Union Glacier

Used this classic earlier... 

A very short guide to Union Glacier Camp from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

And here's a film by the film maker...

Behind the Lens: Episode 7 from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

New Pearson support for Primary Geography and History

Mr. Parkinson has been reviewing this new resource from Pearson.

Curriculum making is an important part of any teacher's professional identity: engaging with the discipline, and developing pedagogical practice, while considering the particular nature of the school's context and the young people who sit in front of you to ensure their geographical experiences are not only educational, but also authentic and empowering.

According to Professor David Lambert,

"Curriculum making is the creative act of interpreting a curriculum specification and turning it into a coherent, challenging, engaging and enjoyable scheme of work, it is a job that really never ends and lies at the heart of good teaching."

For Primary practitioners and Secondary alike, developing a curriculum across a key stage is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which may result in several iterations over time. There are a lot of decisions to make in this work, and not all colleagues may have the time to do this within a particular academic year's cycle, or have opportunities to undertake the necessary reading and other preparation to be able to do this work justice.

For this reason, some teachers will turn to ready-made resources and schemes which are provided by a range of organisations. These are probably well known to many teachers, but Pearson have now stepped into this arena with an offering of their own.

Pearson has a great deal of experience in publishing curriculum resources, alongside supporting teachers with preparations for external examinations with textbooks. They have now produced and released a completely resourced scheme of work for Primary Geography (and also History), which includes all the resources that a school would need to begin to move towards a (possibly) new and consistent approach across the lower key stages, supported by planning materials, resources, regular assessment activities and classroom support for teachers engaging with the material for the first time. 

These resources are part of the Pearson Primary Extended Curriculum.

Pearson has spent a year working with staff at Reach Academy Feltham, Jon Hutchinson (Director of Training and Development at the Reach Foundation) and Emily Maule (Director of Humanities and Social Sciences at Reach Academy Feltham) to create a new, whole-school curriculum for Primary History and Geography.

You can take a look at the sample materials and find out more here if this sounds like it might be something to kick start or revitalise the geography in your school.

The resource is provided as a complete curriculum, including what Pearson calls “I know that...” and “I know how...” approaches, which "enable pupils to not only show they know and remember more, but also develop the conceptual and disciplinary knowledge they need to become young geographers."

Pearson's website explains that the new resources adopt a: "pedagogically rigorous approach, validated by the hundreds of classrooms who have clarified their intent, been supported through their implementation and seen evident impact." 

This approach has been trialled in a number of schools across the Reach Foundation before being made available more widely. This has doubtless ironed out many of the problems that are spotted when a new activity is given its first run through in an actual classroom with children.

For each Unit, teachers can access planning materials and lesson plans, resources, printable activity booklets and assessments which can be completed in various ways. The Units are split up into 6 Sessions, with each one ending in a Unit Check Out, which forms a final review check or assessment. There are 3 Units for each Year, suggesting that combining them with 3 History topics would produce a year's worth of lessons. Resources can be located quickly using the search function.

A series of free sample lessons are provided - you can take a good look at a KS1 lesson on the UK, and a KS2 lesson on Rivers to see whether this might fit with your own existing curriculum, or take it a step further.

Sample lesson plans to accompany the resources can also be seen on the link above.

I've had a good look through the resources and supporting documents for geography.

There are some familiar topics which receive a fresh look, along with some interesting new areas of study - Year 6 will explore fast fashion, for example, alongside carrying out fieldwork. Year 4, for example includes Rivers (with a focus on the Volga), Migration (including a look at Windrush) and Natural Resources (with a located example of Chile and its copper mines).

In addition to the lesson materials there are Concept toolkits, which allow for the exploration of some of the key underpinning concepts of the Units. These concepts include Change and Location and Place. The materials here introduce strategies to organise class discussions, group work and decision making.

There is plenty of support for writing, such as the inclusion of structure strips for some of the key topics when extended writing is required, which are formatted ready for printing. 

Speaking of printing, there is likely to be a lot of printing required to disseminate the very thorough, but lengthy booklets for both pupils and teachers which accompany each Unit. The Year 4 Pupil booklet on the Migration Unit is 31 pages long, for example. Schools would need to factor in a photocopying budget. The booklets are provided in PDF format.

