Paris 2024 - Olympics Activity

Year 8 students have a week on an adventure trip this week. 

A small group is not going along - many of them came along on the recent trip to Iceland that we ran instead.

I was asked to put together a geography activity for them, which would take three lessons to complete. I have connected it to the work we have been doing with Year 8 already this year, and drawn out a few themes:

- sustainability

- circular economy

- globalisation and the importance of global communities

- togetherness and conflict

Shared here in case it might be of interest. Discussion / research and then a presentation. 

Can be made longer if you prefer by providing more time and scaffolding. 

Not as much as there might be on other themes which you may feel are missing? - if so, put them in yourself.

Visit the page here.

RGS Teachmeet - 26th June

Why not join me in late June for the latest RGS-IBG Teachmeet - once again, it's online rather than face to face, but that allows people to join who would not be able to get to Kensington on a weekday evening, so that's fair enough.

Free to join.

Sign up online here.

Speakers

Jo Clarke, Queen Anne's School – Using audio and visual feedback

Guy Paxman, Durham University - The Greenland StoryMap series

Jen Monk, Stretford High School – Windows and Mirrors, ensuring diversity in our curriculum

Fiona Sheriff, Kingsthorpe College - Beautiful books to inspire curiosity in the classroom

Rosie Moore, Cronton Sixth Form College - Embedding Cornell note-taking to improve assessment outcomes

Alan Parkinson, King's Ely Prep - 'Should I stay or should I go': leveraging professional support for pedagogical longevity

I'll be speaking about pedagogical longevity, and how we can use the available support from professional organisations - including the GA and RGS-IBG - to provide the spark which will get us through those times when we question whether we can stay in the classroom.

Welcome to BWH

We now have a rather nice visual welcome to Bishop Woodford House with a new mural featuring the Old Palace and gardens.

Primary Teachmeet Session

 

I ended a busy first day of term yesterday by joining the other presenters at the GlosGeog Virtual Primary Teachmeet, organised by Emma Espley. I caught a few other presentations before I had to go to an after school INSET session. Thanks to those colleagues who gave up their time to join us.

As it was taking place on Earth Day, the general theme was Sustainability.

Here's the presentation that I used.

I referenced a few things that might be helpful:

- an article I wrote for Primary Geography talking about our work in KS2

- Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics work - including work in Amsterdam

- RMetS Heatwaves resource for KS2

- my KS2 blog

- 

Ribe - twinned with Ely

Have you heard of Ribe?

Ribe is twinned with Ely. 

It is a town in Denmark - the oldest town in the country apparently, on the western side of the Jutland peninsula.

Ely has been twinned with Ribe since the 1950s.

Ely and Ribe both have a wealth of historic buildings, an iconic cathedral at their heart, and share a similar agricultural backdrop and a flat, open-skyed, and watery landscape.

There is a tapestry at the Riverside Maltings space in Ely.

According to Ely Museum:

One of Ribe's most famous citizens was Emil Christian Hansen who is known as 'the father of Modern Brewing' and he worked at the Carlsberg Laboratories in Copenhagen. In 1883 he was the first to discover that the yeast needed in brewing was composed of different kinds of fungi and that it could be cultivated, this discovery is still valuable today used in the vast majority of beer production worldwide!

Image link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/morton1905/9555721557/sizes/l/

Shared under CC license on Flickr by morton1905

Sean Henry at Ely Cathedral

This is starting next weekend.

A profound exhibition by renowned British sculptor Sean Henry, bringing together over twenty polychrome figures of significantly varying scales.

Each sculpture will be sympathetically displayed in unusual and diverse spaces, such as vacant plinths inside the building, and around the Cathedral environs.

I shall be looking out for the figures when we have our weekly service in the Cathedral.

The Economist Educational Foundation

The Economist has an Educational Foundation which shares ideas for how teachers can engage with selected articles from the magazines's output. It's also worth following the magaine on various social media accounts for all updates on content and useful articles.

Topical Talk resources are a new feature.

They are slightly more developed resources and include a powerpoint and some related materials.

I am working on my own Taylor Swift resource ahead of your European dates, but there are some interesting ideas in this one.

I shall also be making use of the debate resource shown here: Fast Fashion: should it be banned? when I return to school next week. 

Science and Tourism in Antarctica

Should tourism to Antarctica be restricted?

We teach about the impact of tourism on the Polar ecosystem as part of our Year 8 topic.

This article from the i newspaper features the Viking line's ship which is part of their commitment to introducing more science into their offerings.

Planet Plates

 

Planet Plates is on the CDRC website. 

It looks at low carbon food choices.

For example, which of these is the lowest carbon option?

We will use this as a homework option in our Food for Thought unit.

"Choose Geography"

KEP students will be ending the year by putting together an entry for this competition as always... 

That is the theme of the 2024 Young Geographer of the Year competition, which is always revealed about the time of the GA Conference, with postcards and other information on the RGS stand.

There has never been a better or more important time to study geography.

Geography helps you to make sense of the world around you. It's hands on, relevant, and fun. Whatever your passion for the world – fascination with landscapes or concerns about sustainability – geography will provide you with knowledge and transferable skills that will reward you personally and advance you professionally.

The Society invites you to create your own #ChooseGeography poster to promote the value of choosing geography at school, in further study and in the workplace, linking geographical skills to real people and jobs that make a difference. We are looking for eye catching, creative and informative posters that promote geography as an excellent choice, highlighting its relevance and demonstrating how studying geography can help you understand the world we live in and the ‘big issues’ that we face as a society.

Your posters should include details of why geography is a useful and relevant subject to study, why studying geography matters and how it can help you to understand a range of ideas and concepts. We also want to hear about the skills that geographers have that make them stand out from the crowd, and where geography can take you. Geographers work in a wide range of careers and employment sectors, so your poster should highlight some of the jobs that geographers do and demonstrate how geographers make a difference. We also want to hear what parts of geography you find the most interesting and useful to study and why!

Follow the link at the top of the post for details on how to enter.

175 000 page views

A little 'growth spurt' in the last month, with a year's worth of visitors coming along... thanks for your interest in what we've been up to...

How to solve the Plastic problem

 From BBC Ideas.

Nanoplastics

I referred to this research paper in my teaching, published last month, in January 2024.

It talks about the persistence of nano-plastics in the environment.

TEMU

This website explains the meaning of the logo for the site TEMU. We mentioned this in our Geography of Stuff unit.

TEMU is like a Chinese version of Amazon.

It sells a whole load of cheap tat that nobody really needs in the main, and its website/app is a confusing place where visitors are bombarded with short-term deals in an attempt to get them to overspend and add things to their basket.

Some detail:

The name “Temu” is an acronym for the company’s motto, “Team Up, Price Down.” This motto encapsulates the company’s core philosophy of leveraging economies of scale to generate savings. By amassing a critical mass of buyers and sellers, Temu can pass on the savings to its customers. Sellers are attracted to the large pool of buyers, who are in turn drawn to the wide selection of merchandise provided by a multitude of sellers.

Another example of our throwaway culture which is causing such environmental damage to the planet.

Practical Pedagogies - tickets now available

Practical Pedagogies is now available for bookings.

A conference by teachers for teachers.

This has been organised by Russel Tarr and is the third running of the event.

This year it will be held in Cologne once again, and Mr. P is attending (as are some other King's Ely teachers). 

Thanks to Russel Tarr for creating this speaker spotlight image relating to Practical Pedagogies in Cologne in November.

Looking forward to heading there and speaking about my pedagogical longevity and how to avoid teaching the same year lots of times. There'll be plenty of links to current projects as well.