Curriculum Change and Notes from the GA 2015

What follows are a few headline notes form the GA Conference in Manchester; specifically focused on curriculum change for Geography in September 2016:






KEY DATES: 28th MAY 2015 - A Level Exam specs released
- AQA contact: Michelle Atherton - geography@aqa.org.uk
Launch event  (t.b.c -
- OCR  contact:Abi/Mark/Shelley - Geography@ocr.org.uk N.B Geography Journey Newsletter
Launch Event: Thursday 11th June 2015 (London) - Booking required - click here
- Eduqas contact: Andy/Alison - andy.owen@eduqas.co.uk / alison.doogan@eduqas.co.uk
- Edexcel contact:
Launch Event: 24th June 2015 (London) - Booking required - click here






FIELDWORK: Nick Lapthorn
I. Fieldwork skills will need to be built in throughout the key stages, if not already. It would be suggested that despite the removal of CA, students should still complete fieldwork days at GCSE (as they do currently for the CIE IGCSE). Having said this though, reflection must take place as to what constitutes purposeful fieldwork.
Point to consider:
 - Could IGCSE fieldwork questions come into KS3 projects to familiarise students with the thought process and build up their skill level?
 -  Need to write to S5/Deputy Head of Academic to gain support and outline the need for the days.
II. TIME & RESOURCES must be allocated/built into the school curriculum, if fieldwork is to be successful. This links to the 2 days mandatory fieldwork at AS and 4 days at A Level. LOCAL focus preferable.
Point to consider: Very likely that the fieldwork for AS takes place in the Autumn/early Spring term and the fieldwork for the A-Level takes place in the Summer term, post AS exams (or possibly at the start of the Autumn term of Year 13)
III. One point to consider for the A Level fieldwork is that students will ultimately have limited time and resources at their disposable, so they should be made aware of this. Fieldwork independent report will focus on the PROCESS as opposed to the OUTCOME. MISTAKES are ok.
Point to consider: Pilot survey for fieldwork report could be done as part of the Aske project i.e. a mini-proposal, which is then marked and assessed then carried out of the summer with the reflections?
IV. To support centres, the project will be able to done at one centre or site, and the data collected in a group but then there must be an individual - different reports or reports focusing on different hypotheses.
III. For International trips,the following destinations were discussed e.g. Iceland, Jordan, Morocco, Sicily etc. Also,  a 'pre-brief idea' was expressed as an excellent way of engaging students during fieldwork trips and adding value/purpose.








HUMAN CONTENT:
The Human content could be tricky to teach as it could have the problem of looking nice but in reality being a bit too fluffy and again, although exciting to resource, quite demanding and time consuming; my fear is that higher order thinking skills could be easy on the surface to address but challenging for the students to nail down when considering perspectives..but maybe the assessment will be clear and that this is a good example of differentiation...time will tell!


Simon Oakes, in his GA lecture 'Thinking Global and Looking Local' sought to allay our fears about the new 'fluffy' human core part of the specification: how do we teach it? what type of content will need to be covered/generated? how will it be assessed? etc.


I. PLACES  - Oakes stressed the importance of choosing a case study where both types of geography overlapped e.g. his example of the River Mersey and the changes over time from industrialisation to deindustrialisation was well-explained. He described using rivers as the central actor in his place narrative. The performance of a river changes over time (esp when considering the global shift in manufacturing). Scale also matters - who has the power to transform the landscape - STAKEHOLDERS and their local-global interrelationship.


N.B. In Oakes' opinion, A* students will not compartmentalise the social, cultural or environmental assets as separate entities but instead see them as INTERTWINED ENTITIES. e.g. "If you don't change the river, you will not change the economy".