Each pupil booklet starts with a knowledge organiser (you may have your own views on those), and a learning review page to track progress through the Unit. Activities include labelling, cloze text passages, connecting boxes and sorting information as well as writing answers - generally quite short pieces of text, or capturing ideas. The accompanying Teacher booklets will give teachers confidence in what is required, and help pupils through each Session. Pacing is likely to be important here, and the amount of text and visuals may overwhelm some learners.

There is one problematic Unit entitled Slums, which I would not personally use given the language, and could usefully be rebranded as 'Homes: Near and Far', or something similar.

There are differing opinions about the use of the term 'slums' and I understand that Pearson did speak to subject experts and teachers before making the decision to use it. However, they are now consulting with teachers who have bought these resources and will use their feedback to decide whether to update the unit to avoid the term.

One possible omission from the resource is any multimedia material - such as videos which are aimed at use by pupils or teachers - the materials are quite 'static' and a few animations or sound clips with effects would have been helpful for a Primary audience. 

There are some videos included, but these are restricted to teacher briefings for each unit from the project's lead: Jon Hutchinson.

In the video below, for example, he talks about the approach that has been taken and the work that has been done so far, which may sound like something that you would find develops your current practice. If so, it would be worth taking out a trial subscription.

This approach will not be for everyone, but given the nature of the profession, as we reset after COVID19 and face other challenges with recruitment and recent financial crises, support of this kind will be welcomed by many.

The Cambridge Primary Review is also a little cautious of the approach taken by some schools and Trusts, suggesting that  "children will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected merely to do as they are told."

It is the consistency of approach, format of materials and connection with cognitive science that will provide the appeal for many Primary colleagues.

There will likely be different approaches to using the resources which will probably include adapting them or including a few additional resources such as videos or music.

You can request a FREE TRIAL, and this may be a useful first step to see whether the resources are going to be the answer to your current problems, or a support for colleagues.

Trials run for one month - International schools have two months.

The price to access the Primary Geography content is £400-£450 a year. The current increases in energy and staffing costs mean this will require a careful investment decision. Subscription to the content provides school access to the online content for 12 full months from the date of registration. Teachers accessing the resources via a subscription of this kind must of course be from the same school and use their school email addresses.

For those who want to pair up the Geography content with the History content, the price is £800 for the year for both.

I've also taken a look at the Primary History content, and the structure and focus for each unit is consistent with the Geography content, to provide a consistent experience across the Humanities in schools that go for that option, particularly where teachers may not be subject specialists.

There are also supporting Professional Development courses available through to May 2024, led by John Hutchinson for those who want an additional level of support in finding out how to use the resources to the greatest advantage.

To read more, click this link to download an illustrated booklet (PDF)

Thanks to KS2 colleagues at King's Ely Junior for their comments on these resources which helped to produce this post.

GI Pedagogy Multiplier Event - 9th December

We are hosting this event.

I opened up an invitation to an online event yesterday.

It will take place on Friday the 9th of December and will be online.

I organised a face to face multiplier event to share outcomes from the ERASMUS-funded GI Pedagogy project, but this was not able to attract colleagues because of the challenges of travelling and the business of this term.

The plan now is to have an online meeting instead which I hope that people may be able to attend without the need to travel to Ely. 

This will allow me to demonstrate the importance of GIS in the curriculum and the idea of telling stories.

You can also get a sneak preview of the other materials we have produced, including a training course. A chance to have a discussion around GIS too.

Suitable for Primary and Secondary teachers.

I'm going to try again to get this event in before Christmas.

Free tickets can be obtained on Eventbrite.

Octagon lit up for King's Ely campaign.

A story from last week, when we launched our energy saving campaign in school.

Ely Cathedral’s Octagon Tower is illuminated red this evening (November 14th) to acknowledge the fact that King’s Ely has launched a campaign to reflect the climate emergency. 


Our ‘See Red for Crisis at Christmas’ mission aims to persuade every single student and staff member across our 75-acre campus to be more aware about the energy they are using, and potentially wasting, and the impact that this is having on the environment.


King’s Ely already has environmental impact and climate change high on its agenda, but this campaign aims to inspire lasting change amongst our school community and beyond.


We want an immediate response - lights being turned off in classrooms, day houses, boarding houses, offices and communal areas when they do not need to be on, as well as radiators and electronic devices.


