One of the ways that I like to stretch my most able students is by offering them the opportunity to enter nationwide geography competitions. The benefits of this are threefold: students get the chance to challenge themselves and expand their geographical knowledge; the profile of the geography department is raised; and older students gain valuable […]
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During the spring term we decided as a department to develop a Scheme of Work that would prepare our Year 9 students more effectively for the demands of the new GCSE course. We delivered the lessons around the time of options choices to give the students a realistic idea of what GCSE geography would be […]
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“Fieldwork makes geography come to life, puts everything into context in glorious 3D and helps students really grasp how geography literally shapes the world around us.” Kate Humble, BBC Springwatch presenter (taken from Parkinson, 2009) It doesn’t take long to persuade a geography teacher of the benefits of fieldwork and even less time to encourage […]
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With the summer term well underway, you might be making plans to welcome September’s new Year 7 cohort to school on induction day. With this in mind, we asked former Leader of English (and parent) Jill Carter what advice she’d give to parents whose children are about to start secondary school for the first time. […]
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With the summer term well underway, you might be making plans to welcome September’s new Year 7 cohort to school on induction day. With this in mind, we asked former Leader of English (and parent) Jill Carter what advice she’d give to parents whose children are about to start secondary school for the first time. […]
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Firstly…good news! As part of their not-for-profit work, Esri UK has recently announced that a school subscription to ArcGIS Online will now be free! So now that you have no excuse for leaving GIS out of your Schemes of Work, here are a couple of exciting and innovative ways you can use the software with your classes […]
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Like many schools, the majority of our geography department interventions occur in Year 11 with all hands on deck to ensure target grades are met and significant progress has been made (and can be shown!). As part of my role as Head of Department, I am seeking ways to try to avoid this mad rush […]
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It seemed like every geography teacher that I knew had visited Iceland – apart from me. Finally, this Easter holiday, I got my turn to visit this geographer’s paradise. Along with my sixth form geographers, I went on a 5 day tour of South Iceland to marvel at the glaciers, waterfalls, volcanos and dynamic coastlines. […]
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Planning and teaching the new GCSE (Eduqas A at my school) has highlighted the importance of the AO3 objective: ‘apply knowledge and understanding to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues and to make judgements’. My Year 10 students have been developing their AO3 skills but many have struggled to include everything required in […]
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Like most geography departments across the UK, our Year 7s complete a map skills unit within months of arriving at the school. This year, we made it as engaging as possible, drawing lines of latitude and longitude drawn in chalk on the playground, bringing out OS maps of their local area, and using GIS to […]
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