II. SYSTEMS & GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
i. GLOBAL INTERDEPENDENCE - key idea of uncertainty.
The study of the world's OCEANS would be a good example to teach globalisation through as ties in containerisation and undersea cables (telecommunications). Notions of impacts of mass consumption on fish stocks as well as impacts such as spills and risk, resistance, management and players at all scales.
ARCTIC and ENERGY with links to climate change / HOUSING MARKET
ii. GLOBAL FINANCIAL FLOWS
Technological leapfrogging in the form of capital or remittances  - Vodaphone's PISA scheme. Crowdsourcing.
iii. SUPERPOWERS - EE: BRICS...MINTs...US vs CHINA
iv. DIASPORA-Scotland and Ireland punch globally above their weight through their migrant networks.
v.LAWS AND NORMS -governance of cyberspace (not true that we live in a limitless shrunken world -cyberspace controls are good examples also idea of domestic control versus international control and scale of the operating networks.
vi. SOFT POWER  - global conflicts/disruptions


Finally to wrap things up Oakes discussed the importance of SYNOPTICITY...a word distinctly absent from the new specifications and the proposed core content....
Oakes suggested that the best way to teach the human content and to assess it would be through links to key concepts as well as a consideration of the role of rime and space...the photo below sums it up:

The problem of ‘Outstanding’ Geography

What I’ve learnt is that the word outstanding, often associated to OFSTED, is a misnomer; and unobtainable expectation which constantly demands perfection, often to the detriment of the individual teacher (and his/her family)! The paradox is that to be ‘the best’ requires constant reflection and an acceptance that there is no such thing as a perfect lesson...there is something always to be done, refined or improved. Teaching is not the profession for perfectionists, especially those who strive to be outstanding.

I want to put forward the idea that to be outstanding is not something to strive for.  OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ is not an accolade, as ‘outstanding’ often results in a one-off lesson which create a false sense of learning and cannot sustainably be delivered day in day out.  As the government does away with ASTs, in my opinion it should also do away with the term 'Outstanding', and instead encourage teachers to be great by simplifying the criteria for judging lessons.  

I wrote a post a number of months ago which was laden with outstanding lexicon: hinge questions, objectives, outcomes, progress checkers – all the bells and whistles of the ‘learning fetish’, which purports that students are learners; skills over knowledge; themes over subjects...blah blah blah!  However, since attending the GA conference, the Berkhamsted Teaching and Learning Conference and my first TeachMeet, I would like to get back to basics to what I think are the fundamental building blocks of what makes a great lesson (and teacher).

Simply put a great Geography lesson/teacher will: MAKE TEACHING THE FOCUS by...

i)                    Considering the pace of learning, so that it gives time for discussion/extended writing.

ii)                  Considering the type of task set, so that it is challenging & geographical.

iii)                Being flexible

iv)                Being Personal (through feedback, relation to local place, sharing pupil best practice)

Therefore, great Geography teachers put ‘Geography to work’ (Digby, 2013) through great teaching, by focusing on place, space, changes over time and interconnectedness (Lambert, 2013). Of course, skills such as critical thinking, map work, source interpretation will be drip-fed into the teaching as appropriate (and as needed!). 

Furthermore, teachers no longer have to reinvent the wheel and be great all on their own.  Encouragingly, the teaching practice is finally starting to catch up with business by sharing best practice online through an creative commons approach – nings, googledocs, blogs, twitter, teachmeets – are all mediums through which teachers, new and experienced, can reflect and improve their pedagogical practice in order to be great. PLNs (Personalised Learning Networks) or self-organised communities of practice (Rogers) are becoming crucial in helping teachers adjust to new specifications and share ideas about teaching content and exam technique.  It is unsurprising that Geography teachers are arguably the most connected or have the most extensive PLNs due to the inter-disciplinary nature of our subject – if you’re not connected have a look online for a ning for your subject specification and start sharing.

So, as the summer officially starts I wonder how practical and true the above will be when I start to teach 35minute lessons in September!

A template for outstanding teaching - lessons from cross-curricular observations

This term, more than any other, I have had a wide range of colleagues observe me to help me reflect upon my teaching and learning.  The generic idea was to have an open approach to teaching which would force me to push myself and re-examine how I teach; importantly assessing what works well and what could be improved. I believe that one of the best things about being observed and observing other people is that best practice and new ideas (and mistakes) are shared.

