, for example, seemed to repel us, because it wasn't part of our own experience of place. We use our own places as a barometer for everything else in the world around us. It's a constant subconscious comparison.

After this, we had a quick round of Scottish places. As students had clearly indicated the importance of place, it would be interesting to see their mental map of their own country. Using tags, we placed a variety of locations on a blank Scotland on the board. We started with the main settlements, followed up with potentially 'important' Scottish places and finished with three outlying islands. I loved the way this developed. Troon was placed in the Highlands. The rest of the class had an inkling that this was wrong, but it influenced where people put everything else. For instance, Glasgow was placed above Troon, because the person with that tag knew that he would have to travel North to Glasgow from here! As we moved away from the big cities, place knowledge got more and more vague, yet later, some of the types of places I had included were the type of places that students wanted to learn about for their next country study e.g Places with cultural significance. From this, we were able to ascertain a lot of the things that we wanted to be part of our place knowledge and leads us perfectly into this new unit of work with the students as stakeholders in their learning. Perfect! A monster lesson which jumped all over the place but had positive outcomes.

#placematters Or does it?

2011-04-25T20:08:00.005Z

Categories: Geography General
I'm having a cracking discussion on 'place' on twitter right now. It all stemmed from an idea for a lesson tomorrow with an S2 class (which is now out of the window!). We have just started looking at India and one of the barriers to learning I sometimes feel presents itself is a questioning of the need for knowledge of places, regardless of where is being studied. I simply put the same question out on twitter, as shown in the picture above. The response has been quite out of proportion to what I was expecting, and it's been interesting watching the replies come in, although I have to say I've lost track completely.
One of the notable elements of this is that, so far, none of the replies have said that place has no importance. However, three of the earliest replies came from people in the Shetlands, Baffin Island and Stornoway, all geographically remote places. I wonder if people in isolated communities feel more of a need for knowledge of the outside world? I wonder if urban living is so instant that it dulls the thirst for knowledge about other places?
I expected a reply from Geography colleagues, but the swings of the discussion surprised me a little. For instance, there was a debate about whether some places NEED to be taught regardless of students disposition to learning about them. There was a reopening of an old discussion about knowledge v skills and also about the idea of 'useless' knowledge still being important. Most of interest to me was the idea that students should be involved in deciding the place knowledge that they later acquire. As a teacher, this potentially makes my job a lot more difficult and takes me out of my comfort zone, all probable reasons for giving it a go!
I think I may give some time over to classes on this tomorrow, so many points raised, it might be worth doing a stations activity and collating students own thoughts on the matter, as well as shaping some of the place work that we do for the India unit too. Certainly beats the short discussion about the importance of place and, once that had been established, the 'big room' mapping exercise that I had planned in the first place! Thanks to Alan Parkinson, Tony Cassidy, Angus Willson, Caroline Breyley, Sharon Somerville, Steve Bunce, Murray Cockburn, Liz Sutherland and Jan Webb for contributing their thoughts. If anyone would like to contribute to the discussion, please leave a reply here or contact me via twitter at @Kenny73. You could use the hashtag #placematters after your tweet too if replying. Thanks to all for another great wee bit of professional development. I'll leave the last word to Alan:

"...there's a world of places to choose from and some of them should be decided by the students"

Parkinson (2011)

Troon meets @missionexplore

2011-04-19T19:17:00.001Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Geography General

Tried a mix of mission:explore activities with an S2 class today and really enjoyed the outcomes. With a class of 32, this can be a little difficult to manage, but today the class seemed to engage well in the lesson and, hopefully, learned from the experiences.
Before we used the school grounds, we had a really good discussion about space and place, resulting in us deciding which places were happy, sad, threatening etc. This was important, as some of the missions we were planning on doing required an emotional response. The missions which ended up being most succesful, however (perhaps surprisingly), were the ones which allowed a clear link with more traditional geography.
We started by adapting the 'Look out recall' exercise by sitting beside the public right of way at the top of the school grounds. Students were given a couple of minutes to take in the view and then faced away and sketched what they could remember. It was interesting to note that they actually exhibited the principals of good field sketching. All of the major outlines were drawn first and detail came afterwards. Peripheral or less prominent parts of the landscape were not included as, subconsciously, they must not have registered as important. I'm going to use this exercise with classes in future before covering field sketching techniques as it effectively does half the teachers work for them through the pupils own initiative.
Another of the missions I was really impressed by was the 'soil your page' activity. The students went to 3 different locations and took a soil rubbing to compare. Some pages had slightly darker rubs, but most were the same colour. I heard a student say "it's just all dirt", but then we really gave purpose to the activity in a town dominated by the sport of golf. I took my phone out and we checked the superficial geology using the iGeology app. This showed that the area which the school was built on was all clay, sand and gravel from raised beach deposits. However, the golf course across the hedge was blown sand and this allowed us to tie links golf into land uses and terrain.
We also did an activity from the selection which was about exploring the things which were growing in a small area. I chose a strip roughly about 10m in length and the students had to find out how many different plant species could be found, which ones they knew by name and so on. From what looked like just grass and trees, this expanded to include dandelion, daisy, moss, lichens, various unidentified plants growing among the grass blades and was a nice quick and easy study into biodiversity.
We completed a number of other missions too, including finding shelter if we were homeless ( putting students in a different relationship with this familiar space), speculating on what this place would be like in 100 years (some interesting takes on this, including runways for flying cars!) and some others I had put together on a sheet. It was a little unexpected how much we managed to cover in subject content in such a short time and the way that this content was delivered fully included the students in shaping their own learning. A really nice way to get students out of the class and thinking about the everyday in a different way.
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Repetitive strain

2011-04-17T21:04:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Urban, other
Tomorrow, it's a bit of a revision fest. Trying to keep it fresh and not too repetitive, but still relevant to exam content and, also, technique. First and last period see S4, who have now finished the course (and finish up for exam leave in early May), do a bit of work on the settlement topic. I'm going to try to create groups through an easy starter actvity, where each person in the class will have a card on their desk on entering the room. The cards will include typical features of the three main zones of cities, as well as the ways in which each zone has changed. This will allow six groups to be created e.g. a group who have cards with inner city features, another with inner city changes and so on. The groups will then be asked to either describe and explain the likely characteristics of their zone or describe the ways in which their zone has changed in recent times. These could be potential examination questions, so it also allows for some exam practice. We will then spend some time peer assessing the work and trying to improve responses before sharing the end results.
With S3, the end of year exam is on Tuesday. I'm not sure how many students I'll have as some may be sitting exams tomorrow, but if I have a full class, we will aim for maximum course coverage through a walkabout talkabout exercise followd by a closing discussion of the finished exercises.
Finally, I had planned to do some earthquake proofing with S2, but as the shaking table finds itself currently halfway down the Clyde Valley, and having looked at tomorrow's forecast, I'm going to give the class a bit of this, which has always worked well in the past. This also gives a little bit of fieldwork to a year group who I think, in terms of course incorporation, need a lot more.
As an aside, I've been enjoying the break too much to blog about it, but played with this tone matrix for hours and had an idea for how it could be used in a lesson context. I will come back to this...

