Intense but not in tents.... the Geography Camp

Over at the Geography Collective HQ, we’ve been making some changes and plotting some quality events. We are really pleased and excited to announce some of our plans for our residential camp in early 2014. This will focus on helping geography departments make sense of and subvert the current changes to the National Curriculum and examination system.

As well as the central theme, there will also be lots of informal activities, laughter, great food and fun. We are shaping the programme at the moment, but it will include stuff like:

• Fitting existing Schemes of Work and resources to the new National Curriculum; 
• Using young people to hack your existing curriculum; 
• What to do about assessment; 
• Using Key Stage 3 to improve GCSE performance. 

The final programme will be very much shaped by those who attend.

The style will be (un)conferency, with plenty of opportunity for informal chatting and sharing. As a school leader who held the CPD budget, we’re making it great value and will ensure you’ll leave with lots of ideas, contacts and resources.

We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be using the Field Studies Council centre at Juniper Hall. It’ll be full board and accommodation included in the price. The dates are Friday 25th to Sunday 26th of January 2014.

Go HERE to sign up and register your interest...

Follow and use the hashtag: #GCCamp

GCSE key concepts: Interdependence

You can now download a special PDF 'version' of the Mission:Explore Food book that we've produced for the National Geographic Education team's materials for Geography Awareness Week.

It focuses on the theme of Interdependence.

Link (PDF download - 5Mb)

It's really rather tasty....

Learning outside the Classroom

Chapter 6 of the Badger Geography Grade Booster book talks about the importance of appropriate fieldwork for the data collection element of the Controlled Assessment.

This will still be a part of GCSE courses for a good few years yet, and if/when it is finally replaced, there will still be fieldwork and longer projects which means the advice in the Chapter will still be relevant.

Fieldwork learning comes under the banner of Learning outside the Classroom.

I'm delighted to announce that the Geography Collective has been shortlisted for a Learning outside the Classroom award.

We would be even more delighted if you would consider voting for us, especially if you have been enthused by our Mission:Explore books, app or website, or perhaps been visited by us, seen us at Glastonbury, Latitude or the Hay Festival, ridden on buses in Suffolk, cycled along Sustrans routes in many cities, explored the Great Glen with Discover Explore or in some other geographical context...

We're going to be on the road in the next few months, and also will be running our Geography Camp in December, of which more later...

Please click the link and give us your vote. Thanks :)