Ijen Sulphur Miners

Risky Business 

Bugs Matter

There are concerns about the decline in insects.

We have signed up to Bugs Matter to help gather data.

Bugs Matter have produced an app and website.

Instructions of how to get involved:

Before making an essential journey, clean your front number plate. At the end of your journey, place the splatometer over the middle of your front number plate and count the number of squashed flies and other dead bugs you can see through the holes- zero splats still count! Remember to take a photo with the splatometer in place too. Then crucially – submit your count and photo using the app to record the information.

The survey runs from 1st June to 31st August when insects are most active and abundant.

New classroom clock for the department

My classroom clock gave up the ghost last week and I ordered one to be made by an Etsy seller. It will go up next week. 

It's time for geography...

Windrush Day 2022

June 22nd is Windrush Day. 

We didn't have any lessons because of the move-up morning.

We have offered a new unit this year on the Ben Zephaniah book 'Windrush Child' and will be teaching it again next year with a few tweaks by Mrs. Melville.

Windrush Day was earlier this week.

A statue was unveiled outside Hackney Town Hall. It is called Warm Shores.

It has been visited by the GA Vice President Alastair Owens:

Thomas J Price’s Warm Shores statues (part of Hackney Windrush Art Commission unveiled yesterday) in front of ⁦@hackneycouncil⁩ Town Hall are just stunning and a great conversation starter with lots of people gathering round. You must go see! pic.twitter.com/qLFfxitve4

— Alastair Owens (@AlastairHackney) June 23, 2022

Everest Base Camp

I'm currently teaching about Mt. Everest and the connections with the Sherpa people - as part of a unit on Extreme Geographies.

We often find that whenever we teach a topic, related news stories appear which match the content and add a new dimension, or confirm the importance of what we have chosen to teach about.

This time it's a story about Mt. Everest Base Camp.

This is being moved for safety reasons.

The camp  produces up to 4000 litres of urine per day...

London

I've been finishing the year off with a unit on London and a city's stories.

London attracts many visitors from around the world. I liked the look of this map.

When looking at the significance of London in geography, students annotated a tourist map to highlight key features and show the importance. I think next time I’ll get the highlighters out to show whether they are socially, politically, economically important etc. pic.twitter.com/sPceU5jT0w

— Chorlton High School Teaching Team (@ChorltonTeach) June 22, 2022

Here's the origin of the original map.  (A large JPG which can be zoomed into) and showing the area of London I visited last weekend.

Slow Ways for Geography Teachers

I worked with Dan from Slow Ways, Kate Stockings and Claire Kyndt to put together some ideas for geography teachers to engage with Slow Ways.

One of the ways is to get involved with a crowdfunding campaign to produce some large format maps of the UK showing the routes of Slow Ways.

With National Fieldwork Week coming to an end, this is another opportunity to spend time outside.

We need your help to approve and check existing routes. There's so much to be gained from getting involved.

National Fieldwork Week - Epipolar

Out with groups last week for National Fieldwork Week.

We were looking at old photos of the city of Ely and how the same locations have changed.

The students were interested to see the changes that had occurred since the images were taken (and in some cases, very little change). I sourced the images from the Epipolar website where there are pairs of images which you can swipe between to see the change.

They have also shared images for other local locations.

A video created for the site can be viewed below:

Climate Central Map - Sea Level Rise

National Fieldwork Week

The latest GeogPod has been released and it features Paula Richardson and I talking about the GA's National Research Report and how that fed into the development of the National Fieldwork Week.

 This starts on Monday the 6th of June.

Episode 53 of #GeogPod is now available!

In this episode, @GAGeogger speaks with @GeoBlogs and Paula Richardson on fieldwork

Listen now at https://t.co/hLSfHDfVhp

Series 9 of GeogPod is kindly sponsored by @CambridgeInt#geography #nationalfieldworkweek #podcast #education pic.twitter.com/sk62VGtEQS

— Geographical Association (@The_GA) June 4, 2022

Thanks to John Lyon for hosting - see if you can spot the question I wasn't expecting... :) 

Be sure to share what you get up to next week. 

Email info@geography.org.uk with your pictures and details....

World Environment Day #OnlyOneEarth

 A useful reminder that we only have one earth...

World Environment Day is on the 5th of June. It's a Sunday this year.

The theme is #OnlyOneEarth

Check out the resources here for this years' event.

There's a practical guide on the theme of #OnlyOneEarth

Thanks to Stephen Schwab for the reminder.

Slow Ways Maps Crowdfunder

I've blogged about the Slow Ways project a number of times as it has developed.

It was featured on Countryfile on Sunday.

There is an option to purchase a large map of the UK with Slow Ways routes marked on which can be used to mark routes walked, or plan larger walks. There are 2 maps: a North Sheet and a South Sheet.

I've ordered a pair for me and a pair for the classroom.

Each map costs £5 and you can support the project on the link below.

A giant map of trails connecting all of Great Britain's towns and cities as well as every national park!?

Time to get:

🌈 dreaming
🐙 planning
✍️ drawing
🐌 hiking
💚 sharing

Back our crowdfunding campaign for £10 or more to get both maps! https://t.co/SRLQA9qmcV 👍 pic.twitter.com/xhzQ45zoc4

— Slow Ways (@SlowWaysUK) May 30, 2022

Our Place in Space

I've been following the latest installation by Oliver Jeffers. It allows people to find out their Place in Space: to put Earth into its context.

"The only place where... stories are told."

Astronauts have the 'overview effect' when they look down on the planet and Oliver wanted to show the scale of the Solar System.

Oliver has created a walk way which runs through the city of Derry and is shortly heading for Cambridge.

See more details here. 

If you can’t get to Belfast or Cambridge this summer, there is a free app which allows you to follow the walk virtually. Download it from this link.

One of the aims of the walk is to consider scale – an important idea in geography too. 

 There are also teaching resources to download exploring some of the ideas, which may be of interest even if you don’t follow the trail. Let us know if you take part with your class, or perhaps your family.

The trail is about humanity's place in the solar system.

It's going to Cambridge after Belfast. The route will take it through Cambridge.

What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility.”

Haruki Murakami

There's a lovely free illustrated app by Oliver Jeffers as well, where you can take a virtual route if you can't get to the location where the walk is installed.

Listen to Oliver taking a walk with Clare Balding on her programme 'Ramblings'.

GI Pedagogy Training Course - 4-6 July

Last week I had a meeting of the GI Pedagogy group of partners - which is funded by an ERASMUS+ grant, given by the British Council.

I represent King's Ely on this project, and have completed all the intellectual outputs and supported other partners and worked on a range of work packages.

We have been working on resources and an online teacher training course. 

We now have an opportunity for you to join us for a face to face event in Madrid.

Free training course for secondary teachers - introducing an Innovative Pedagogical Model for Teaching using GIS, July 4-6 2022, Madrid, @GIPedagogy project, some travel grants available - find out more and register at https://t.co/8uy2lRNfpA

— karl_donert (@karldonert) May 19, 2022

The Registration form is here, and you can also request a first-come first-served grant of €200 to help with the cost of attending if you are outside of Spain.

It would be great to have you there. Happy to answer any further questions as well. 

1500 posts

This blog has been a bit of a slow-burner compared to LivingGeography. I started it around nine years ago now, when I was about to start a new adventure in the classroom, and didn't expect that I would still be working at King's, as Head of Geography in the Junior section of the school.

It's had up around 80 000 views, which is OK.

Thanks for reading.

Image: Sundial on Ely Cathedral - Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.