Hurricane Season starting...

The Badger book includes a range of ideas for ensuring that the course is organised in such a way that the topics are taught at an appropriate time. Chapter 3 on 'Memorable Geography' provides a range of similar advice.

With that in mind, you should get ready to start teaching about tropical revolving storms. 
This could be set as a Summer holiday task for Year 10 students if Natural Hazards / Weather Hazards are on your specification, or alternatively set as a pre-GCSE task for those Year 9 students who you know have opted to continue with GCSE (assuming a 3 year KS3)


Hurricane season will start at the end of May... or has it already started ?


Tropical Storms Alberto and Beryl have already formed, but not developed any further...
Why does the hurricane season in the Atlantic start at this time of year and not earlier (or later ?)
Challenge your students to explain why...
Alberto and Beryl were the first in 2012's season - who is next ?
How are hurricanes named ?
Will there ever be another Hurricane Katrina ?

If you'd like a great activity using GIS and enquiry, you'll also need to get yourself a copy of Bob Lang's 'GIS made Easy' book. This contains a full lesson activity and associated resources which teaches about some key GIS skills through the context of exploring hurricane paths. I edited this book.
You can have a sneak preview of the book by visiting the GA website.


Visit the NOAA site for all the latest information.


You also might want to catch up with a recent Twitter chat with the hashtag #hurrichat while it's still there: experts answering questions on hurricanes.
Another reminder of the power of Twitter (which is featured in the book too)

It's part of Hurricane Preparedness Week - lots of YouTube clips and other resources. There's a very useful PDF download of a guide on how to prepare.

Get ready for the season ahead... Students could be put be put into teams and briefed to keep an eye on a particular name and track it and report back...

VITAL Teachshare tomorrow night...

Join Richard Allaway and myself tomorrow night (Tuesday the 29th of May) at 7pm for a VITAL Teachshare.
We shall talk about the development of Richard's Geography all the Way website, show some of the activities and how they developed, and share some plans for the future development of the site.

A chance to talk to the creator of one of the best geography websites out there... oh, and Richard too... ;)

Richard's image features in Chapter 2 of the Badger book, and influenced several other sections.

UPDATE
GO HERE TO WATCH A REPEAT

Revision Podcasts

One of the key elements of revision is to get involved in some way, and make the experience interactive. The Badger book provides some ideas for revision in Chapter 7

Paul Berry has produced a very useful resource using a tool called PRESENT.ME
This links video with powerpoint material.
You can produce up to 3 x 15 minute presentations per month with a free account.

Here's Paul's video, for his OCR GCSE group.
It's based on the Geography Themes exam

Why not give it a go...
I also like Paul's idea of the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - that could be added to some of the mnemonics in Chapter 9 of the book...

Wordfoto

One of the techniques in the Badger GCSE book is the visual linking with the content in the exam by creating diagrams called calligrams. Google the term to find out more. I like the effects that you can get with the WORDFOTO app. This creates a nice effect with a bit of tinkering...
Here's a photo of a pebbly beach for example.
What other visual cues can you produce ?

VITAL Portal Top Tips...

Just added the 101st TOP TIP to the VITAL Geography Portal that I manage.

Individual subscriptions are just £10 for the year...

Details about the Portal are here.

Details of the latest SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS for schools are here...

I also added the letters 'H' and 'I' to the Word of the Week column.

If you were choosing geographical terms to represent the letters 'J', 'K' and 'L' what would you choose - each word needs an image that you have taken to represent it too....


Quite a few ideas in the book started out life on the OU VITAL CPD portal... It's a good place to communicate ideas....


Watch out for an online Teachshare which will feature the book coming soon...

Graphic Organisers

Graphic Organisers are mentioned in the Badger book as one important strategy in helping students to revise.
There are various strategies to help them become more expert described in Chapter 4.

A sample of over 60 types of graphic organisers are available to download in PDF format from this website.

John Davitt's Learning Event Generator

This features in Chapter 3 of the book, and a version of the tool is included on the CD that comes with the book.
John has been working on an online version of the tool which you can edit yourself as part of a web page, which would be useful to avoid the need to run any software, so would work well if you were using a Chrome Book, for example, or a laptop in a classroom that was not your usual one...
Click on the word to change the 'subject' and generate a random way of doing it.

