Maternity cover vacancy available at King's Ely

 A job opportunity for you to work at my school.

A part-time maternity cover teaching Geography in King’s Ely Senior school is currently available from September. 

This would involve 

Deadline to apply is 19th of March.

Details are here. Happy to answer any questions.

The post is part time to cover maternity leave for the whole of the 2025/26 academic year. 

This is a 50-60 % timetable and would ideally be over 2.5 - 3 days a week.

The postholder’s duties will involve, but will not necessarily be limited to: 

• Preparing and teaching high quality lessons to stimulate and encourage pupils in year 9 and at GCSE and potentially A Level
• Set and mark homework in line with school and department policies
• Record and review student progress; providing targets and guidance to improve student performance
• Offer support sessions for pupils
• Establish and maintain professional relationships with staff, pupils and parents
• Supporting department trips and events
• Attending parent’s evenings and other whole school events
• Setting and marking internal assessments
• Supporting the A level NEA programme by supervising candidates in their investigations

Introduction to Globalisation from BBC Bitesize

Looking for a short Globalisation introduction and found this page. It's on the Welsh Bitesize page, so has a Welsh bias of course, but it's very good.

The video is useful too....

Should we be eating insects?

Year 7 have got to this point in the year again...

Windrush Child Updates

It's worth looking at the BBC's Bitesize for some extra detail on the book. There's a nice illustrated plot summary of the story (contains spoilers if you haven't read it...)

Details here of Windrush.

Rubber Duck Boom!

Here’s a song that I made using SUNO: a tool which Matt Podbury introduced me to at Practical Pedagogies which uses AI to write a song in whatever style you want, and on a theme. 

This was to go alongside one of my favourite lessons, when we explore the story of the Ever Laurel and the 29000 bath toys fell into the North Pacific in 1992 and revealed some of the workings of ocean gyres and their role in concentrating ocean plastics, to which the bath toys added as they disintegrated over the decades since.

Of course the frogs, turtles and beavers are always left out of the narrative... 

Enjoy the Electronic beats of ‘Rubber Duck Boom’. Sing along to the chorus!

Will Fry on The Fens

Will Fry's Changing Places Substack had a recent post on The Fens: the location for King's Ely. It explored the way that places are represented in order to justify colonising or changing them.

e.g.

William Camden’s Britannia (the Lonely Planet guide of its day), written in 1586, depicted the Fen-dwellers as “a kind of people according to the nature of the place where they dwell: rude, uncivil and envious to all others”. This is an early example of the idea that the nature and character of a place can shape the people in it.

It refers to James Boyce's excellent book 'Imperial Mud' which looks at the landscape of the Fens.

Windrush Monument

I passed through Waterloo a few weeks ago to head for the GTE Conference.

Waterloo is home to the National Windrush Monument. 

This was unveiled in June 2022 by Prince William so is a relatively new addition to the station.

We read 'Windrush Child' by Benjamin Zephaniah with Year 7 students and have done for the last 4 years.

Taste of Tomorrow

A very useful series of articles in the BBC Future series. 

Plenty to inform our Year 7 unit 'Food for Thought'.

Toporopa

A site with map quizzes. Suitable for KS1 and 2 pupils.

The focus is on learning the geography of Europe.

National Character Areas (NCAs)

Natural England has updated the National Landscape Character assessments on their website.

 Wherever you are in England you are in one of these areas, which has a particular character.

Each NCA represents an area of distinct and recognisable character at the national scale. 

Their boundaries follow natural lines in the landscape, not county or district boundaries. 

This makes them a good framework for decision-making and planning for future change. 

The information contained within the NCA profiles aims to help guide land management and other activities to strengthen character and resilience, responding to pressures such as climate change.