One colleague in particular, a chemist, was keen to swap/share observations. We met up and discussed what we wanted from the process during the Autumn term:

1. The ability to test new ideas with classes and experiment new techniques
2. To focus on independent learning & assessment
3. To work on getting the kids to do more

The outcome is a provisional framework (for all subjects) for consistently ensuring your lessons are outstanding. 

To some extent the latter has been inspired by @TeacherToolkit 5 minute lesson plan, which many teachers (who use Twitter) across both sectors have been using (See @specialsciteach's photograph below.



Source - For Blog CLICK HERE

*Please note this is not a prescriptive list - the template below provides flexibility for teaching and pacing the lesson according to the pace of learning (a more "see how it goes" approach to teaching as opposed to timings being based upon amount of activities)

**Simply the idea based on LESS IS MORE - QUALITY NOT QUANTITY!

1.  Every lesson should have ONE PRIMARY FOCUSED OUTCOME- what is the key thing every student should leave the lesson knowing/understanding/being able to apply to the real world.  Too many objectives can be confusing and often the lesson can be rushed to cover the content as opposed to exploring the core idea in depth & through discussion.

2. Every lesson should be have ONE MAIN LEARNING LOOP  plus a series of smaller bolt-on loops (a.k.a progress checkers / hinge activities or questions / additional content / minor outcomes etc) which can be flexibly added to the lesson, if needed! (See CTT lesson  below for best practice)

3. Every lesson's PACE MUST MATCH THE PACE OF THE LEARNING (& IDEALLY TRY AND FIT THE CLASS PROFILE).  The engine and key in my opinion to achieving an outstanding lesson is appropriate pacing.  However, PACE can be a fickle beast and too much can mean the students do not have time to process the information sufficiently, whilst too little means the lesson content is not covered quickly enough and is often lethargic. The key point is to pace the lesson according to the PACE of learning rather than the PACE of the activities you have to get through in the time! It is a tricky balance to strike as PACE needs to vary for each year group, for each day and stage in the year - to get the PACE right takes time and only comes with experience.

4. Every lesson's MAIN ACTIVITY SHOULD BUILD FROM CLOSED/SIMPLE TO OPEN/COMPLEX; ideally aspiring towards higher order & critical thinking skills wherever possible, if appropriate.

5. Every lesson should have a range of FLEXIBLE BOLT-ONS or HINGE ACTIVITIES to support the primary outcome, if needed. Note that the, if needed, is a key idea as too often continuous and in my opinion unnecessary 'reviewing' occurs, wasting valuable independent learning time.

5. Every lesson at the end spends at least 10 minutes ASSESSING THE MAIN OUTCOME. This could be done by a ticket to leave exit slip, an exam question or any other plenary assessment tool. The key question to ask is - How do I know every student has learnt something/made progress & achieved the primary outcome?

6. Every now and again, when near the end of a topic or unit, give the class a FERMI PROBLEM  - in this context a problem designed to teach/encourage approximation, critical thinking, problem solving & synoptic links both within and between subjects. Often they are Oxbridge type questions e.g. For Geography, 'What is the population of Croydn?' or 'Is nature natural?' 

Furthermore, there are some additional best practice techniques I have picked up from colleagues. One of my favourites is using named wooden lollipop sticks (example 1*) to ensure all members in the class are asked questions & assessed.

*Example 1: At the start of term (or at the start of a lesson) get every pupil in the class to write their name on a wooden lollipop stick. These are then collected in and the teacher uses them to record who has answered a question and who has not - a quick, easy and effective record to ensure equality of assessment and differentiation when needed. I have personally taken this idea but instead use paper numbers , from one to twenty-four. Each chair/desk has a number and during the class, i hot seat students by pulling out a random number to assess and gauge progress.

*Example 2 - Hinge questions - 80%

Here is a rough outstanding lesson template format based upon our conversations so far:

STARTER
Reviews previous learning or introduces topic. Must be focused, engaging/stimulating, provide a basis for assessment either through progressive Socratic questioning or written assessment e.g. exam question.