Purchasers of the book have further guidance and resources to help them make use of this tool....

GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 4 of 4

We are at the final of 4 posts which summarise some of the responses from the 94 students and teachers who answered my questionnaire earlier in the year...

This final question asked about Smartphones and whether they were used for revision and teaching and if so, which apps or features were used....

One teacher provided these specific recommendations:

Geography GCSE Revision App (£1.49)

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/geography-gcse-revision/id340221590?mt=8

GCSE Geography Bitesize Last-minute Learner (£1.49)

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/gcse-geography-bitesize-last/id410791814?mt=8

GCSE Geography Bitesize Podcasts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/audio/geography/

Think Geography GCSE Geog Podcasts

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/think-geography-gcse-geog/id374013012

About a quarter of the respondents didn't own a smartphone, and one teacher said nicely "I am a technical dinosaur and my phone is a brick".

There were 15 people who owned a smartphone but hadn't as yet made use of many apps in their teaching, but that they would investigate further.

Some apps that were mentioned by name:

• iPlayer (for iPad)
• Flipbook
• The Guardian
• Bitesize App
• USGS Earhquake App
• AQA App
• Twitter
• National Geographic Atlas

One colleague had turned powerpoint slides into JPEGs so that they could be viewed on the phones.

Several teachers pointed out that many students had Blackberries because of the messaging, and wondered about the apps that might be available for these... any ideas ?

Google Docs are an area that could be more used.

James Mutton has just created one with the hope of creating a collaborative resource for Edexcel B

Check it out if you'd like to be involved...

Thanks to the teachers and students who took the time to fill in the document.

I shall be creating another document with some questions on the new curriculum later in the year to help guide another product. As before there'll be a prize on offer for all who take part...

GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 3 of 4

OK - so we're coming up to REVISION TIME for GCSE colleagues.
The IB Geography papers are also being sat next week, so there's a lot of teenagers trying to revise.

Remember that there are some key revision tips in Chapter 7 of the Badger Book


This is the 3rd of three posts summarising the 94 responses I got to my Google Doc on GCSE Geography revision earlier in the year....

Two more questions are summarised in this blog post....

The first one asked about the topics that people found the hardest to teach / revise....


There was a broad range of over 20 topics that were mentioned (most of the course really by someone) including some topics that I wouldn't have expected to be there..

The areas that were featured the most were:

• Weather and Climate, particularly depressions 
• Industry / Economic Activities
• Map Skills
• Population
• Economic Development

It seems that there are also some issues with Case Studies: from their frequency to the depth that is needed.

• Some colleagues were concerned about the amount that needs to be revised compared to the amount that is actually examined.
• Level marking
• Timing
• Depth of answers that are required (sometimes too much, at other times not enough...)
• Use of Diagrams

You will be pleased to hear that Chapter 7 tackles revision, and Chapter 8 looks at exam preparation and skills....

Which brings us on to the next question:
What additional help would students / teachers want to help them with revision  ?

This might lead on to some actual resources that need to be prepared, or perhaps some collaborative efforts from teachers. I will share some ideas for these (and the previous question) in future posts on this blog.
Quite a few teachers were fine without any further support, and others suggested that greater consistency from the Awarding Bodies, better Specifications and better questions would help.

Some interesting comments worth mentioning...

• Case Study notes with tasks to help unpick them (have been producing some KS3 resources for Harper Collins very like this...)
• Online Videos
• 'Current' Case Study material (no shortage of ideas for that on Living Geography of course)
• Podcasts

Ready made display and other material was mentioned, although I always enjoyed creating my own displays in my room...

Finally, a multimedia resource / textbook of some kind was mentioned - the arrival of iBooks Author earlier in the year makes this sort of collaborative resource a possibility, and we are planning something related to this for the GA Conference 2013. 

The final post in this series will look at the Apps that people have found useful when revising and teaching GCSE Geography...

GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 2 of 4

Second of 4 posts summarising the 94 responses I had to my GCSE Geography revision questionnaire that I had on a Google Form earlier in the year....


The second part of the questionnaire asked teachers and students to assess the value of various common methods of revision.


I asked students to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 was never used / not useful and 5 was always used / really useful


Here are the average scores for each of the methods....