End Game

2011-03-30T21:39:00.003Z

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More S2 work. Third of three classes, so apologies if its repetitious on previous posts, but I still feel the work deserves more than its place covering the crumbling masonry on my classroom walls :-)

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Collage

2011-03-28T15:13:00.002Z

It seems as though most of the work we are displaying just now relates to the tsunami, although some is past work which I am just now getting a chance to review. However, this is a piece of work which started as something different but, through the students themselves, became focused on current events. This is very important in my mind as it is student led learning rather than a teacher force feeding disaster facts. The students concerned also took this home to complete without invitation. I am really drawn to the unconscious prioritisation of elements of the collage. It seems to me that by placing rescue at the centre and 'Hope' on its own outwith the cluster of words, the piece of work retains an optimistic quality to offset the images of disaster. From Emma, Sophie and Kerry 2D

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#sendaihaiku Personal student responses to the Japanese tsunami

2011-03-27T21:41:00.005Z

Categories: Environmental hazards, writing & assessment, Other
I have been poring through some S2 tsunami haikus. I had shown the class an example haiku below;

When the buildings sway
The victory of structure
is lost in the wave

This was to introduce the structure of a haiku, but also to set the tone that I was looking for. I wasn't really thinking 'geography' at all, just looking for a personal response to human tragedy. I think it's fair to say that summarising such a massive impact event was something that, unsurprisingly, a number of 12 to 13 year old students found too challenging, but some students wrote very powerful haikus, something emboldened by the brevity of the response in my opinion. I am very proud of the students thoughtful approach above and would encourage other schools and practitioners to submit their own classes contributions via the twitter hashtag. We offer nothing yet more than our thoughts and prayers and hope that empathy across distance is met with the other support that the Japanese people need at this time.

Random Assessment - Student's work using the Learning Event Generator

2011-03-23T22:34:00.003Z

Categories: Other
This was time consuming, but worth it. Students, after some initial hesitation, really embraced the assessment modes. Apologies about the stumbling commentary. I also now realise that the elephant linked to the zoo story which ran right through the storyboard! Quite clever use of narrative. Thanks to John Davitt for the inspiration.

1923 Rhapsody

2011-03-23T13:05:00.001Z

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This is a sterling effort, where three students wrote, then one performed a cause, effect and response composition based on David Leat's 1923 Tokyo Earthquake exercise. More to come, as we were using John Davitt's learning event generator.

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Pixton Taster

2011-03-22T23:02:00.002Z

We used this to summarise a piece of learning and intend to use it for a major piece of homework soon. Hope to get a little peer reiew of work tomorrow. A nice tool.

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Apologies if I'e left anyone out, jumping backward and forward between edmodo and pixton. Will happily edit the post

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Homework - The eternal dilemma

2011-03-22T12:39:00.006Z

Categories: Other
I have been keeping this post in reserve, hoping that by the time I publish it, more students will have completed work like Rachel's above. She has clearly understood the exercise, that is, to present a three frame summary of a farming type citing location, landscape and the farming system. I could have asked the class to do the same thing through a past paper, a list of questions, a note, but thought that they might respond to a creative application of their knowledge. Unfortunately, I think I'll be publishing the post.

In doing so, I'm sharing my experience of homework, home learning, independent learning, call it what you will, and also, I suppose, looking for answers. First of all, I should clarify that I don't believe in homework for the sake of homework. The exercise was a precursor to a lesson that I had planned, which it now looks unlikely that I'll be able to deliver. I have regularly tried to give homework which is a stimulus for future learning rather than a repetition, and in this exercise, the knowledge had to be collected and processed by the students themselves before creating the strip. I have, of course, used past paper revision as exam preparation to ensure that students are prepared for current assessements too. However, I'm looking at a gradebook, where 8 out of 29 students have completed the set homework, 2 out of 19 completed a past paper homework in my other S3 class (until SMT involvement, which then turns homework into a conflict) and 2 S2 classes have given scant return on the most recent home exercise, aimed at raising awareness (and money) for the Japanese Tsunami.

I looked back through some of the homework that has been given to various different year groups. In summary, I feel that it's been varied, achievable and useful. We used wallwisher to source information about a topic prior to starting and also as a revision tool. We have used games, diamond 9 sorting exercises, food labelling, Google Earth, collective mapping to show globalisation, learning walks, photographs and more standard pieces of written homework. Individual learning styles have all been given a chance to shine. Yet, I still find the same problem in terms of submission rates. I still find there to be little appreciation of the role of home learning in the overall. I must also stress that I don't feel that I over set in terms of homework, so I find it even more puzzling when so little is returned. Perhaps I'm just having a good moan, but I would be grateful of any insights, whether from fellow professionals or students. Is there a point to homework? And if so, what am I missing?

Quick Quiz

2011-03-14T14:19:00.000Z

For supported study tonight

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A teaching response to Japanese tragedy

2011-03-13T20:49:00.004Z

Categories: Environmental hazards
Yet again, as we teach tectonic hazards, a major disaster has occurred. I thought Christchurch was it, but the subsequent events of the weekend in Japan show that nature never fully shows its hand. Japan, amongst all countries which lie on fault lines or plate boundaries, is probably best prepared for major tectonic events. It has invested billions in the infrastructure which mostly withstood Friday's massive earthquake. Instead of celebrating a triumph of modern engineering, we are left with the images of the tsunami which followed devastating coastal communities, as well as witnessing the very real threat of a nuclear disaster. I feel if I overplay this with the classes, on the back of the Christchurch earthquake, it will a) trivialise the event b) become repetitive and disengage learners and c) be an abuse of my position for teaching capital. On the other hand, students may wish to know more.
As a compromise to this, I'm going to show the class the BBC news special as an addition to the work the class are already doing on this topic and with no set agenda for the actual lesson unless the students look for more. In terms of a response, I would like it to be individual and meaningful. I'm going to ask the class to support the idea of haikus as their own response, after a discussion I had on twitter with colleagues. I'd like to explore whether it's possible to collate these, put through a free publishing package and sell for a nominal fee for the Red Cross or a similar disaster relief charity. If anyone has done something similar before, I'd be grateful to hear about your experiences, which might help us succesfully construct ours.

An Open Letter to Fergus

2011-03-13T20:30:00.004Z

Categories: Rural
An idea I'm working on with my S3 classes is very dependent on this evenings dinner. I openly declared at the start of our rural topic that, even as a teacher, it took me a long time to realise the reason that kids in town and cities really need to know about farming. I set a homework, which is due tomorrow. Some have already returned it. I've asked the class to bring in a piece of packaging from tonights meal. I'm interested to see what the students eat and where it's from. So far, even the processed stuff is farming produce and the majority of it is British. I'm trying to explore with the class the notion that we depend on farmed produce for, well basically, our existence. As part of the lesson, I'll ask students to plot their packaging on Google Earth ( which will also allow us to look at local v International produce) and reflect at the end of the unit on my old trusted Fergus Drennan video. Fergus is a forgager and basically feels that we should be able to rely on wild, fresh food. I'm not sure he is really saying it in so many words, but it could be argued this is anti-farming. At the end of the unit, I'm going to ask students to draft an open letter to Fergus Drennan. They can agree or disagree with his own views, but I'm more interested that they can articulate the positives and negatives of modern farming. We'll see how it goes...

Random assessment and moving countries

2011-03-07T17:14:00.001Z

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I started pieces of work with two classes today which I'm blogging for a permanent record, should they work well. My S2 class started a card sort activity looking at the causes, effects of and responses to earthquakes. The class were in groups of three and this was a ten minute activity. Instead of giving the class more writing for understanding, we used the random generator after the assessment criteria had been explained. Some nice choices by the groups so far- a drama acted out in class, a radio weather forecast and a sportscast among others. I look forward to seeing how these develop.

