What do the following have in common? The human and physical causes of flooding The impact of free trade on Low Income Countries How to draw a climate graph Did you get it? Other than being pretty standard, and therefore awesome, pieces of a geographers education, they all take one hour to learn. Exactly one…
Towards the end of last term, as we started to review our Expect Excellence action plan, my thoughts shifted towards our next goal. I have become increasingly concerned that over the years our focus has been on how we teach and that we have taken our eye off what we teach – and why we…
What does excellence look like in your subject? That is the question that my department will be putting at the heart of all we do over the next year. For the last two years we have focused on increasing aspiration and expecting excellence. I wanted to ensure that we had a culture where everyone wanted…
Two years ago I decided that my department should have one particular focus for improvement. I work at a wonderful school, where results are very good and our kids generally want to do well. I was concerned though that there was a risk of complacency and the data seemed to bear this out. Results were…
My Year 7 class had something of a revelation this week. We have just started looking at coasts and coastal processes and spent the lesson learning about different types of erosion. Knowing that coasts, like rivers, are responsible for three processes (erosion, transportation and deposition) and that these shape the landscape are fundemental to the…
Do you ever find yourself watching the news or reading a paper and saying to yourself, ‘I don’t understand how this could happen’? If so, I’d suggest you may not have been paying attention in your Geography lessons. The study of Geography is as old as the hills. Or at least as old as people…
In a recent discussion on twitter, I suggested that one thing I would love to see more of are blogs by teachers discussing their lessons. Picking them apart and explaining their thinking. Showing how they put the pedagogy they espouse into practice. I have tried to do this once myself (A glimpse inside) and found…