Copying out Notes: 2.4
Summarising Notes: 3.7
Flash Cards: 3.4
Revision Sessions at School: 4
BBC Bitesize: 3.2
Practising past paper: 4.3


The next question produced some very lengthy responses from some respondees, some of which are repeated below.
I hope that these might be useful for some last minute revision as we move into exam season after the May Day Bank Holiday....


How else do you revise / help students revise other than what has already been mentioned ?


I don't have room to go through them all here, but will be using some of them for future posts for purchasers of the Badger GCSE Book....


One teacher provided a 7 point programme for revision, which sounds quite useful:

Usual exam practice in class with students goes like this... 

(1) Deconstruct question by examining command words. 

(2) Identify content that needs to be addressed in the answer

(3) Generate a writing frame

(4) Have a go at writing an answer

(5) Peer assess work

(6) Compare with a model answer 

(7) Identify individual points for improvement.

Here's another sample of the respondees ideas that I particularly liked... a quick ten to kick us off...

1. Pass the parcel exam question answer formation

2. I use a lot of spider diagram / mind maps over a single sheet of A3 per section - colour them, use images etc

3. Blog with daily 20 minute activities in the run up to the exam

4. Dart board games - checkout requires students to hit the correct words in order.

5. Rely on good classroom teaching!

6. We have an integrated system of GCSE revision which we are gradually building. I have written 3 revision guides - one for each unit - specifically tailored to the course and the case studies we use - they are quite chunky but they become active workbooks during the revision lessons

7. Dealing with dyslexics - we make audio recordings for them to listen to on their MP3

8. Tarsia puzzles

9. Ridiculous actions to remember things 

10.  Visual prompts around school (this idea features in the Badger book with some examples....)

Next post - which topics are the 'hardest to revise' ??

GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 1 of 4

Earlier in the year, as part of the preparation for the publication of the new Badger GCSE Grade Booster book (have I mentioned that  ?) I put a GCSE Revision Questionnaire online as a Google Form.

The Badger book has a section on using Google Docs to help revision by the way.

In this and the next three posts, I shall go through the results that came in.

Thanks to the 94 people who answered the questions...
There were 64 teachers and 30 students (thanks to Liz Smith's class who answered the questions in particular)

Specifications being taught (teacher responses only)

AQA A: 17 - the most popular

AQA B: 7

Edexcel A: 5

Edexcel B: 10

OCR A: 3

OCR B: 12 - the 2nd most popular

WJEC A: 5

WJEC B: 3

CCEA: 1

iGCSE: 1

Websites used to help with revision

BBC will be pleased to hear that BBC Bitesize got 65 mentions, the most of any other website by a long way.

S-Cool: 21

Nings: 8

You Tube: 2

Geography all the Way: 5

Anthony Bennett's seminal Internet Geography: 5

Cool Geography: 6

GeoBytesGCSE (Rob Chambers): 1

SAM Learning - mentioned by some of the students but not the teachers - probably relates to a school subscription

Funky Geography: Liz Smith’s blog

BBC Class Clips: 3

Staffordshire Learning Net and Forum: 5

Terry Jones also shared some Revision Flashcards on SLN: http://learningnet.co.uk/geoforum/index.php?topic=7122.0

Well done to Henry Scott for starting his own revision blog too....

Letts Revise: 1

Geography Lost: 1

School's own VLE: 7

Abbeyfield Humanities Blog got 2 mentions - nice work by Mr. Drake

Blythe Bridge School website - which apparently has "good revision sheets": 1

Share Geography: 1 

Geography Clinic: 1

Worldlywise Wiki from Chesterton Community College: 2

GeographyPods.com: 1

Revision World: 2

Revision Centre: 2

Geographyfieldwork.com: 1

NGFL: 1

Kerboodle: 1

Radical Geography: 1

NGFL Wales: 1

BBC News: 2

Edmodo: 1

TES: 3

In the next 3 posts: 

- how best to revise - techniques and tips from colleagues

- which topics are hardest to revise ?

- how can smartphones and apps help revision ?

And of course you know what to do if stuck for ideas....

