If you are looking to encourage students to read beyond the specification, here’s a sheet that maybe of use for geography.
I’m really fortunate that we have an ever-growing library and an incredible librarian that supports and promotes reading and research across the school. These are a small selection of the books that occupy the shelves of the school library.
Click the download button below to grab a copy*
*affiliate links embedded
Last week when it was announced that GCSE exams were cancelled, I was heartbroken for my incredibly hardworking year 11 students. Many I’d taught for 3 or 4 years, they were excelling and I knew this year groups results were going to be phenomenal. However, they’re also not just a grade. They’ve grown into incredible young adults; conscientious, humorous and down right awesome geographers.
When the IB exam cancellations were announced on Monday, felt exactly the same for them. Some of my year 13 IB class, again I’d taught for 4 years. I even dedicated ‘Making it as a Teacher’ to their GCSE class.
Yet, I believe I hadn’t merely been developing my students abilities to pass exams. Instead I’d been teaching them to become life long learners… hopefully even geographers.
In order to keep them engaged with learning and the geographical world, my team and I came up with a list of books, articles, podcasts etc. we thought students would find interesting whether or not they are continuing with geography next year.
I then turned our suggestions into the following sheet. The content is divided into books, articles, documentaries & movies, podcasts and TV shows. All images are hyperlinked.
I’ve uploaded the geography one as a PDF and editable Word document, in addition to a general template for other subjects to amend.
You can access the resources freely here.
In order to edit, you will need to download the resources.
Hope you and your students can find it of use.
Best wishes,
I’ve come across some very useful tweets whereby teachers are sharing resources they’ve created via a Google Drive (or similar) as opposed to Tes or other resource sharing platforms. But since they tend to highlight their resources via twitter it can often be hard to come across them in a web search. In order to help highlight the fantastic resources others are kindly sharing I thought I’d put together a list to share with you, with many thanks to their creators. If you know of one I’ve not yet listed, please feel free to comment or tweet me with links.
This post will appear on both MrsHumanities.com and Magpied Pedgagogy and will be updated as and when I come across new ones so you may wish to bookmark it.
NOTE: As most of these are Google Drives you will probably find that you need to login to Google otherwise the folders will appear empty.
Let’s start with something I set up a while ago but never launched. One for all the Geography teachers.
National Geography Department Google Drive is a way of geography teachers to upload and share resources. Simply upload to this folder and they will then be moved to one of the other folders which can be found here. Once moved the resources are view only. Please name documents by topic and key stage they are designed for.
Jamie Clark @XpatEducator has quite a set of accomplishments. I first came across their resources some time ago back when I was Head of Humanities. Their profile now says they are Director of Digital Integration and Enlgish Teacher along with Apple Distinguished Educator, Producer of The Staffroom Podcast and Author.
Mr Classics @MrClassics3 is a classics KS4 Latin and Classics teacher
Mr Classics Google Drive
Denise Freeman @geography_DA is a geography teacher and teaching school lead working in London.
Denise Freeman’s Google Drive
TeamGeog @GeogTeam is a platform to share resources for Key Stages 3,4 and 5 and is managed by @m_chiles and @jennnnnn_x
TeamGeog Google Drive
Rachael Speed @BeingMissSpeed is a Geography NQT based in Hampshire.
Rachael Speed’s Google Drive
Simon Beale @SPBeale is a Head of History, a @ssat lead practitioner and co-founder of @historybookgrp and critical conversations pod.
Simon Beale’s Google Drive
Morwenna Chapman @MorwennaChapman is Head of Department and Geography teacher. She has created a lovely set of resources for stretch and challenge. Grab a copy here in Morwenna Chapman’s drive
I Teach Boys @ITeachBoys92 is a Science Teacher in London.
I Teach Boys Google Drive
Louise Cass @louisecass is a Science Teacher and former Forensic Scientist.
Louise Cass Google Drive
Miss Keloglou @MissKeloglou is a chemist and chemistry teacher. You’ll have to explore the folders to see their helpful resources.
Miss Keloglou Google Drive
Adam Bilton @heroteach is a Science teacher.
HeroTeach Google Drive
Dr Sue Thaw @aegilopoides is a Head of Science and has shared their revision resources. Again you’ll have to open the folders to see the resources.
Dr Sue Thaw Google Drive
Hope you find these of use and please do highlight to me any others you come across.
Best wishes,
At the start of the academic year, in the first lesson I like to give a brief introduction of myself to my classes, a little about me and my expectations of them. The register is taken and then straight on with setting them up for learning.
One of the things I go through in my introductions are expectations, those I have of them and that they should have of themselves.
I haven’t changed my introduction for the last 2 years so thought I’d change things a little, thus came up with ‘Be the IDEAL Geographer’. I’m figuring that across the key stages I can make reference to it regularly, are you being an IDEAL Geographer?
Any way, it’s one of those resources that can easily be amended to suit your school or other disciplines, scientist, historian, mathematician etc. So here is an editable version for you. Click on the image below to download it.
Please do share your recreations of it via twitter or share a link to it in the comments.
(Note: The comment on inquiry questions is associated with the IB curriculum. More info on ACE discussions/questionning here)
It occurred to me this morning that I have so many resources that I put loads of time and effort into but since moving schools in September 2016 I no longer use. I thought I ought to start sharing a few more of them.
Now I can’t promise they are any good but they might be a starting point for you.