With S4, we went outside for use of a large space. I had allocated each person in the class a country, which they had to display. We were starting development indicators and I wanted to see what their understanding of development was. First, the class were asked to split into developed and developing countries. They were then asked to line up by wealth. This was interesting as the class assumed countries like Kuwait were at the lowest end. We reorganized on corruption, health and finally happiness, before returning to the class for a plenary discussion where actual results were shared.

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Revision thief

2011-02-27T23:12:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Population, other
Tomorrow, I'm going to start preparing S3 classes for the weather assessment. We'll start off with a topic traffic lights exercise to create a personalised revision plan. I want to then give the period over to an activity I just, em, nicked from the presentation above from Tony Cassidy, where the class split in to 'students' and 'examiners', 9 of each if possible. This will be more difficult with the class of 29 tomorrow, so might need to tailor this and look for alternatives. Basically, it involves an activity where the parts of the topic are split up and students move around the various themes and have to give an account to the examiner (who is marking them). Halfway through, the roles change, so that everyone has a chance to hear others responses (hopefully some good ones) as well as having to think on their feet a little.
With S4, we are at the end of the population topic in both classes, looking at migration. However, Tony has pointed me to some good case study resources which are highly relevant for our purposes, particularly as the Gambia is our own example. Pushing quickly through lots tomorrow to try to wrap up the unit.
S2 are finishing some display work prompted by the resources blogged about in the last post. Thinking of putting some work on here and also might ask a member of the S3 to video some of the revision activity for assessment purposes.

Christchurch- a lesson perspective

2011-02-24T21:42:00.002Z

Categories:s1 and s2, Environmental hazards

This is a post I wrote on the phone on Wednesday. For one reason or another, I couldn't publish it till now, but I thought it was worth sharing due to the current nature of events.

I've blogged previously about how its an easy thing to either cover natural disasters or ignore them for the wrong reasons. Yesterday, I was travelling to work and heard about the Christchurch Earthquake on the radio. I felt this was worth abandoning the planned lessons for, while at the same time hoping to balance the geography with the empathy .
We started the period with four discussion starters. It's important to stress at this point that this was breaking news and few of the students were aware of the events. First of all, we considered whether there was any correlation between when earthquakes occur and the damage they do. Both classes had some excellent reasoning here. I gradually revealed the Christchurch time only after the classes had identified this time of day as one of the worst possible.
Secondly, we considered whether it was really possible to prepare for earthquakes. We started this from an individual perspective, considering earthquake survival necessities (some great class inputs), while at the same time throwing in a simulated earthquake drill. However, we also looked at the wider problems such as the uncertainty of seismic gaps, discussion of aftershocks and the way that the built environment was constructed to cope depending on a country's wealth.
This led perfectly on to both the response to disasters (personal, community and authority responses) and the short & long term priorities in the wake of an earthquake. I showed the class the New Zealand news bulletin where the Prime Minister of the country was being interviewed, which I thought was a great leveller, to see this leader of men at times at a loss for what to say. Even more powerful was the second clip, six minutes of unedited news footage with no audio. The atmosphere in the clip is surreal, often hushed into an eerie silence despite the volume of people in the shot. There is a real sense of shock, a city stunned and some bizarre attempts at ignoring the mayhem (the man in full running gear out for a jog while everyone else is preoccupied with events springs to mind), as well as good illustrations of the panic, fear and devastation as buildings collapse in front of the onlookers eyes. I think the fact this was almost 'live' had quite an impact in interest and learning.

Finally, to place ourselves in the same situation, we adapted Tony Cassidy's Introduction to Earthquakes to look at the earthquake through the eyes of a Christchurch resident (being continued today). I hope this sparks enough interest for the class to want to find out something about this for themselves, as there has been blanket coverage today. That would be the ideal lesson outcome, encouraging students to engage with the real world events which too often slip quietly by.

Darfur commentary for HMD2011

2011-02-10T00:46:00.001Z

Download now or listen on posterous

Darfur commentry.amr (84 KB)

This is a commentary by Rachel and Lucy to fit a no comment video clip. It is based on some work the class were doing around the problems in Darfur. Just looking for a place to host this at the minute.

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A lesson in 3 parts (and by 3 teachers)

2011-02-09T22:19:00.002Z

Weather charts

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Categories: Other
I have a visit from the Head Teacher tomorrow who is looking at classroom routines and the quality of students learning. As we are almost ready to move on in the topic, we are at a slightly difficult juncture. The class are almost there with synoptic charts and weather station symbols but still have some inconsistencies in their responses in class. I don't want to move the class on until the group are confident in reading the weather, so I've decided on a three stage lesson, which is pretty straightforward, but will also be usable for revision with S4 students at supported study.
At the beginning of the lesson, we will have a mock up synoptic chart on the board. I tried an activity today which allowed whole class involvement in our starter through use of the random name picker. I have a tendency to ask questions to sections of the room, so this should spread the activity around. I borrowed laminated cards from a colleague, Mr Marshall, and we used (and will use) them to identify important features such as the warm and cold sectors, fronts, high and low pressure and wind patterns. As individuals come out to the board, the rest of the class will annotate their own version of this.
Afterwards, we will introduce people to the equation. This comes from a resource borrowed from Mr Douglas and is important in developing thinking skills as there can be more than one answer. In pairs this time, students will try to place the statements on the chart as well as creating some of their own and swapping with their partner. This will be helpful as we go on to look at the effects of weather next.
Finally, an individual activity based on the real weather. Choosing at least one area (most probably the local one), we will use met office surface pressure charts, accurately account for the weather at the present time, but also try our hand at forecasting the future weather. The fact that we will be able to check this by moving the chart forward in time is invaluable. I think this is perhaps ambitious to cram into a period, but there is also some extension work available if students finish this. I don't know how the lesson will go, but if nothing else it's a great example of collegiality considering three of us have sourced parts of the lesson, and I'm thankful to both colleagues for the ideas. Hopefully, I can return the favour.

Earthquake Weather

2011-02-02T09:43:00.004Z

Poodwaddle.com

Categories: s1 and s2, Population, Other
Trying to catch up on some lessons which I wanted to blog, more as a reminder to myself than anything else. I'm looking at earthquakes for the first time with S2 today. The class should already have a fair knowledge of where earthquakes occur and why they occur too, from the work they have already completed on plate tectonics. Today, we are going to look at how they occur and how they are recorded. I can't remember who it was, but someone recently questioned why students needed to know about different types of earthquake wave. I actually think this is quite important. It develops a deeper understanding of the damage that earthquakes can do and links in to the work that students do later on earthquake proofing. It is quite technical and, I think, strengthens Geography's claim to straddle the science and social subjects, as it takes the waves studied in Physics and links it to people and place. I always borrow slinky coils and ropes from Physics when we teach this, and we'll be doing a demo of P, S and L waves using these today. I also found out very recently that we have a seismometer sitting here unused which is shared by the Physics and Geography department. I have asked for it to be connected to the network, but want to prompt students to think about how it works before we actually use it. For that purpose, I'm setting a little problem solving exercise loosely based on this for my S2 class today. It will be interesting to see how close they come to the website version (update-one group almost spot on in less than ten minutes!).
I am teaching weather again for the first time in many years. Again, it's a scientific branch of Geography, and as such, introduces lots of new terminology. We have been talking about air masses and air pressure recently. For air masses, a simple starter I gave to both S3 classes involved rubbing the table and creating friction and heat. We then sat the paper of a jotter page over the table for a few seconds. The Paper had clearly taken some of the table's heat. This made it very easy explaining how air which forms in certain parts of the world is hot and dry, cold and wet etc just from students knowledge of place. It also helped explain some of the recent cold weather and snow, as we talked about polar air passing over the North Sea actually being heated and taking some moisture to hit eastern areas in particular.
When talking about pressure, as well as looking at the general features of high and low pressure, we also covered the movement of air using this nice little exercise from Alan Parkinson's site. A nice way to bring air masses and air pressure together, as well as introducing synoptic charts was Tony's exercise here. Today, we are starting to look at weather fronts in more detail.
As ever, I'm really enjoying teaching population. With S4, we used the population clock and some key landmark dates in students life lived and yet to come to start looking at population change and how population counts are conducted. This generated some good discussion, as did the Death Clock, which brought a little light relief, but also, an understanding of how lifestyle, gender etc can influence life expectancy. From this, we started looking at some of the other useful information that can be gathered during population surveys through the embedded site above, such as information about religion, cause of death from death certificates and more. This really opened up the reasons why population counts are important, but also led us on to discussion of why the counts might not be accurate. Yesterday (and again today with my other S4 later), we focused more on population change, with the wonderful jelly babies game to get things moving. Thanks to Alan again for the discussion starter.

