Arcadia at Glastonbury

Plastic in the Oceans

Find us here...

We now have a What 3 Words sign on the classroom door.

Ocean plastics...

Shipping containers

Showed this very useful video earlier in the week, made by the Maersk Shipping Line.


This goes well with the activity on p.58 and 59 of the Hodder Geography 'Progress in Geography' textbook, which I use as part of my unit on Stuff...
It links to the location of the OOCL Hong Kong using the Marine Traffic website, following its route between China and Europe like a bus...



Image: Alan Parkinson: shared under CC license

OCR Forum

Over to Cambridge today, and the very swanky new triangle building of Cambridge Assessment for the annual OCR Consultative Forum.
Met with a few colleagues, and heard interesting talks from others, including Gemma Pollard and Julia Thomson, and had a rather nice lunch too.

I did a short input which is shown here:


I also referred to my KS3 specification - an early version of which is shown below:
This has been updated since then...

Let me know if you have any questions...

King’s Ely Junior Geography... by on Scribd

Glastonbury calling...

Year 7s are moving on from food topic to exploring music festivals, and their impacts on the environment. This will revisit some ideas on map skills, and also sustainability. I am going to use a combination of a unit from Vicki Woolven, and one which is on the RGS-IBG website (with some updates for this year's event)

Over 120 000 tickets for this year's event were sold in just 36 minutes, at £250 a ticket for the 3 main days of the Festival (with days either side of course for many)
The main festival website has plenty of information, including

This year, there is a ban on non-reusable plastic bottles.
Here's a brief reminder of the last Festival, in 2017, and the highlights - The Killers and Goldfrapp were memorable for me...


More to come as we get stuck into the unit.

Unfair Factory and Fashion Revolution

Using the classic Unfair Factory game to explore some 'realities' of sweatshops through games.
Also try the very similar Sim Sweatshop game, which avoids the need to sew.

Fashion Revolution's transparency index is another resource we have used.

Food stories

A few final food-related areas for our work on food.

Bee Wilson's article here is excellent.

Also check this story on McDonalds and their Monopoly game, which is being blamed for encouraging people to buy more fast food than they otherwise would, to try to win prizes.

MP Tom Watson has called the competition a "danger to public health"

How to find us

New sign on our Junior classroom door, which should help everyone find their way back here....

Ordered from the What 3 Words shop.

It's always interesting to check back in and see what additional partners What 3 Words are now working with.
These now include Airbnb, and others. They are being used to identify locations in countries where there may be issues with standard addressing systems, or extreme remote places which are off-grid.
Here's an example...

Bloomberg Jeans Infographic

One of several articles and items used during our Fashion Revolution preparations

Tokyo 2020 medals

As you can see from the diagram above, a project which was launched a few years ago in Japan is close to finishing.
All the medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 will be made from metals recovered from e-Waste.
I am putting together a presentation on this for Year 8 students, and it will be shared when completed.

House of Illustration

Down to London after school today for the launch of a new set of education resources to support the teaching of migration stories using illustration, and an exhibition of art, including some original pieces by Olivier Kugler, from his wonderful book 'Escaping Wars and Waves'.

The House of Illustration is part of the new King's Place / Granary Square development, which houses St. Martin's School of Art - my wife went there when it was housed in Long Acre.

We found out about the launch of their new education resources for Primary, with a talk from a teacher who had used them with her class - some really nice work had been created.
We heard about the importance of the visual language of illustration to go along with spoken and written word.
We had an introduction to the House of Illustration's materials here (all free to download)

We also heard from Emily from Positive Negatives, who had a Secondary focus.
We were shown a powerful animation they had created with an illustrator, and work of secondary educators - see a maths link up here that we were shown.



We were shown some excellent work, again all free to download.

We also had a talk from Karrie Fransman, who created this powerful animation North Star Fading.

This forthcoming event looks excellent: on the power of illustration too.

These are all well worth exploring....

Agbogbloshie: e-wasteland

Agbogbloshie is a suburb of the city of Accra on the Atlantic coast of Ghana in West Africa.

It is a well known example of a community which receives illegal shipments of e-waste, which provides employment for young men, often migrants from the north of Ghana. Cables are burned to melt the plastic revealing the copper wire.


Attempts are being made to stop the burning.

Pure Earth blog has more details on this.

In the most recent Geographical Journal from the RGS-IBG, there was an article on the places in the world where this activity takes place - it is not only Ghana, and in most cases there is a hierarchy of jobs which sustains other employment.

Source of image: https://www.voanews.com/a/wire-strippers-bring-some-relief-from-toxic-smokein-ghana/2498347.html 

Mondelez