Extreme Geographies

Having spent quite a long time exploring some issues with landscapes, our current unit is called Extreme Geographies.
It's quite short, as the summer term is mercifully short following the longer Lent Term.
It starts with a look at some of the Extreme Places
What about Mt. Everest?
How do people die on the mountain?

From Visually.

Mount Everst infographics - there are plenty of them...
I have a Pinterest page of them.

Chick Cam

Now live streaming from the KEJ Science Department - tweet us at @KingsElyGeog if you spot something interesting happening...

Study leave

Best wishes to all Year 11s who are now on their optional study leave. I shall see some of them over the coming weeks ahead of the exam.
Thanks to Stella for the meme she made me...

Hywel Roberts Webinar

Hywel Roberts is running a webinar on the use of narratives in teaching, drawing on his work in this area with a number of other educators. It is described as a reverie.

The link to the webinar is here.

It's free, and having been fortunate to see Hywel present his ideas in person, I'll certainly be making every effort to listen in to this one.

Dan on Food Management

Primark Video

This link will take you to a useful video for those teaching about Fashion, ahead of Fashion Revolution week.

It's a 360 walk through of a Primark factory in Bangladesh, showing clothes being manufactured.

Climate Change - the Facts

David Attenborough narrated an important documentary on BBC earlier this week.
I was away and missed it, but caught up on my return.



It is available to watch for a month after the date it was first shown, as usual on iPlayer, but it would be great if it could be made available indefinitely, as many programmes are on iPlayer already. Perhaps us Geographers should politely lobby the BBC and suggest this.

Half of consumers are apparently willing to pay more to help reduce plastic waste, for example. There are plenty of recent stories.

Leo Hickman posted an image of a piece by Jeremy Clarkson in 'The Sun', which would be useful as a counterpoint to this programme, describing his thoughts on being told what to do. I grabbed it and made it into a word document.
Here's the basics from the programme:

An exciting opportunity linked to the Better World Detectives

For the last year or so Mr. Parkinson has been involved with the ongoing development of resources linked with the travel company TUI. These resources come under the banner of the Better World Detectives, which connects with TUI's own sustainability statement of Better Holidays, Better World.

The resources introduce students at key stages 2, 3 and 4 to key ideas related to sustainable tourism, and are free to download. They reflect TUI's work on promoting more sustainable and greener holidays.

The Primary resources are based around the fictional resort of Sonrisa, which is based on Costa Rica. They introduce students to sustainable fishing, the impact of tourism on local corals, and the efforts to protect local turtle nesting sites.
The Secondary resources are focussed on sustainable sourcing of food for hotels, carbon footprints, ocean plastics and the impacts of overtourism. These go into more depth, including a look at how tourism can impact on the health and well-being of residents of Costa Rica and a real-life case study of a Rainforest Alliance conservation area in Mexico. Both sets of resources feature lesson plans, resources and planning documents.
Coming soon are two new exam-style packs, with case studies of Iceland and Mexico, which will be ideal for GCSE or advanced KS3. You can sign up to receive these on the TUI stand at the GA Conference in Manchester, and they will be available to download from their website from mid-April.
The next phase of the development of the resources will involve teachers, and one of those teachers could be you.
This exciting opportunity will take you on an expenses paid trip to MEXICO! The destination will be the Riviera Maya, where TUI is developing sustainable tourism initiatives in partnership with the Rainforest Alliance.

Go here to find out more

It will be an incredible and rare opportunity for peer-to-peer working and training, and probably a once-in-a-lifetime CPD experience. It has a competition element, and is being organised by TUI Care Foundation (which is TUI's sister charitable organisation, devoted to making tourism a force for good).


This is a three-stage competition, running from the start of April to mid-August 2019.

1. Register your interest and download Lesson 6 of the Secondary resources by 31st May

2. Teach Lesson 6 to students, and complete the application form which will be in the 'You've registered' email you'll receive when registering by 30th June.

A shortlist of names will then be announced in early July.

3. Those who are shortlisted will be asked to create a 10-20 minute activity that they would take to Mexico with them if selected by 7th August.

4. The final winners will be announced in mid-August.

Those selected will be able to meet local teachers in a peer-to-peer CPD training environment, where they will engage with teachers from the Riviera Maya, and visit locations in the area to learn more about sustainable tourism in the area and, together, create ways to mutually use them in your respective classrooms, whether in the U.K. or Mexico. 


The trip will take place at the end of October 2019, during the October half term. The main experience will last four days: 2 days in a CPD environment, 1 day on an excursion and 1 day in a school in the Riviera Maya. It isn’t essential but would be beneficial if applicants have an understanding of Spanish, though this should in no way deter non-Spanish-speaking applicants from applying.
All expenses will be paid, teachers selected will just need to cover their travel insurance and be available for those dates.
TUI representatives will be at the GA conference, where you can find out loads more information about the competition and register your interest directly with them. The TUI stand is Stand 40, near the main entrance to the main hall.

You could also come along to a session which I'm involved in too if you like.
Thursday 11 April
11.40-12.30
Lecture Plus 7
Celebrating sustainable tourism: Key facts, new developments and case studies
Alan Parkinson, Ian Corbett from TUI - Senior Manager in Sustainability, Becky Kitchen from the GA - CPD, Curriculum and Marketing Manager
We'll be in room 1.219

Contact Maddie Duggan, Better World Detectives Project Manager at
info@betterworlddetectives.co.uk for further information, or speak to Maddie at the GA Conference.

Best of luck to all who enter the competition. It's a very exciting opportunity to visit a part of the world which few will get the chance to experience.

60 000 views

Although dwarfed by the 5 million+ visits I've had to the LivingGeography blog, it's still nice to know that people are interested in what happens in my classroom too.

If you want to visit my specialist GCSE teaching blog visit here as well. It covers my teaching of the OCR B Geography specification.

Young Geographer of the Year 2019

#GeographyTeacher! Today we're launching this year’s Young Geographer of the Year Competition, which asks students ‘Where can geography take you?’ - We can't wait to see all of your entries #YGOTY https://t.co/RdZYgA8yR3 pic.twitter.com/BFb6mHAnYv

— Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (@RGS_IBG) April 5, 2019

There is also the Rex Walford award for trainee teachers to produce resources on the same theme.

As always, we'll be working with our students to produce some entries for this competition.

Find out all the details, and age categories here.
Hopefully will pick up more details from the RGS-IBG stand at the GA Conference next week in Manchester.

Getting closer to Fashion Revolution Day

Activism here of the style that we were discussing...
Via Clean Clothes Campaign

Amazon standoff

We have been exploring the potential damage caused to the Amazon rainforest (and other rainforests) by human activity.

This Reuters Graphic is rather excellent and considers the potential changes following the election of President Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Scroll down to see the story develop...

STEM Talk

Gave the final talk to this year's STEM club. They have been exploring sustainability and done a range of experiments and other activities. I talked about everything from the psychology of hunger, to the impact of beef production. Here are my slides...

STEM Club Talk by GeoBlogs on Scribd

Ducks in the Oceans

Arcadia at Glastonbury