Darfur and forced migration: For Holocaust Memorial Day

2011-01-24T16:10:00.005Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Other

Our department is involved in commemorating the Holocaust this week. The theme we are working to is that of untold stories. I am working on ideas for two year groups at the moment. As a prelude, we spent quite a bit of time looking at the world surname profiler, which created a good discussion. It was interesting to take a name and strip it back. For example, we took 'Mill' and saw the strong Scottish origins of the name, particularly in the East, the spread to former colonies and English speaking countries and were able to suggest reasons for this spread. When we did the same thing for ethnic groups, Jewish ethnic concentrations still show up very high in Germany more than other European countries, which again might take explanation in light of the Holocaust.

For my S2 classes, although we have been studying earth forces, one element of the recent work on volcanoes has focused on people being displaced by these events, a good example of a forced migration. Using this as a start, we looked at reasons why people migrate. This was a simple lesson, made easy by the use of Noel Jenkins kinaesthetic activity here. I got quite a lot of unexpected reasoning here when I trialled it today. For instance, one of the boys had moved to an area where jobs were in short supply. He had moved from the town. When asked why, he reasoned that he could be retiring after working and wanted a peaceful, less crowded environment. This image below shows some of the other reasons that the class provided during and after the activity. We also marked whether the class believed these movements to be forced or voluntary. By complete chance, when we were talking about this, the topic of Jews in Nazi Germany was raised and allowed a good link to the theme we will be exploring next period, genocide.

When the class arrive next, we will be working on an activity which allows a reader multiple scenarios to choose from. We are not going to be looking at the holocaust for this, but a modern day reporting of a genocide in Darfur. I am going to begin the period with a recap of the previous lesson followed by a glimpse of the Darfur Wall. I want students to think what the numbers might represent, bearing in mind the theme. Clicking on these reveals a name of a sponsor, mostly American. Aside from acting on their conscience, I wonder how much the average donor knows about life choices that people have to make in these dreadful circumstances. Using examples taken from real people, I have been putting together an exercise which simulates some of the events along the actual timeline which might have triggered the movement of people to safety, further danger to their life or, in the worst scenarios, death:

Darfur survival

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Students will have to make choices at the end of each short paragraph which influences what they read next. I'm hoping that this illustrates some of the major obstacles presented to people in Darfur and how such hopeless situations can rapidly develop. The idea is taken from an old college lecturer who did domething similar around Kristalllnacht. When the class has finished the exercise we will have a plenary which will include introducing the students to the characters who make up the choices and are, fortunately, not a number on a wall. I've also considered using this No Comment TV clip and asking students to use the knowledge from the exercise to construct a newscast to time.

For S4, we are looking at it from another angle. Resentment is something which is easily stirred on the grounds of ethnicity and I want to look at the host nation. We had a great start to a discussion today when I asked the class to think for homework about the impact of a) losing immigrants for a day e.g. a mass pullout from society to show their worth, and b) a ban on immigration. For the former, one boy suggested he would be really affected at the weekend, as the transport he takes is likely to be driven by someone from, most probably, Eastern Europe. This led to discussion about why these jobs are the ones that migrants take, if it's good or bad that they do, an open and interesting discussion which challenged assumptions. In the next lesson, we will put the class in charge of immigration and present a number of potential immigrants. It will be interesting to see the initial reactions before building the scenario further. I would like to again, where possible use real examples by exploring potential backgrounds to the immigration taken from people fleeing from genocide in the past, again reaching the untold stories. More information about Holocaust Memorial Day can be found here.

Out with the old...

2011-01-05T22:39:00.001Z

Think the old Munro calendar might just about form the basis of something with S3 tomorrow, as part of revising for the glaciation test; feature recognition, suitable land uses, limiting features of the landscape, map orientation using the images. It pays to be a hoarder...

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The Impossible Egg

2011-01-05T22:13:00.001Z

I'm going to use this as a lesson starter tomorrow with my S4 classes. We are looking at Tundra climate and quite a few large scale projects which at first glance seem impossible have been completed in such parts of the world.

I'm going to challenge a few people in the class to have a go at the task, show the solution and then relate this to how Tundra projects have coped with, for example, permafrost, earthquakes, threats to wildlife etc. Hopefully, we can draw quite a few of the solutions out before extracting them from our sources. After this, we can hopefully evaluate their successes.

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The snowfields of Central Scotland

2010-12-22T14:00:00.001Z

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I heard this phrase on the radio and I really liked it. It seemed apt for the journey home across the Eaglesham Moor. The photos don't really capture the view to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and it was difficult to get good access to the best views in my work shoes! A wonderful stillness and a perfectly appropriate blogging sign off for the season. Merry Christmas :-)

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S2 Survey

2010-12-21T09:29:00.002Z

Click here to take survey

Testing Posterous app: Fin me oot walk

2010-12-18T19:23:00.001Z

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Not sure about the app, as I like simplicity of email, but giving this a try. Went out to hide our first geocaches today. Took my son to an old place that people have forgotten about, Caldervale, or Fin me Oot (find me out), which is tucked away off the Blantyre to Uddingston backroad. There are still the foundations of the houses which used to be here, and a rickety makeshift bench which, according to my father in law, used to be where old guys used to sit for a cigarette and a read at one of the magazines which they used to keep planked under the seat. Not sure where the walk leads to as we went to the bridge and back after my son had spotted the icicles hanging from its underside. By then, we had thought of the perfect cache spot :-)

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For @mark_howell101 headbutts and geographical enquiry

2010-12-14T21:42:00.001Z

I was working with an s3 class today doing a lesson on enquiry skills. For me, enquiry is all about being out in the field and I find it quite dry and also quite difficult to teach in a classroom setting. It's just all words and theory. So, today I wanted to break it down. What does enquiry mean? What are gathering techniques? What are processing techniques?
I thought about using an example based on an infamous stewards enquiry from my days working as a bookmaker, where one jockey stole anothers whip. Being unable to find this, I remembered the fracas in the summer when cyclist Mark Renshaw took, or gave, one for the team so that his sprinter team mate, Mark Cavendish, could gain an advantage.
We talked about what had happened, and some students said he would have been disqualified. I asked on the back of this when, why and how. We were basically exploring the idea that before disqualification, there would have to be very good proof. Although it was obvious for us with hindsight, we agreed that the race stewards would have to consult rules, check video etc before deciding on his fate. This was to help them FIND OUT about the issue. It was agreed that this was a good definition of enquiry. To do this, they GATHERED information in different ways (video being one), but then had to PROCESS this into a meaningful result- in this case, the race result, standings and the withdrawal of the rider from race listings. What's a results list if not a table?
Afterwards, we went on to discuss this in relation to geographical scenarios where students had to suggest how they would 'find out' about the issue, what techniques they would use to 'gather' the information they needed, and we will later discuss how we would use or 'process' it. Not sure how much of a difference it made, but couldn't see how I could tell Mr Howell this in 140 characters on Twitter :-)