King’s Ely is promising to make a significant donation to the homelessness charity, Crisis, and its ‘Crisis at Christmas’ appeal (www.crisis.org.uk) if a positive change is brought about! 

Infrastructure

When asked to define infastructure, I may now use the image here, which was one of my favourite images from Bucharest last weekend.

HMC Blog

A new post that I contributed for the HMC blog. This is part of a series of posts which are being added across the weeks that the COP27 negotiations take place.

I will be sharing another post once the event is over and the final report and agreements are made public. One hopes that this will result in an agreed plan of action.

During the weeks, students have also been exploring the issues in KS2 and KS3.

Time for some hopeful geographies as well.

Iceland Trip with Rayburn Tours

 

As I mentioned in a recent post, I spent five days of the first week of my half term in Iceland. 

This introduced me to a couple of new locations which I hadn't visited before - including the car parks and tracks leading to the recent Fagradasfjall lava flows - and also reminded me of a great many that I'd been to previously before the pandemic and I enjoyed experiencing the power of Gullfoss (and the taste of the ice cream at Efstidalur).

There had been some changes in tourst infrastructure in familiar locations with others being constructed e.g. a nice new toilet block at Thingvellir for visitors, and new paths etc.

I will be working with Rayburn Tours to lead future tours through 2023 and beyond.

I've got a special Iceland blog which will host all the reading and planning I'm doing around these tours, which already hosts the year long 365 blog project which I completed in 2020 (when I was originally going to be visiting four times).

On future visits I hope to head up to the Westfjords to see some additional new locations which are being added to the itineraries, and which I will also visit on a planned visit with my own school during 2024.

Rayburn Tours have also updated their RAYBURN ICELAND SERIES set of resources.

There are two sections of resources:

Unit 1: Natural HazardsSlick looking PowerPoint presentation + Activity Sheet
Classroom Poster
Fagradalsfjall Case Study + Activity Sheet

Unit 2: Energy ResourcesSlick looking PowerPoint presentation
Classroom Poster
Iceland’s Energy Resources Issue Evaluation (Both digital form-fillable and printable versions)

There are many more to come as well:

NEOM

NEOM is a remarkable concept and project which realistically has very little chance of coming to fruition because of the sheer scale of its conception and the cost of building materials and the actual reality of the location where it is.

The website is full of promise.

It promises:


No roads, cars or emissions, it will run on 100% renewable energy and 95% of land will be preserved for nature. People's health and wellbeing will be prioritized over transportation and infrastructure, unlike traditional cities. Only 200 meters wide, but 170 kilometers long and 500 meters above sea level.

The Line will eventually accommodate 9 million people and will be built on a footprint of just 34 square kilometers. This will mean a reduced infrastructure footprint, creating never-before-seen efficiencies in city functions. The ideal climate all-year-round will ensure that residents can enjoy the surrounding nature. Residents will also have access to all facilities within a five-minute walk, in addition to high-speed rail – with an end-to-end transit of 20 minutes.

Here is another view:

Will be fascinating to watch what happens next...

Mr. P's been to Iceland

The Geography Deapartment have been on their travels this half term...

Mrs. M and Miss. S headed South

Mr. P headed North... to Iceland (not the freezer store) - here are a few geographical highlights.

Temporary placemaking

It has been interesting to see the adaptations to parts of Ely, which are preparing for being used as a location for filming for a new film called 'Maestro', on the life of Leonard Bernstein. An example of temporary place making for geographers...

Image: Sally Parkinson

COP27 Postcards are on their way...

 A few hundred postcards from King's Ely Junior are amongst them...

The @Oxfam team is leaving for #COP27 carrying thousands of encouraging postcard messages for negotiators from UK schools. They all call clearly & creatively for #ClimateJustice. A massive thank you again to all who took part. Your voices will be heard @oxfamcampaigns pic.twitter.com/F2VoeRYdlI

— Oxfam Education (@OxfamEducation) November 3, 2022

A dry year

We had wet break on Thursday on the week before half term.... this is becoming a rarity now...

With little over 60% of the average rainfall for the year-to-date, and a deficit of ~3½ months' worth of rain, this year is currently on track to be one of the driest on record in East Anglia 🏜️ pic.twitter.com/qOD0tnLiab

— Dan Holley (@danholley_) October 22, 2022