To start with I’m sharing my Scheme of Work on Exploring England. Whilst the topic is called Exploring England, it looks more at the the United Kingdom as a whole with some exploration of the geography of England.
Lesson 1 explores the differences between the British Isles, the UK, and Great Britain. Students have to locate their location on a global, national and local level.
Lesson 2 explored human and physical features of the British Isles.
Lesson 3 takes a look at the population distribution of the UK and in particular England.
Lesson 4 encourages students to look at migration to the British Isles over time.
Lesson 5 looks at migration in more recent times and the stories of migrants, encouraging students to explore push and pull factors.
Lesson 6 is an an opportunity for some directed improvement and reflection time of any assessed work.
Lesson 7 is the summative assessment for the topic.
Lesson 8 explored symbols of Britishness and encourage students to understand the concept of multiculturalism.
Lesson 9 encourages students to reflect on their knowledge and understanding of England to explore tourism to and within the UK.
Lesson 10 finishes the topic with a look at UK governance.
In addition you will find a learning matrix for the front of student books. Simply highlight the achieved criteria in one colour and the next steps in another. Easy to use and clear for students to identify next steps if asked.
You can access the resources, click here.
Feel free to use as you will.
Hope you can find some use out of them.
I love an information collector activity and use them regularly with KS5 in preparation for writing essays.
I haven’t used one in a while with KS3 so thought I’d make an activity for my year 8 classes this week. We are investigating the social, economic, environmental and political impacts of the 3 gorges dam.
Students will be given a set of resources and will use them to fill in their sheets. Nice little task that encourages student inquiry. Students will then use the information they collect in an extended writing task.
I’ve compiled a selection of facts, statements and images from a variety of sources for the students to use.
You can download a copy of the resource here.
Hope its of use.
Following my own presentation at #pedagoohampshire16 I’ve decided to try out marking crib sheets and whole class feedback in order to be able to check books more regularly but mark less since I want marking to inform planning as much as possible.
Following on from some inspiration from @MrThorntonTeach I decided to make a marking crib sheet which I’ve called the Feedforward Book Look Record.
The idea being that I will use the findings from the book looks for plan the following lessons. That way resources, activities and next steps can be catered for the class/individuals thus closing the gap sooner rather than later.
How will it be used?
Quite simply I will look through a set of books as I do I will complete the relevant sections of the record sheet.
Praise – highlight whole class and individual successes, make note of any rewards that need to be given.
Unfinished work – make note of any students with work that is incomplete in order to discuss completion with students in class.
Misconceptions – outline any misconceptions both individual and reoccurring misconceptions to late deal with during the planning of the next lesson.
SPaG – take note of any spelling mistakes that can then be incorporated into a learning activity, as well as any punctuation and grammar errors that are reoccurring so that suitable tasks or targets can be created.
Next steps – generate any questions or tasks that can be worked upon as part of the DIRT process, also highlight any particular skills I want students to work on in the work that follows.
Assessment of understanding – here I will simply place students initials where I feel their understanding of the work lies I will probably only write out those I feel are in the amber or red categories so I can focus on them in the following lesson/s.
And there you have my version of the marking crib sheet inspired by @MrThorntonTeach
You can download a copy here.
Evening.
Since I’m moving on from my current role and won’t be needing many of the units of work and resources I created over the past two years, I’ve decided to upload and share them for others to access and use freely.
Although I’m happy for the new Head of Department to have them, I also want others to benefit from the time and effort I’ve put into making them (and there’s been a lot).
So to view the full units of work and download any of the resources follow the links below
I will add more links to this post as I upload to the TES.
The Powerpoints are all my work, most of the resources are but some I’ve edited and reformed into pieces suitable for my classes. If I’ve failed to give credit where credit is due (more than likely) please let know and I will amend.
Feedback is always appreciated as I like to know how to improve my work, however please don’t moan about the use of Open Dyslexic font (yes, it’s happened).
You can find other resources of mine through my TES shop (although everything is free).
Hope you find the resources of use.
Last week I shared the following tweet on a before and after topic review sheet I use.
#pedagoofriday loved seeing the progress of yr7 in their last topic with a before and after topic review pic.twitter.com/pSGmVq7MMY
— Mrs Humanities (@MrsHumanities) June 10, 2016
It’s quite a simple but effective approach to student self-assessment.
At the start of the topic students RAG rate their understanding. Not only does this allow for the student to assess to their prior learning but allows the teacher to identify areas of confidence and thus areas to challenge the student.
Then at the end of the topic students RAG rate again. I like to do this before a DIRT lesson, this then allows me to focus a students attention to the areas in which they feel less confident and therefore allows me to close any gaps in their knowledge.
Here’s a template for the document – I print the two pages on one sheet.
Hope they are of use.
In need of a way to record intervention sessions?
Here’s a simple intervention feedback sheet to download. 
I needed something different to record interventions sessions on other than post-it notes, scraps of paper and verbal discussions so made this.
It’s quite self explanatory but here’s how I’ll be using it…
Students present – students that attended the intervention session
Notable moments – anything noteworthy, successes of individuals for example.
Points to Flag Up – any difficulties experienced by students, anything I will need to return to
Assessment of Progress – RAG rate the progress made by each student, their initials will be put in the corresponding box
Next steps – my plans for the following intervention session
Hope it can be of use.
Mrs Humanities 