LOOP 1
Assesses the learning from the starter activity - key to identifying strong/weak areas of subject knowledge and acts as a basis to progress onto the main task or take stock and go another direction e.g. reviewing last lesson.

OUTCOME OF LESSON INTRODUCED
Key primary outcome explained - the focus of the lesson!

MAIN TASK  - should aim to build up from closed and simple to open and complex, liking to critical thinking and independent learning as appropriate.

(ADDITIONAL BOLT ON LOOPS/HINGE ACTIVITIES AS REQUIRED/IF NEEDED)

PLENARY ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 

Many thanks - Please leave your won comments below and hopefully using this template we will no longer feel like the image below:

Further Reading/Blogs:

http://teachertoolkit.me/2012/10/22/ttkitthunks-johnsayers/

http://specialsciteach.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/observations-and-5-minute-lesson-plan.html?spref=tw

http://back2thewhiteboard.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/11-how-can-questioning-unlock-learning/

CTT Lesson - keeping it simple and focused - The one question lesson (from the teacher)

N.B The topic is the environmental consequences of rapid urbanisation for AQA Geog GCSE

 - Teacher puts question on board and on A4 student sheet (n.b. prior knowledge of topic is vital!)
 - Each student writes down one question on the sheet which can be answered Yes/No.
 - After 3 rounds of this reflect on progress so far
 - Next round is questions with a one word answer
 - Next a numbers answer
 - Finally rounds with open ended questions
 - Now, each student or group answers the question on the sheet using the information gleamed form the questions.
 - Video of Bhopal is shown and prep is to add any missing content to notes using textbook & independent research

Question : How could this be improved?

The Geographer & the Chemist: An update on targets for next term...

UPDATE - The Geographer & The Chemist


So, the chemist and I met up today not only to review this term's observations and teaching and learning in general, but also to set ourselves new targets for the coming Spring Term.

The challenges we have both set ourselves are to explore & evaluate:


1. A variety of main tasks (inc. advs & disadvs of each method) - reflecting on what went well & how we would change it, if we had to deliver it again.

2. Assessment for learning strategies/techniques - Investigating what they are, how they work and how best to apply them and to what situations and classes.

3. To make key skills and key terms a core part of our etaching across all of the curriculum levels.

Chemist's top tip of the day:

Pose 3 differentiated questions/equations/problems/phrases on the board and hand out every member a post it note. Students then chose one option and come up and put their answer up. One member of the class is then chosen to sort the correct answers out and explain why.

BRILLIANT!

The importance of podcasts in connecting with today's mobile learners

After two years of being a loyal Blackberry supporter, with the shift of the company towards its focus on the business community and the lure of Apple and its Apps, I succumbed last week to getting an I-Phone 4S and my my what a revelation.  Although the touch screen keypad is a little frustrating (ahem..predictive text), the power of the I-phone has surpassed my expectations.  It epitomises how EASY it is to connect to the Global Village (M. McLuhan)and in particular share ideas, links, resources, tweets, podcasts etc etc etc.

Podcasts are particularly useful and still, in my opinion, not utilized effectively by many teaching practitioners.  Obviously the tech savvy student in comparison to his more Luddite orientated teacher (apologies for the gross generalisation) may already listen to popular podcasts on comedy, sport (probably football), and radio shows.  However, there are a plethora of GREAT Political, Economic, & Geographic (a.k.a PEG) podcasts which students can download and listen to on their phones - hence, independent learning on the go, and it's not reading 'dull' or 'long' books!

As the UCAS drum starts to beat again, students (and teachers alike) are trying to prove WHY they love their particular subject through the medium of the their personal statement. If you are lucky enough to live near London, then the LSE Event lectures (free) and RGS Monday evening lectures (free to school members) offer a tangible and dynamic medium to engage with Geography at a higher level. However, for those a little further away, podcasts make geographical distances insignificant and allow any student with a decent smartphone and internet connection to engage with their subject at a higher level and through a medium which they may indeed find more engaging and time efficient. 