I was born in Area 38: Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield

I studied in Area 37: Yorkshire Southern Pennine Fringe

I trained as a teacher in Area 41: Humber Estuary

My first job was in Area 69: Trent Valley Washlands

The first home I owned was in Area 76: North West Norfolk and my school was on the very edge of Area 46: The Fens

I spent three years working in Area 37 - Yorkshire Southern Pennine Fringe, when I worked for the Geographical Association.

I now live in Area 84: Mid Norfolk, and my current school is in Area 46: The Fens

What numbers have you lived in?

Primary Geography article

Physical copies of the GA's journals arrived this week - not 'Geography' yet.

If you are a subscriber to ‘Primary Geography’ you will have been able to read my article on inclusion / exclusion in rural / urban spaces. 

Check it out and download it if you are a subscriber.

Your life is manufactured

A quick introduction to a book that I bought earlier in the week: Tim Minshall's "Your life is Manufactured".

In 2022, he presented at Cambridge Literacy of Ideas on the importance of manufacturing and the recording of his talk is also going to be of interest to us.

More to come on this.....

Pale Blue Dot - taken 35 years ago today

I refer to this picture and the associated quotes quite a lot in my teaching.

It was taken on 14th February 1990 - 35 years ago today.

The picture was remastered in 2020.

The one I often show was taken by the Cassini Spacecraft in 2013 as it approached Saturn.

Here's an animation I show...

GTE Conference 2025

 My session took place after the morning break on Day 2.

I spoke about the work we had done at King's Ely Prep to develop a new unit on Samantha Harvey's 'Orbital'.

This was still a work in progress, but has gone down well so far, and there is more to come in the final 2 weeks of this half term.

I will be blogging about this again once it has been completed, and sharing all the resources. Year 6 have been enjoying the unit I think - a questionnaire is coming up.

Thanks to Sophie Wilson for sharing some images of me in action. I was pleased with the reception to, and interest in, the talk and the project.

Images: Sophie Wilson

GA EDI Report - newly published

When I was serving on the GA's Governing Body, work started on a report exploring the diversity and inclusion of all aspects of the GA's activity. This was going to be produced by a Working Group called the DIWG.

It has taken a while to carry out the research that underpins the report. Thanks to all those who were involved in producing this.

Thanks to Steve Brace for sending me a copy of the report.

You can download your own copy from here.

Thanks also to the report's co-authors:

Elaine Anderson, Nona Anderson, Peter Jackson, Alastair Owens, Hina Robinson, Iram Sammar and Christine Winter.

The report is published today. It can be downloaded from the GA website.

GA press release says:

Despite growing diversity of the geography GCSE cohort, at A level and at university geography is one of the least diverse of all subjects.

The subject, and its institutions, are not serving all geography teachers nor all young people who could benefit from studying geography. Change is needed.

The Geographical Association (GA) recognises the need for change and invited feedback from a wide range of participants on its work and governance.

The Geography for Everyone? report, and the research on which it is based, was commissioned by the GA’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, established in response to the GA’s 'listening exercise'. This spoke of the need to ‘drive forward initiatives for greater diversity in the Association and support for anti-racist teaching in geography’.

While the research sets out to explore diversity and inclusion from a range of perspectives, the themes of ‘race’ and ethnicity were strongly emphasised in interviews with participants and are central to the report, perhaps reflecting wider societal concerns and movements like ‘Black Lives Matter’. The report’s co-authors Elaine Anderson, Nona Anderson, Peter Jackson, Alastair Owens, Hina Robinson, Iram Sammar and Christine Winter commented:

'Working together on this report has opened our eyes to some of the challenges that the Geographical Association faces in becoming a more diverse and inclusive organisation.

But we are also optimistic that the GA can use the insights and recommendations in our report to drive change so that it supports the needs of all geography educators and helps to build a discipline that values the experiences and perspectives of everyone.'

The GA welcomes this report and its recommendations. These will help bring positive change to the Association and the subject.

The GA is currently preparing its new 2025 -30 strategic plan and ‘Geography for Everyone’ will be one of its guiding principles.