WJEC Blended Learning Resources

There is a wealth of Blended Learning resources on the WJEC / CBAC website.

These are excellent and cover a great many topics suitable for 'A' level and GCSE students and also teachers who want to check their subject knowledge ahead of teaching a topic for the first time. They are free, and no account is needed. They follow a similar format to those on the SENECA website.

Click BEGIN and work through the resources.

Very helpful support from the awarding body.

GeogPod: National Fieldwork Week

Head out with Year 10 this coming week if you can.

One of the best ways to appreciate the landscape is to head out on fieldwork. 

The latest GeogPod has been released and it features Paula Richardson and I talking about the GA's National Research Report and how that fed into the development of the National Fieldwork Week.

 This starts on Monday the 6th of June.

Episode 53 of #GeogPod is now available!

In this episode, @GAGeogger speaks with @GeoBlogs and Paula Richardson on fieldwork

Listen now at https://t.co/hLSfHDfVhp

Series 9 of GeogPod is kindly sponsored by @CambridgeInt#geography #nationalfieldworkweek #podcast #education pic.twitter.com/sk62VGtEQS

— Geographical Association (@The_GA) June 4, 2022

Thanks to John Lyon for hosting - see if you can spot the question I wasn't expecting... :) 

AQA Pre-release 2022

I was told yesterday that the AQA GCSE pre-release material for the 2022 summer exam season was based in / or mentioned Ely, so I asked for a copy and discovered that it was based on an application by Amey to add an incinerator to their existing waste management park near Waterbeach / Denny Abbey to the south of Ely, along the A10.

The scheme was controversial, although the benefits were clearly stated by the company. A protest group was set up, and commissioned a report on the impact of the proposal, which included mention of the chimney which would be taller than Ely Cathedral and spoil the view towards it from Madingley (a place of geographical significance).

Interestingly, for a pre-release where students usually have to weigh up whether a planned development should go ahead, the decision has already been made in that the scheme was .... spoiler alert.... turned down in 2020.

I tried to add some local contexts - newspaper articles, campaign group reports, local landscape character analysis reports etc. into the mix and shared to the community - AQA is the most popular GCSE specification choice so there will be lots of teachers looking to prepare something on this, and we are all working at our limits at the moment with hybrid learning for many still due to students recovering at home from COVID.

Anthony Bennett has added a copy of the document to his page of pre-release materials. This is available to subscribers and non-subscribers of Internet Geography.

An editable version is below or on this link...

Feel free to download a copy and add your own ideas to the document - there have already been some deletions from the document which is a little disappointing, but I have been able to recover to previous versions.

Images: Alan Parkinson and shared under CC license

Threads

This is not related to the 1980s TV drama featuring a nuclear bomb being dropped on Sheffield...

Threads is a new online game from the Global Goals Centre, which has had the involvement of a number of organisations.

Thanks to Verity Jones for the tipoff.

Go here to play the game.

The activity explores the product life cycle of an item of clothing, with different routes depending on what the product is, and several other decisions that are taken during the course of the journey... This is revealed at the end.

Usefully, the team has also created a set of lesson plans which are helpful for those in KS2 and KS3, and with a strong cross-curricular / Global Goals theme. There are 8 lessons, each with a PPT and an accompanying overview document.

Here are the details of the team that created the game and accompanying resources.

This is well worth taking a look at, as there might be something here that can slot nicely into, or alongside existing curriculum content and activities.

Chalk one up

An interesting long read in 'The Guardian' on chalk: a rock which makes up a large part of the UK's bedrock stretching all the way from East Anglia and the famous striped cliffs at Hunstanton all the way down to the south coast, and the famous Old Harry Rocks of the Foreland. 

It is one of the rocks that gets taught at KS3 very often because of its association with particular stretches of coastline, landforms, and as a rock type which is affected by solution. At GCSE it can lead to distinctive landscapes, although limestone and granite are more often selected.

If I was to dig down below the village where I live, I would reach chalk, as I would for most of Norfolk.

BGS Map Viewer for my village.

To find out what lies below your feet, visit the British Geological Survey mapping site, or download the MySoil app.

Mountain Aglow

A new website which looks at the legacy of the Soufriere Hills volcano's eruptions in Montserrat.