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Monday Shorts

2010-12-12T21:51:00.003Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Environmental Hazards, Glaciation
Tomorrow promises to be quite a busy day outwith teaching commitments, but I also have the opportunity to teach one of the lessons I enjoy the most with S2. We have been studying volcanoes and have learned about the role of plate tectonics in volcanic eruptions, the anatomy of a volcano and are just about to go on to the effects of volcanic eruptions. I thought it might be good to introduce this through Noel Jenkins excellent Montserrat lesson. This means when my colleague, Mr Douglas, picks up with the class on Thursday, they will have been through a simulated eruption scenario, which should help when they look at their case study.
For s3, I want to do a lesson based around enquiry skills for glaciation. I would like the class to do a classification exercise, where I give a number of fieldwork scenarios, possible gathering techniques and reasons for use and see if the students can draw on both their experience from Culzean and common sense. I think, a little like the Montserrat exercise, I might score this. For future reference, I'll draw attention to this link at the close of the lesson. Right, off now as the battery is ready to go...

View from the Livingstone Bridge

2010-12-12T15:48:00.001Z

This is my favourite local place. The water was running high over the weir and through the Salmon ladder. Great low, but clear light at 2.30pm.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Christmas is coming...

2010-12-11T19:15:00.001Z

Glasgow Christmas scenes from earlier today

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Using the Learning Event Generator

2010-12-09T11:08:00.005Z

Categories: Geography General, Glaciation

I have been using the Learning Event Generator from John Davitt with two classes recently. The experience of both classes have been very different but, ultimately, worthwhile. I have used this in the past and completely randomized the activities. Although this works sometimes, it also encounters resistance from students who feel that they are being forced to learn or show their learning in a certain way. I think taking people out of their comfort zone can bring positives, but also thought that by introducing free choice for the students, I would still be able to edit the activities to provide a real challenge.

I set the generator up as a recap on learning for glacial deposition. I had spent a few periods going through the features that students would have to potentially explain, but felt that it had been one way. I had done a lot of talking to fill in some of the textbook blanks. Students had been taking independent notes. I was not sure if students were learning or just on autopilot, and this feeling was reinforced after a discussion with both classes about the ways in which they learn. By giving students a choice of presentation methods to show their understanding, I thought I'd be able to have a better assessment of where we were at.

The activities

To give a flavour of what students chose, here are some examples:

Outwash Plains as a Chinese Whisper

Kames as a flipbook

Drumlins as a nursery rhyme

Drumlins as a pop up book

Kames as a recipe

Outwas Plains as a play by play Sports Commentary

Kames as a nightmare

Glacial Landscape Origami

These were all very diverse and each created its own successes and failures, but even the failures were things that we could learn from. I'll pick a couple of examples and explain how we translated it to an assist for the way in which students will currently be assessed.

Chinese Whispers

The outcome of this activity (four pairs were involved) was very significant. First of all, some students showed really excellent summary skills to make the whisper one that could be easily passed around the class. Their summary was clear, well structured and contained a lot of knowledge in two to three lines of text. The clearest summary was also the one which most succesfully made its way around the class - not quite unaltered, but pretty much spot on by the time it reached the last pupil. Other students really struggled with this. Students were compelled to write verbatim what was in their notes and, unsurprisingly, the longest whisper disintegrated on the way. We related this back to exam practice. You can learn something word for word, but if you don't really understand it, your response soon falters and, in an exam, it's easy to fluff your lines trying total recall. The ability to be concise was discussed too, as I find lots of students run out of time in exams as they try to cram in everything they remember, often duplicating things they have written. A good summary allows better time management without sacrificing marks. I suggested that in prep for exams, students try this in fours as a way to support their revision.

Flipbooks

I liked the outcome of this as it highlighted a common problem that students struggle to break in real exam situations. Both flipbook examples that I looked at, to my eye, showed a process. I could make out in one glacial advance, then retreat, resulting in a terminal moraine. I could make out in the other, a glacier retreating to leave a moraine dammed lake and a Kame. However, I only knew this by guessing. There was nothing to tell me this. We related this back to exam technique. How many times do people offer a supporting diagram which really doesn't tell the examiner anything, or anything new? This highlighted the importance of labelling a process properly. In one of the classes, we then illustrated this perfectly by taking a five minute window to do a question in pairs, back to back. One student was writing a response and the other showing the same process by diagram. In a couple of cases, the diagram included information which wasn't in the other person's response, and which would have gained marks in an exam. So, even with the flipbook having parts missing, there was a lesson in this.

Recipes

Only one group was 'brave' enough to try a recipe. I say 'brave' as I thought this might be one of the easiest ways to represent landscape formation. I asked a very reluctant Cameron to share some of his, Scott's and Benjamins recipe for Kames. They started off with ' Add sand and gravel (any amount you like), use meltwater to mix all the ingredients, and spread unevenly' or words to those effect. We discussed the response and reasoned that Kames will be different sizes according to the size of glacier, hence the first statement. The boys picked up on the composition of Kames, the fact they were fluvioglacial and that deposition could be uneven. After they had shared the start of their recipe, I suggested to the class that all the boys were doing was representing a stage by stage process, something which students do formulaically all the time in exam questions, but this had shown a real understanding of what was going on rather than just memorising lines. So, does this not prepare a student better for a question wuith an unfamiliar look or wording?

In summary, I think the hardest thing about this lesson is having the will to do it and persevere with it. I mean that both for student and teacher. If it's not managed properly, the fun part becomes frustration, boredom or idleness as students don't see the purpose. I think it's important as a teacher not only to take the risk and allow the room for this, but it's vitally important that either beforehand or in recap, the students see the benefit to themselves of thinking out of the box. I think I managed this succesfully with one of the classes, but not so well with the other, but it was worth taking the risk and worth taking again for the outcomes, even the ones that might initially have been viewed as a negative.

A thank you note for #s2erupts

2010-12-06T21:53:00.008Z

Categories: s1 and s2, environmental hazards
Late last night, I sent out a request for help with a lesson today. It was late (despite having thought about it for a while), and I made contingencies in case I hadn't given enough time for a response from people in my twitter network or who read the blog. All in all, between 11ish last night and 10am this morning, I had around 30 replies, with lots of really great questions for the students to start researching.
On arriving at work, I then encountered an unforeseen problem. The class had half the time usually afforded to us, as an extra assembly had been convened to launch the school's mission statement. This meant that, not only might we be struggling for time to do the research, but we probably wouldn't get all the responses posted back. It's with great credit to the class that in the short time we had, they got stuck in to the task. This meant that the bulk, but not all, of the questions were answered and in the period following, I was able to post the students responses, although the students were very aware of who they were writing for. It would have been preferable if they could have done this themselves and also that they could have seen the whole picture, because together, their work represents an impressive display of collective knowledge. I will be able to revisit during the next visit of the class, and also plan to fill the gaps with a couple of twitdocs from one of my other classes (to save other people's twitter streams getting filled).
I was also very pleased and so grateful to see those who took time to thank the students for the answers they provided, and I will be sure to share this with them. The main point of the lesson, though, is that the students should treat every resource as something useful. Only the questions about volcanic plugs and pyroclastic flows needed the internet to help answer them. All of the other responses were either from personal knowledge or, more particularly, from the textbook rersources that students had in class (that are easily dismissed in a pursuit of active learning activities).The pupils had to skim and scan these resources, work to a tight timescale, work with others and present a precise response (developing summary skills) as I had told them of the 140 character chunks we had to reply in. Overall, an excellent effort in so many ways which would not have been nearly as succesful without the help of all the contributors. On behalf of the class, I'd like to convey our thanks for assisting in a fast paced lesson where the students were engaged with their learning throughout.