Below is a brief summary of some of the podcasts I like to listen to and tweet about (@jsbgeography). Check them out, select the ones you like and add any new ones to this post to share ideas and build up a resource bank!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/oneplanet

http://soundcloud.com/theeconomist

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/

If you are also interested in keeping up-to-date with topical news stories and have an I-Phone then download the free FLIPBOARD app; a great way to collate and browse topical news stories which interest you!

A great grouding in Geography - Geography History and Concepts (Holt-Jensen)

A fantastic introduction to the history and philiosphy of Geography - emjoy!

Why Geography is important! Andorra is not in Africa

Good spoofs make me smile.

Why Geography matters!

Changing Educational paradigms & the role of Geography

Many of you will have seen this though provoking video which has been making it rounds on the web. I am just posting it to remind us all of what can be achieved and changed!


Thoughts and comments welcome.

Geography matters on Google Books: Doreen Massey

A classic geographical text for all students wanting to expand their horizons  by  a very prominent geographer.

Abandoned places...spaces or places?

Geographers quite rightly tend to be obsessed with the concept of place and space. I stumbled across a series of interesting images and the following question arose - when places become defunct* are they still places per se or  over time do they lose their human attachment and just return to ordinary spaces/landscapes? Do landscapes have a social or even historical memory and how long can this last before e.g. do humans always have to inhabit places for them to be called a place?

*due to a natural or disaster, quasi natural disaster or simply that it becomes abandoned due to an industry shutting down.

Pictured: Ashley, Pennsylvania
The Huber Coal Breaker, built in 1938. “Other coal breakers have been demolished,” Yves Marchand says. “It really is the last of its kind.” All those windows were there to let in as much natural light as possible. Today they are target practice for stone-throwers

Pictured: Port Richmond, Pennsylvania A generator stands like a sculpture. In its day it was one of the most powerful in the world. It was housed, Meffre says, in a room “built to look like the main hall of a grand city station”

Robert Polidori's photographs of Pripyat and Chernobyl. 

Robert Polidori's photographs of Pripyat and Chernobyl. 

http://moreintelligentlife.com/gallery/american-ruins

http://chrisotley.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.houkgallery.com/artists/robert-polidori/

Clipperton Project Update

For those of you that have been following the progress of the Clipperton project will be please to watch the new trailer which shows the findings of the group's recent expedition earlier this year!

The Clipperton Project is a multi-disciplinary, international arts and science project which aims to take outstanding practitioners in the arts and sciences on expeditions to little-studied, inaccessible and complex territories which have been isolated by history.

Royal Institution - Geographers website

A fantastic website by the RI covering great geographic themes - plenty of videos to watch and discussion to to contirbute to - excellent - also on my links page!


http://richannel.org/themes/environment

Check out the link on the anthropocene...

Hope and Poverty

Hope and Poverty

An Ocean of troubles - our attitude to the ocean environment

To what extent does the state of our oceans depict the global attitude to the environment?

Last night Simon Reeve's Indian Ocean programme  highlighted the state of the oceans in the tourist hot spot of the Maldives and how some islands are being used for waste dumping!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18073917

http://www.economist.com/node/21554490

Culture & conflict over the environment

Another excellent case study on how cultural attitudes and values (economic versus environmental especially) lead to conflict in one of the world's most charged regions. This case study is an excellent example of the environment as a contested category and how different cultures view the vital resource of water - economic development & geopolitics versus indigenous cultural rights versus environmental value (biodiversity). The map link here shows a classic case of upstream versus downstream conflict & dispute (http://mapsof.net/map/jordan-river-map).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11101797

Friends o the earth Middle east provide a good overview of the situation, admittedly from an environmental perspective: http://foeme.org/www/?module=projects&record_id=23

Opinion: Cultural cooperation is key to this area in order to preserve the cultural heritage from a multi-faith perspective!

Other opinions suggest that Israel is violating the human rights of indigenous Palestinians by not only occupying territory but also denying water access to the Palestinians - however, this is the opinion of Amnesty and it is a very divisive & debated issue!