Controlled Assessment

Chapter 6 of the book deals with the Controlled Assessment which is obviously of vital importance when it comes to determining the final GCSE grades that students receive. There has been a steep learning curve for teachers in ensuring that the work that is planned enables students to access as many marks as possible.
The book contains information and guidance derived from colleagues in many schools, as well as subject advisers from the main awarding bodies, many of whom I have worked with over the years.

As an example of how one school prepared its students for their CA task, you should head over to the Priory School Portsmouth, where the geography team there have recently been to Hengistbury Head and shared material in advance of (and after, and even during) the fieldwork days on the coast. As the school is near the coast it made sense for them to do that type of context - are you doing the same in your school ?
The materials that students had access to included:
- information and build up on the department's Facebook page (the book describes the importance of using social media tools in Chapter 10)
- a gallery of images on the photo sharing website Flickr - when I was teaching in Norfolk I made sure that there were plenty of images - in fact here's a slideshow from October 2007 of mine from Stiffkey SaltMarsh and Holkham Sand Dunes...
You can get a free FLICKR account which will enable you to add up to 200 images...



- a student book shared on Slideshare - made by an NQT member of the team: Sam Atkins, and a rather splendid piece of work

Geomorphology fieldbook

View more presentations from David Rogers

What are you doing to share pupils as effectively as possible for their Controlled Assessment ?

Thanks to all who contributed...

Have just been sending thanks to those colleagues who contributed ideas to the book - you are mentioned in the acknowledgements in the book...
These are not in order of importance, but just as they happened to feature and come to mind. I like to use the phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants' on occasions like this...

To see the actual ideas in full, you'll need to order the book of course...

Thanks to Sam Atkins for his idea of raising grades as being like climbing mountains. Also for being a GA NQT Conference attendee earlier in the year...

Thanks to John Harrison, Assistant Head of the King's School, Peterborough for some ideas on memorable geography.

Thanks to Kenny O'Donnell for the Stepping Stones idea that I read about on his blog.

Thanks to Tony Cassidy for the Facebook idea which has gone down so well with everyone who's seen it, young and old...

Thanks to Emma Johns for her poster which I've been using for many years now.

Thanks to Noel Jenkins for some general sprinklings of ideas in various places, and the 'How to Google up your coursework' document that is referred to...

Thanks to Danny O' Callaghan for letting me refer to his work.

Thanks to Helen Nurton for some general revision ideas from materials produced for her school.

Thanks to Jo Blackmore for the production of a range of documents for the exam board NINGS which were adapted and fed into the thinking for some sections, and the examples of the Geography Speed Dating.

Thanks to Val Vannet for the Geodoku activity - more on that in a future blog post

Thanks to Matt Blackmore for the ideas on activities to support memorable geography including Keyword Facebook, DJing and a version of the Speed Dating activity

Thanks to Rob Chambers for letting me use a few sections from his GeoBytesGCSE blog

Thanks to David Riley for support through the TRIPTICO tool (see other blog posts relating to this tool)

Thanks to Steve Kidd for his BIGBURY activity which showed the value of some before and after images.

Thanks to John Davitt for the Learning Event Generator (and Richard Clarke for his Excel version which is included on the CD which comes with the book...) - this features in the 'Pick and Mix' section, which was going to be a little larger, but we were short of space.

Thanks to Russel Tarr for his Class Tools suite, which gets a mention.

Thanks finally to Andy Leeder, for the useful guidance he provided as part of the Suffolk Geography Conference in 2011.

Oh, and don't worry I did write some of the book still ;)

Author copies...

My author copies arrived today... looking great !

Just browsing and about to send e-mail thanks to those who had an idea featured in the book.

David from Triptico shows one of the tools featured in the book...

The book features the Triptico suite of tools by David Riley, with some ideas for how you might use them.
Here is a screencast which shows some ideas for using just one of the tools: Word Magnets, or 'Mystery Magnets'...

Those of you who have purchased the book should turn to Chapter 10: New Tools, which features Triptico and many other ideas for engaging learners...

Books in stock at the warehouse...

Thanks to Graeme Eyre for telling me that he had already received his copy of the Badger GCSE Grade Booster book that I wrote, and has already been using the activities today... he tried out the speed dating activity today for starters...
Here's a picture of some of the books in the warehouse ready for distribution, with thanks to Gracey at the warehouse for the pic...

Order yours now to avoid disappointment...

Further feedback welcome...