sharegeography.co.uk

Thanks to Liz Smith and students for sharing their Winter Iphone Apps. Nice work.

Examples of Students Work.

View more presentations from Liz Smith.

I’m always happy to see students’ work.

I was thinking about looking at the cold spell over the coming week, I’ll be asking students to write a piece about how the weather effected their week, but I also fancied doing something a little more creative- so we’ll have a go at developing some winter Iphone Apps!

I thought this could be adapted to other topics, so I’ve put a template together.

Both can be downloaded from my SlideShare account.

KS3 Geography has been a little more pedestrian, year 7 I’m working on new transition materials, so started by looking at different maps and what they had in common, we then drew maps from memory of our home area. I’ve now added a transition page to Radical Geography.

In year 8 will started to look at rivers, I use Victoria Ellis’s rivers introductory video (Nice bit of Enya..) as a starter, we then produce a poem entitled the ‘River’. Reminds me that I want to record some of them and put them online- one for this week to try…

In year 9 we started weather and climate, we considered the difference between the two terms, and then began to produce maps of the average summer and winter temperatures across the British Isles. Good traditional stuff!

Recently it has been suggested that the UK is headed for a heatwave this summer, so I’m expecting difficult working conditions and cries of ‘it’s too hot to work’. As far as I know there is no upper limit for working temperatures in the UK.

To exploit this potential weather event, I thought I would try to extract some Geography.

View How hot is your classroom? in a larger map

The idea is that colleagues record the temperature of their classroom on the Google map. The map is open collaboration, so you just need a Google account to edit it. Hopefully it will be nice to see how temperatures vary around the country, it would also be nice to see the classroom temperatures of other colleagues from different parts of the World. For students, it offers the chance to discuss how and why temperatures may vary, and proves we are not alone!

Why an inside temperature? I’m just wondering how fit for purpose our learning environments are…

I thought some standardisation is needed, therefore

• Temperatures should be taken at midday in your time zone, on any day from the start date.
• Temperatures should be taken in the shade, away from direct sunlight, computer equipment.
• Temperatures can be updated if/when your previous high has been exceeded.

Using the map,

• Place a place mark on your school location, I’m using the sun one.
• Add a photo of your classroom if you wish.
• The place mark title should include the temperature in Degrees Celsius.

I thought temperature readings could begin on Monday 1st of June, but colleagues can join in at any time. In the mean time, please place your classroom marker in preparation.

The map project can be followed by RSS feed. A KML file can also be downloaded and use in Google Earth.

Please feel free to contact me for help.

Had an email from Dan E at ActionAid about a forthcoming event.

With possibly the most important decision ever to be made by humanity at Copenhagen this December, ActionAid has teamed up with Queen Mary University to create Teach climate action! This teachers’ event is purposefully timed after KS4 and KS5 exams but ahead of the autumn term.

11:00 – 16:00, 19 June 2009
Queen Mary, University London, Mile End
Tickets £10

Buy a ticket now

Take part in Teach climate action! to:

• act on climate change issues in school
• hear from experts about the fight against climate change
• consider the moral implications of (not) teaching climate action
• discover the new stories and case studies for your classroom
• explore ways to teach climate change across the global dimension
• develop ideas for your teaching
• pick up a free PowerDown toolkit
• meet and create links with like minded teachers and academics

A wide range of speakers have confirmed they are speaking and the list is growing. Confirmed speakers include:

• Yasmin Mcdonnell, Emergencies and Conflict Team, ActionAid on Copenhagen, climatic hazards and responding to climate change
• Professor Susan Buckingham, Director of Centre for Human Geography and Environmental Issues, Brunel University on the gendered nature of climate change and how mitigation and adaptation strategies need to be socially and environmentally just
• Lizzie Gillett, Producer, The Age of Stupid on communicating and acting on climate change
• Dr Victoria Johnson, New Economics Foundation on climate change and interdependence
• Professor David Lambert, Geographical Association and the Institute of Education, London on the moral implications of teaching climate action
• Dr Robbie Sutton, Department of Psychology, University of Kent on the psychological obstacles to the fight against climate change and the prospects for overcoming them
• Dan Box, Journalist and winner of the RGS/IBG and BBC Journey of a Lifetime Award on his trip to the Carteret Islands in the Pacific to meet the world’s first official climate refugee

Nothing much new, caught up in coursework and finishing the R.S. and Geography syllabuses.

I’ve started to put revision materials on Pilot Geography related to the pre-release booklet.

The first presentation is comparing Hutton Henry and Harbone, with our place, Ilkeston.

[slideshare id=1180695&doc=prerelease2009part1-090322124345-phpapp02]

Also noticed a broken link to the 2008 resources, which people might find useful.

Not much new with KS3, I’ve added a homework task for illustrating the Richter Scale, I like to enlarge them to A3, makes nice display work. I’ve also added a simple starter/review for hurricanes- it has a couple of weather and climate questions included for revision purposes.

A discussion with an online colleague Ruth lead to this resource, she teaches hurricanes in the autumn term, which makes sense. As we are studying Katrina as a case study I decided to produce a tracking exercise.

The first slide shows the objectives of the exercise, the second slide shows students the correct symbols for tropical storms of differing intensities, which can then be annotated onto their tracking sheet. The third slide goes over the process of recording data onto the tracking sheet, so a revision of longitude and latitude.

From then the presentation is automated, students receive updates from NOAA about the tropical storm, students report this on their table and transfer it to their tracking maps, there is significant time between each data update to allow this process.

I’m not sure yet whether I’m going to split the class into groups, with data collectors informing trackers. I reckon I could also integrate Google Maps into the piece and some disaster management, but that’s for another time.

I know it works, because Liz had a go for me. Cheers! I now need a whole class run through to seek out any adaptations.

Also added a hurricanes penalty shoot-out to the page.

I’ve now updated my Katrina resources. I’ve uploaded the pop-up hurricane task and template. Let me know how it goes, if you are using it.

My addition to the touchy emotional feelings type geography is the video emotional graph.

We’re going to watch the B.B.C. news special on Katrina and graph our emotional response every five minutes, each time adding a note of explanation, at the end we’ll calculate our average emotional score. We’ll then consider how our emotional response changed over time and why. If it doesn’t work, it’s some numeracy anyway!

I like to try a new starter each week, I’ve always been against word searches, but decided to have a go at a class one. I’m going to set a time limit of five minutes and then ask students to come to the IWB to highlight their word and explain its significance to the topic. As a result, I’ve updated my starter and plenary page.

After marking coursework for most of the day, I wanted to do something creative.

I find hurricanes difficult to explain, so decided on the pop-up route.

[slideshare id=951548&doc=popuphurricane-1232907428139972-1&w=425]

I haven’t uploaded it to R.G. yet, because I’m still deciding whether it has merit. I’d use it with my Katrina resources.

What do you think?

Year 9 wanted to look at Hurricanes next, so I’ve decided to use Hurricane Katrina, I suppose I can then compare it to the more recent Burma Cyclone. So started to update some of my old, and they looked old, resources.

Also added a Grade or No Grade game for climate.