Cultural capital - valuing nature a little differently?

Arguably in a post-industrial society we have moved towards 'valuing' the environment very differently to how we used to perceive it; an economic resource to be exploited under the guise of such paradigms like industrialisation, modernisation or globalisation. According to Kuznets would the West place itself in an era of increasing environmental awareness and decreasing degradation?

Since Carson's Silent Spring and the emergence of radical environmentalism in the 1970s &1980s, the environment has become an issue of common parlance and to put it simply, the environment matters. Today the environment should be (and to some extent is) viewed as as a holistic concept (economic, biodiversity, social-cultural etc etc) as UNESCO outlines in it's definition & mission statement. Clearly though, the latter developments have meant that from an economic perspective whilst economists still see value in the environment, it is fundamentally a different type of value to the one in the industrial period (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17448634).

The new paradigm of the environmental movement of the 1990s and new millennium was Sustainable Development, and as the environment became an issue of national (and international) security, politicians and academics started to see the need not only to protect but also to preserve the more subtle cultural and often spiritual connections organisms  had to the environment. It appeared that the cries of deep ecologists to revert back to pre-industrial times had been answered (well not really!) - alas though, the the environment is and always has been/will be a contested category providing that the human population conitue4s to grow and expand and nations continue to industrialise. Thus, with the Advent of the new Rio Summit there are cries (as there were in 1992) to improve our level of protection and romantic platitudes of a return to some modified form of a pristine wilderness...!(Just look at the BBCs recent programming over the past 5 years to increase our environmental awareness).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18060323

I would argue though that on the hand yes, protection is paramount, but from my time researching in Honduras, i would caution outright protection as often the Western model of a core and buffer zone can alienate the local people from the land and cut the connections which make that particular environment so diverse - just look at Ayres Rock (or Uluru) to see how poor management can lead to severe conflict...Israel, Palestine and the West Bank water security issues is another example.

Q: To what extent do different cultural attitudes to the environment make conflict inevitable?

Discussion: Is there such a thing as a pristine wilderness as Humboldt asserted or not? Discuss.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17747643

A great little video clip showing the positive impact of the London Olympics...

Slums in the UK! Sheds with beds....

Admittedly the title sounds like the frontpage of the Daily Mirror but undercover BBC reporters have found that hundreds of illegal immigrants are living in sub-standard and cramped accomodation in the streets of West and NW London.

For information and to look into this strange use of space click here for the video

Cultural capitalism

A little video from the RSA on the shift from an industrial, modernist society to one of post-industrial cultural capitalism with an increasing concern for the environment and nature.

Good one for Unit 4: Culture.

A new commodity: second hand clothes

Prices paid for second-hand clothes in the UK have tripled in the past five years, sparking a battle between charities, criminals, companies and local councils for the nation’s cast-offs.

It is an intersting development to new and 'emerging markets', especially when considering many developed nations export much of our recyling to LEDCs as they are more efficient at recycling.


As the FT states:

'The price rag dealers pay for used clothes has climbed from about £220 a tonne in 2007 to about £650 a tonne today, according to trade publication letsrecycle.com. Demand has mushroomed since the European Union expanded eastward in the mid-2000s, creating accessible markets for winter clothing that rag dealers cannot sell in Africa. Sterling’s tumble has accelerated the trend. Charities say donations are falling in the face of new high street competition. “Clothing has always been seen as something charitable,” said Maria Chenoweth-Casey, chief executive of charity TRAID, which runs second-hand clothes shops. “Vintage clothing is dying . . . It’s sad to see it shipped out of the country without even being looked at.” Criminals are also drawn to the high prices. In 2008, when Ms Chenoweth-Casey noticed the “yield” of her charity’s textile banks dropping, she hid a tracker inside a bank and followed the signal to an industrial estate in Havering in North London. The stolen clothes were in a trailer bound for east Europe.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/44784f66-8ae8-11e1-912d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1t41bUClx