#s2erupts with a little help from my friends...

2010-12-05T23:01:00.001Z

OK, so this is a blatant steal of a David Rogers idea, but perhaps I could give the rationale. I have been talking to some of my classes about their learning experiences recently. One of the themes that keeps recurring is a deep dislike of textbooks. The students associate them with sterile classroom experiences where little interaction is encouraged.
When I look at a textbook, I see a great resource for information, but it's the way the students are being encouraged to process the information that perhaps leads to the prevalent attitude. So, tomorrow, I'd like to show one of my class's that a textbook can be a useful tool.
This is a big ask, but I'd be very grateful if readers of this blog and/or people in my Twitter network took just a couple of minutes to post either in the comments or via Twitter itself something which you would like the class to find out about Volcanoes. We could use #s2erupts as a tag to collect responses by. During the period, the class could use a mixture of textbook and Internet to try to source answers, then respond. I thought about simply doing this myself, but I think it has far greater impact, as David has shown, as a one off concentrated experience for a wider audience. So, in the spirit of Christmas, could you please (pretty please) spare a few moments to give the class a task? Many thanks in advance

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Big Yin teaching Tundra

2010-11-30T23:01:00.003Z

Categories: Other
When I was looking through resources for teaching Tundra, I found an old text which had quite a lot of detail about people and developments in the Biome. It had a lot of facts about the traditional way of life for the Inuit, such as making soup from seals blood! Some 'recent' changes were detailed in the way of life of the Inuit and much of this still seemed relevant. However, I was a little wary of using such an old resource and felt I had to compliment it with something else. Enter Billy Connolly. In the boot of my car, I had a copy of 'Journey to the edge of the world', the book of the television series. After looking on youtube, I found a couple of appropriate clips but, in truth, I could have used many more. The first clip below was really useful. For instance, today, we talked about the settlement that serves as the backdrop and why there appeared to be no road. It was easy to illustrate how the built environment is also sensitive to the needs of the landscape, with houses raised off the ground. The climate for August looks a tad chilly too :-)

The second clip had scenes that some people might find a little upsetting, as Billy followed a family in a 'traditional' hunt, which actually perfectly illustrated how, even when clinging to traditions, the outside world has influenced the Inuit. Both clips supported the lesson really well and I would use them again.

At first it's cold, and then it's hot...

2010-11-28T21:35:00.004Z

Categories:s1 and s2, Glaciation, Other
A weekend of snow has resulted in a bit of brainfreeze regarding where I'm at and what I'm supposed to be doing with my classes tomorrow. With S4, we are beginning a look at the Tundra. I started on Thursday with an inflatable globe. I've done this before and always have a smile to myself at the reaction when I say 'yes' to the inevitable question, 'Sir, are we playing with that today?'. We use the globe and wherever the thumb of the right hand lands, the student has to correctly identify whether it is Tundra, Hot Desert, Polar, Savannah, Mediterranean, rainforest or none of the above. I believe it's still important that students have a better awareness of place and this exercise always throws up a couple of crackers. I did this with the other S4 class and got some bizarre relocations of climatic regions, which we have hopefully fixed via the exercise. I also used it to then ask students to pick out some places by name in regions classes as Tundra.
We then went on to look at advantages and disadvantages of the tundra climate . I am intrigued by a comment from an online colleague, Sharon Somerville (@arcticlass ), who taught in Resolute Bay, who said 'Tundra isn't just Tundra'. I still don't know what this means, but what I do know is that students on Thursday found it really hard to think of advantages. I asked Sharon for her thoughts on this and thought this was a lovely response;I'm going to use this to start the discussion and then use some of the negatives that Sharon highlighted. If it's at all possible, it would be nice to have an open session with Sharon where the class could put their questions to her.
I have just blogged in the last post about my eureka moment for teaching glaciation. Steven Lockyer suggested using a youtube video of a snowman being built and class labelling it, which seems a nice alternative to sharing a lovely pic of my kids with my S3 class :-) Also reminded me of this clip from the infamous Hampstead Heath Snowball

Will follow this with a more standard explanation of feature formation, seeing as I can't get back in the IT lab until Wednesday to finish flipbooks/comics etc.
I'm beginning volcanoes with S2 tomorrow. Looking forward to the Montserrat lesson from Noel Jenkins , an absolute failsafe, but thought I'd start with another youtube clip, this one below;

I don't know if I can get sound from this as my IWB bulb blew, but the idea is to show it once and get a handle on vocabulary that the class haven't heard before, show it again and start a Chinese Whisper on paper. I'll ask someone to start a recap of the 3 minute summary and pass it on for the next person to extend and so on. I'll leave some prompts up on the board to help with this. While all this is going on, I'll ask some members of the class to start poulating our map at the back of the room with current tectonic hazards. All this will be against the backdrop of a written activity, so might need to scale it back depending...

A silly idea

2010-11-28T21:28:00.001Z

How can making a snowman help my students? I feel slightly embarassed at sharing this, but it was a bit of a eureka moment today. I should probably explain...
I was out in a near blizzard today with my son and daughter. Apart from my son trying to sabotage my hood to put snow in my neck (in fairness, he was only trying to get his own back), we made an enormous snowman. The snow was really easy to pack, maybe because it was falling on a previous layer.
As we rolled the snow, our tiny snowball quickly began to grow, but as it did, it morphed from something White and beautiful to an off-white, speckled mess. My son was quick to point out that half the park seemed to have become embedded in the body of our snowman.
We looked at what we had collected. There was a fair bit of mud, lots of odd stones randomly scattered, leaf debris and pieces of wood. We managed to patch him up, but our course of destruction couldn't be disguised. A straight line of pastel green (some hardy snowflakes had managed to cling to the grass) betrayed the course we had taken. So, back to the question. How does this help my class, an S3 Geography class studying glaciation? My first thought was how quickly and easily our packed snow cleared everything in it's path. Our tiny snowball gained mass (corrie glacier) and soon had the power to strip out nearly everything in it's path (erosion). It took a fair chunk of the path with it (transportation), some hidden within and some clearly visible (supraglacial?). If the logical thought says that the snowman will melt over the next couple of days, some of that mud will seep out in the melting water (fluvioglacial) and a fair amount will be dumped in situ, most probably the heaviest mud and stones from deep within (till). If I hadn't rolled, but had pushed the snow, I would have banked all this rubbish at the front (terminal moraine). OK, so the last one is stretching it a bit...So there you have the simplest homework you are ever likely to set. Make a snowman to learn the basics of
glacial erosion, transportation and deposition ;-) Sent from my iPod

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Flipbook example for class

2010-11-24T09:37:00.001Z

Where the words are less important...