Since the eruption began in 1995, hundreds of scientific studies have been published on the activity at Soufrière Hills and its impacts. But these numbers are dwarfed by the remarkable creative outpouring amongst Montserrations on island and all over the world, which matches the vigour of the volcano and the enthusiasm of the scientists to understand more.

The impact of the volcano on the lives of Montserratians is powerfully reflected in these memories, stories, poems and songs that have been written, told and shared over the last 25 years. We are a team of scientists, literary analysts, historians, artists and social scientists who have benefited from this new knowledge. With ‘Mountain Aglow’, our goal is to document and celebrate the creative responses to the eruption, to keep the collective memory of Montserrat before, during and after the eruption alive and accessible to everyone.
There is a digital exhibition.

Trailer for the website / exhibition on the island. The physical exhibition is paired with this digital exhibition to explain the eruption and the legacy.

Out later in the year... to help with GCSE fieldwork

Will be available to order from the GA shop and also view on the GA stall at the GA Conference.

Surrey Geography Network Meetings

For those who are in Surrey or within easy reach, Brendan Conway has shared details of what looks like a very useful series of events in the next few months, and into 2020.
As you can see, there are some excellent speakers including the 'mighty' Simon Oakes and the GA's very own Alan Kinder.

Details for booking are at the bottom of the blogpost.

Surrey Geography Network meetings 2019-20

These are designed to help you to address current issues whilst at the same time networking with other geography leaders / teachers.
The meetings will take place at Notre Dame School KT11 1HA from 1.30 to 4.30. The dates, speakers and their topics are as follows​:

Tuesday 19th November: Enabling Data Skills in the Geography Curriculum, Dr Simon Oakes - former chief examiner, author and education consultant

The session will present some excellent ideas for embedding data skills into Geography lessons. It will draw on Simon's Royal Geographical Society funded project work as well as his own wealth of experience as a chief examiner, teacher and text book writer. The session is designed to help you to develop students' confidence and their ability to use their geographical knowledge to make the most of available data.

Tuesday 10th March: Planning your Geography Curriculum, Damian Gray - Chartered Geographer and Head of Geography, Sunbury Manor School

Damian will illustrate how he has planned his department's geography curriculum to meet the requirements of Ofsted's new inspection framework which necessitates the need for subject leads to be able to justify the quality of their educational provision and lesson sequence choices.

Monday 22nd June: The new Education Inspection Framework (EIF) - What this means for Geography Curriculum Leaders, Alan Kinder - Chief Executive of the Geographical Association. 

Alan is also a Director of the Council for Subject Associations, British Council consultant and a virtual editorial board member to the SecEd educational newspaper. He is a member of the Council for British Geography and on the advisory board for the University of Sheffield's Geography’s Department.
The session will offer advice and share ideas as to how best to meet the new demands on geography subject leaders of the new EIF with specific reference made to the support provided by the Geographical Association.​

If you wish to book a place, please email Katy Gill (courses@schoolsnetwork.co.uk) who will allocate you a place and send you an invoice. 

The cost of the 3 meetings, one per term, remains £160 in total.

New DME from Internet Geography

Thanks to Anthony Bennett over at Internet Geography for the excellent images and drone footage of the Golden Sands resort near Withernsea which have been shared over the last few weeks.
I am familiar with Withernsea, as my first ever teaching experience was in the school there during my PGCE.


These are all worth exploring, and the students loved them in the last week of term, when we explored coastal erosion as part of the conclusion to our Adventure Landscapes unit.
Visit the website, or follow on Twitter to see more...

And to make the most of these images, you can now obtain a DME which provides a range of activities for AQA GCSE Geography in particular, including questions, images and activities.



There is a £5 discount until Christmas Eve. See it described here.

https://t.co/MzBW6h6kYE pic.twitter.com/bfSOcpgEEb

— internetgeography.net 🌍 (@InternetGeog) December 17, 2018

Finally, if you go to the shop you will see details of CPD / fieldwork events that Anthony is running early in the New Year.

20 000 views

It's taken a while, but thanks for visiting and reading the blog. More action over on Living Geography if you want to keep up with what's happening in the geography world.