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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.

When planning this week I noticed a river domino had slipped into the weather and climate ones… glad I noticed that, because I was due to use them this week. Now updated.

Thanks also to Kenny for informing me about the broken link to the Extreme Environments introductory movie- should now be updated.

I do appreciate people informing me of mistakes and broken links.

Cheers.

Not much to update this week, now that I’m into exam entries, records of achievements and reports.

I’ve updated the instructions on the noughts and crosses slide for weather, because I’d confused my right and left clicks.

I tend to use one strategy across a scheme of lessons, so I’ve also added examples for rivers and Antarctica.

Wanting an easier day tomorrow, so just putting some finishing touches to resources for next week.

I’ve uploaded some resources to do with multiculturalism in Britain, under cultural geography, think I might update some of the case studies near the time of delivery. Also added a content generator match-up of the main cultural sub-divisions.

I’m also about to finish looking at Antarctica with Year 10, I’m be focusing on climate change, we do this in depth at Year 9, so have produced a Question of Sport type refresher as a starter.

When reading the excellent blog of Joe Dale I was reminded about the drag and drop macro that can be used in PowerPoint, as a result I’ve produced a noughts and crosses game for weather and climate, not really noughts but circles, because they interfere with the hyper linking; but I’m sure it will be highly adaptable. Please read the instructions under the notes on the first slide.

Just preparing for next week, or is next year. Uploaded some Pilot cultural resources, that I spent last year producing- sadly cultural geography didn’t make it into the new spec, only going to get use them two more times…

Also uploaded some weather dominoes and a question of sport type starter for a river’s long profile.