2010-11-23T22:12:00.005Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Glaciation
Preparing for a fight with blocked url's tomorrow, but looking forward to trying out something. I have managed to book the computing room (no mean feat in my new school) for both S2 and S3 and plan to set an enquiry looking at sequences in landscape formation. I suppose this is, again, just a different way of telling a story. However, this time, the visual element of the story will be the most important part. Students in S3 will have a random pick for a feature of glacial deposition. I think one is enough to start and I also think the students needed a break from it, hence the reason we covered land uses and conflicts first. The activity will be a before and after, with the students task to fill the in between. I am going to offer the use of comic life or simple booklet (providing it's accessible) as the means of presentation. I love the look of simple booklet, and a student could supplement their explanation by embedding a range of other media. I very much doubt we'll be able to, but the bennetton flipbook would be nice as freehand additions can be made. I'm hoping that by turning landscapes into comic strips or moving flipbooks, we can make the task one which challenges while at the same time is enjoyable. There is the added challenge that students have to first research and break down the information on feature formation and put this into their own words. Failing this (although comic life is definitely on all the machines), Steve Bunce sent me a fantastic bundle of links to story telling ideas via Julian Wood. I'm planning on doing similar with S2, using a picture of the structure of the earth followed by a video of a violent volcanic eruption and asking how one is linked to the other.

Lazy lesson blog

2010-11-22T21:56:00.001Z

Download now or listen on posterous

Memo.m4a (1711 KB)

In the absence of a will to write tonight, I've sent an audio note of a simple, very traditional lesson starter involving pupils using traditional map pins to map earthquake and volcanic activity. Excuse the persistent asthmatic wheeze

Sent from my iPod

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Catching up...

2010-11-14T22:34:00.003Z

Categories: Glaciation
Have quite a lot of work queued for putting on the blog from my S3. First, some more Glacier stories. I am very impressed with the standard of these and feel vindicated in trying it- a real extension activity, something which many students found very difficult but, as you can see, brought out the best in their creativity while demonstrating a true understanding of the learned topic:
Glacier Stories

Secondly, we also spent a bit of time clay modelling. One class tried claymation, using stop frame animation, but I've still not managed to get these downloaded from the school cameras. I found this quite hard to do for a large class as battery failure became quite an issue, so with my other class, we simply modelled landscapes. The criteria I set was as follows- the models must show the following features clearly; corrie, arete, pyramidal peak, hanging valley, u-shaped valley, truncated spur, ribbon lake, misfit stream. The features must be in the order you would find them in the landscape e.g. by altitude. Students could add other features such as scree and tarns, but I basically wanted to see how good their feature recognition was. Some of the results are below. I haven't managed to load all of the pictures from my phone yet, so this is only a sample:

Bottom one is in two parts. Now for tomorrow's work...

A cache, a code and a crowd to place it

2010-11-07T20:54:00.004Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Other, Geography General
This is an idea, or bits of ideas I've had floating around my head lately. Will probably refine it as I develop it, but here's the bones of it anyway. I have recently been sucked into the world of geocaching, which, if my profession is taken into account, shouldn't really be that surprising. I love the adventure involved in visiting places that are either new to me, or are so familiar that I have never given them more than a cursory glance. I would say it's given me a totally different view of my own local area in a very short time.
I also have a long standing interest in developing literacy in my students. I have always been a reader and an admirer of the power of the written word, but my understanding of literacy has been turned on its head in the last year and a half, mainly through my involvement in the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN). An expression of literacy skills can mean so much more than writing a story (although I can't hide my pride in students when they produce work like this).
Finally, I've blogged recently about QR codes and am very intrigued in the ability to hide a lot of information in a small square of paper. So, how does this all link together? Well, here's the idea...
I've been thinking a lot about personal/local geographies lately. I work in Troon and am not local to that area. I hear people in my classes talking about places and have no clue where or what they are. This became more apparent to me as we collated a map of Troon/School stories for our 75th anniversary open day on Friday (this is still being added to and some parts have yet to be updated by students, although I've temporarily locked the edits). I realise that there is so much more to a place than meets the eye. It got me wondering what parts of Troon students would like people to see in their town that they otherwise might not. Everyone knows about the golf, the beach, the harbour etc, but what is 'hidden' from the average visitor? For this end, I'm going to ask a couple of classes in the next couple of weeks for their 'vote' and why as a blog comment. This will mean there's a collective response which might also spark some discussion. This is going somewhere...
Today, I purchased a load of geocaching goodies, including containers. Most of these are for use within easy reach of home (as the owner, I'll also be responsible for their maintenance). However, I'm planning on putting one, with permission, at the most popular 'hidden' location. If you like, I'm crowd sourcing my geocache. I won't tell students it's exact location, but I'm planning on sticking a little QR code inside the cache, so that whoever finds it will also see the blog responses of the students, leading to potentially exploring some of the other suggestions - an alternative Troon tourist route. We could even do this as a map with the comments in the pins.
There are some factors to consider. Although it would be nice to have students names beside the comment, this is very open and the cache could be found by anyone, so I will probably just use initials to satisfy my urge as the teacher to know who's done the homework :-) I'll also be asking students to think carefully about both the comments (digital etiqutte etc) and also the location. Managing risk here is at the forefront of my thoughts and I would want to place the cache in a safe environment, especially if students were looking for it themselves. I do think it gives an opportunity for the words and work of students to gain an audience other than the classroom teacher. I would hope that this would have an impact on what and how students write. I also think that the people who find the cache couldn't get a better tour guide. The kind of places I'm finding while geocaching near home are the kind I would have known inside out when I was a kid. Part of us forgets about the experiences that await us right on our doorstep as life and work take over. If it takes a semi-geeky game to remind us, then we're all the better for it.

Acrostic Poems

2010-11-04T11:31:00.002Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Writing asnd assessment
Should have done these as Haikus instead, but might have taken a bit longer to explain. An end of topic summary by a couple of students on the Tokyo/Japan topic.

Japan's capital city is Tokyo
Agriculture in Japan includes rice fields and sugar beet
Population of Japan is around 127 million
Acid rain, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and typhoons are common natural distasters
Not uncommon to eat rice with every meal!

Rachel 2C

Technology at its best
Observe the gadgets for you to test
Keep them coming, I would say
You will never get bored down Tokyo way
Open your mind and open your wallet, that's what my mum and dad would call it!

Adam 2C

Story of a Glacier lost (Part 2)

2010-11-03T16:21:00.002Z

Categories: Glaciation

Harry's story (edited down a little in terms of size, content all Harry's)

The story begins high up. Very high. So high that even snow does not melt. So high that the snow becomes thicker, turning gradually to ice. This is how Glacier was born and this is where the story begins.
Glacier was an old-school bully, sticking on to rocks and freezing, before moving again, taking the poor rocks with him. He used these to attack and erode the landscape around him. His story changed when he became entwined with Corrie.
Glacier was born in a shallow hollow, which would grow to become Corrie. He originally played nice guy with Corrie and got underneath her skin, quite literally. Glacier struggled, however, to change his ways and was once again the bully, cutting away corrie's backwall and deepening her floor. He got in between her cracks, freezing and then brutally pulling her rocks apart. The rocks he pulled were now being used to attack corrie's floor. Over time, however, Corrie realised that, despite this, Glacier was changing her for the better. She had grown from a shallow hollowto a deep and fine armchair shaped hollow. Then one day, without warning, Glacier left.
He slid off under his huge weight downhill, helped by gravity. Each was as upset as the other, their friendship now dead. Glacier had moved on, though, and was back to his old bullying ways, attacking the valley below them. Glacier had left only a rock lip and a lochan. Some helpless rocks lay strewn across the ground, these once strong and sturdy rocks reduced to scree. A friendship that was meant to last forever, now, forever, gone.

