We’re all aware of the importance of time management for teaching. The start of a new school year is the perfect time to take stock and ask: are your departmental meetings effective, or are you meeting for meeting’s sake? When I joined a new school (and thus a new department) I decided to give myself […]
Read more
Despite optionality this year, the AQA course is lengthy. If you are doing it over 2 years, it needs to be covered at the rate of knots and so therefore retrieval practice (RP) should be a welcome guest in every classroom! Put simply, RP is the strategy of calling information to mind which enhances and […]
Read more
Last week we ran an insightful and engaging webinar with Kate Stockings, if you missed it you can catch up here: ‘Making the most of Year 7: How to get our geographers off to the best possible start’ . Kate asked several questions throughout the webinar, and as the attendees contributed lots of inspiring answers, we wanted to share some of these responses to get fellow geography teachers thinking about the transition […]
Read more
In this second blog about the GA Conference 2021 I want to share some of the key points discussed in my session on departmental leadership. Responding to a historic lack of CPD available on effective middle leadership I shared some thoughts, reflections and ‘lessons learnt’ from my first 5 years as a Head of Geography. […]
Read more
As the Easter holidays arrived, so too did the annual Geographical Association Conference. This year it was fully virtual and, naturally, many of us were perhaps questioning how this would work: would it have the same community feel? Would there still be opportunities for networking? Would it have the same ‘buzz’? As I write this, […]
Read more
With all the talk of a “catch-up curriculum”, what is my priority upon our return to in-person learning? Keeping great geography at the heart of my lessons. While I don’t want students to dismiss the past two months of learning as ‘irrelevant’, I also want to be mindful that some of the content covered simply […]
Read more
This September, for the first time in many years, I found myself leading a department with non-specialist teachers delivering Year 7 geography. I know from speaking to others that this is a position that many geography departments find themselves in year after year and so I recognise how rare my experience has been if this […]
Read more
As I wrote in a previous blog , being a form tutor is an element of my role that I’ve come to fully appreciate during lockdown. Weekly phonecalls to my Year 8 form have become a highlight of my week and have ensured that I have a stronger relationship than ever with the 30 members of 8.2. I’ve […]
Read more
When schools shut on 20th March, teachers across the world were thrown into a whole new way of working. Whilst some schools have long used elements of online learning it was, on the whole, limited to the use of platforms to share homework tasks. And so, the learning curve began! What I want to focus […]
Read more
As September approaches, many prospective and experienced teachers will be thinking about the new school year – thinking about how to ensure they enjoy the last of the holidays whilst getting organised and prepared for the year. With that in mind, I thought I’d share my top tips for anybody getting ready to start a […]
Read more