The Vicky Lake Show...

2010-11-03T14:12:00.003Z

Categories: Glaciation

Sharing a story written by one of my students to show the work of ice in an unusual way:

"Hello, and welcome to the Vicky Lake show. First up we have Christopher Corrie and Glenda Glacier, who have been going through a messy divorce while fighting over custody of their children, Rocky and Pebbles."
"Here we go again, always the same old story", thought Vicky to herself apprehensively, "Divorce, custody, arguments..."
"Now let's welcome Christopher and Glenda to the stage" she told her audience.
It appeared that Christopher Corrie was heartbroken. Glenda was leaving him and taking their children with her. She had been the love of his life, shaping his life so much that he would never be the same again.
" Now, Christopher, I want you to tell me how you and Glenda met" Vicky asked eagerly.
"Well", he started, "it was a while ago. Too long ago for me to remember, actually. As I recall it, we met one very cold, long winter. I was covered in snow. Next thing I remember, Glenda and I were together and I was the happiest I had ever been. She impacted on my life so much that I had to give up a lot to be with her. She changed, She started plucking parts of my life that I got so stressed and worn. I Think that's why she moved"
"That's not what happened!" Glenda disagreed.
"Well, Glenda, tell us what happened then" ventured Vicky
"OK, well, my life has been dynamic as I'm forever moving. I was created during the ice age when snow just kept falling, so much so that the snow underneath truned to ice. I have been moving all my life. It's not my fault, it's gravity!"
"OK, but what about the impact your behaviour has had on Christopher?" asked the host.
" Well, as I said, gravity is to blame. It is forever moving me downhill, so I have no choice but to grab on to what I can. Unfortunately, the pull is so strong that I fell I've ripped off parts of Corrie" Glenda explained emotionally.
" I couldn't helped being pulled toward Christopher. And as for me 'plucking' parts of his life, I can't help that I'm so cold, everything freezes onto me and gets broken apart"
" You left me an empty hollow, Glenda", Christopher added desperately.
Glenda just turned away from him as she knew she would get upset if she looked at him. Vicky was bewildered. She had never met such an interesting couple in all of the programmes she had presented.
" And what about the children-Pebbles and Rocky?" she asked nervously, waiting on the next argument.
"Well, I think I should keep them, as I will keep them in one place and not move them around all the time" stated Christopher.
"I think it's right that I should have them, because with me, they'll always have their mother and other friends as I travel. With him, they'll have one parent and that's all".
"Well, I hope you both sort this out and I wish you both the best" whispered Vicky in heartfelt tones.

2 months later: "You may remember Christopher Corrie and Glenda Glacier from 2 months ago? Well I recently heard that they broke up permanently and Glenda kept the children. Now on to our next couple, Wendy Waterfall and Gregory Gorge..."

I thought this was absolutely brilliant, accurate in the content (I edited a mistake in one small part, but the words are those of the student) and presented in a very creative and unfamiliar context. Well done, Elle!

Writing the earth. Or copying Alan...

2010-11-01T12:13:00.004Z

Categories: s1 and s2, Glaciation

The blog's been a bit quiet of late, but the classroom work has been going like a fair. Much of what I'm doing in class just now is either as a direct result of new ideas gained or old ones regained from my attendance at the SAGT conference. I attended a brilliant keynote speech by Alastair Humphreys, which showed why he is often invited to schools as a motivational speaker. Alastair has made the impossible possible through his attitude to challenges, such as cycling round the world in four years on £7000, circumnavigating the M25 on foot whilst relying entirely on the goodwill of strangers and is currently preparing to emulate Scott's Antarctic journey, as he puts it, "without the death part"! I'm mentioning this not just because of the fact I enjoyed his talk immensely, but also because, through his website, there are some excellent accounts of his journeys which could easily be adapted for classroom use. I am particularly drawn to a Scottish example which is rich in geographical terminology and would be excellent for use with a class learning about Scotland, weather, rivers etc

The two seminars I attended were by Noel Jenkins and Alan Parkinson, and both made a big play of the role Geography has in developing literacy, a particular area of interest to me. I'm going to share some work over the next week or so which shows the results of some of the things we've tried since, but here's a brief summary:

1) Telling a story around a geographical process - Alan had used the example of 'river as a person' , telling his life story from youth (upper course) to old age ( lower course). This came too late for use with my S3, but I decided to try something similar with Glaciation. When I mentioned this on twitter, Tony Cassidy sent me an excellent example of the story of a Hanging Valley, as told through 'Their Song;' and old show that used to be on the radio sharing sad stories. I introduced a similar idea to my S3 classes (see last post). This was really not easy, as the class couldn't equate the telling of a story with the explanation of a geographical process. For me, the link is explicit. For instance, the story of a corrie's formation has a start, middle and end, there are relationships between the ice and the landscape which are made and broken and the story of both changes as a result of this. I am pleased to say that some of the work I've been looking at this morning shows the promise of being absolutely first class. One story portrays the glacier as a bully, with a total disregard for those around him. Another is being rewritten as a Jeremy Kyle chat show, where the glacier and the corrie are fighting over the custody of the children (scree). Suddenly, these features are personalised and from initial scepticism, I feel as though a fair number of the class are embracing the idea of presenting their knowledge in an unusual way. This for me is key. It demonstrates firstly whether the knowledge is sound and, secondly, whether the real understanding is there should the students be asked to demonstrate it in an unfamiliar way ( a trickily worded exam question?). My NQT is doing something similar for Hurricane Katrina with an S1 class.More to come on this.

2) What if they had a facebook profile? Last year, I was looking at change in rural France (as exciting as it sounds) with an S4 class. We managed to make the topic engaging by having a twitter conversation with a 'Farmer', followed by a facebook/bebo/myspace mock profile for typical residents of rural villages. I was looking back through these today and some are fantastic. Alan had mentioned the template that Tony provided at SAGT, and this morning I had a class who were looking at rural Japan, so we are recycling this exercise using it. This is a really good way to summarise key points, information etc, but is much, much harder than it looks at first glance. I get these back in a week, so I'll try to share some here.

3) QR codes - Noel had a really fascinating seminar which was essentially based around his hobby of urban exploring. There are a number of ideas he shared which would have been of use for the Industry topic I've just finished with S4, for example, telling the story of a building unloved could be a great way to recap on Industrial change, and rebranding a building could be similar in terms of showing an understanding of urban and industrial change. However, he talked about personal geographies and I was reminded of this great post (which I think Alan also mentioned). I had previously asked my S4 to do a five minute walk detailing their response to the urban environment as homework. Much of what was returned wasn't place specific. I'd wondered about what to do with it, as I didn't just want to give it back and for it to disappear, so it would be nice if the authors could 'hide' their personal response to a landscape through these codes. It provides an audience for student work, but also requires a bit of unscrambling. I think this is something I'd definitely like to try with younger classes looking at local geography.

Overall, another really excellent piece of teacher CPD which, as always, will influence my own practice. Thanks to those mentioned here for the great food for thought they have provided.

Inspired by @GeoBlogs and @tonycassidy...

2010-10-27T08:47:00.001Z

Just trying a bit of literacy development with a class. Could go well, could need work!

Posted via email from Mr O'D's class posterous