Some resources I produced for the Royal Meteorological Society.

Also posted a response to a mobile policy review that is being conducted at my place of work on my personal pages, any response would be grateful.

Sorted our 19th Geography Flash Meet on the 10th of March, all are welcome to join us.

One area I had success with last week was looking at the Christchurch earthquake. I like the idea of floating topicality, it makes students realise that geography is a living subject. I do struggle though  with developing an appropriate response to such a recent tragic event. For Key Stage 4 it was a useful revision of plate tectonics, for Key Stage 3 I used a little strategy I picked up from Ian Murray. I first shows a clip in of the quake aftermath from the BBC, then explained the tectonic theory. I then read eyewitness accounts from the BBC website, as students actively drew what came into their minds.

It was interesting to see how students responded in a variety of ways, from artistic representations…

To storyboard accounts…

To images with associated quotes…

It was interesting then to discuss why they had drawn such responses and what key themes ran through the class set of images.

Also signed up for the RSS feed of a new Alan Parkinson blog about supporting geography teachers. Should be good… no pressure

As always I’m happy to share resources and ideas.

Examples of Students Work.

View more presentations from Liz Smith.

I’m always happy to see students’ work.

I thought this could be adapted to other topics, so I’ve put a template together.

Both can be downloaded from my SlideShare account.

In year 8 will started to look at rivers, I use Victoria Ellis’s rivers introductory video (Nice bit of Enya..) as a starter, we then produce a poem entitled the ‘River’. Reminds me that I want to record some of them and put them online- one for this week to try…

In year 9 we started weather and climate, we considered the difference between the two terms, and then began to produce maps of the average summer and winter temperatures across the British Isles. Good traditional stuff!

To exploit this potential weather event, I thought I would try to extract some Geography.

View How hot is your classroom? in a larger map

The idea is that colleagues record the temperature of their classroom on the Google map. The map is open collaboration, so you just need a Google account to edit it. Hopefully it will be nice to see how temperatures vary around the country, it would also be nice to see the classroom temperatures of other colleagues from different parts of the World. For students, it offers the chance to discuss how and why temperatures may vary, and proves we are not alone!

Why an inside temperature? I’m just wondering how fit for purpose our learning environments are…

I thought some standardisation is needed, therefore

• Temperatures should be taken at midday in your time zone, on any day from the start date.
• Temperatures should be taken in the shade, away from direct sunlight, computer equipment.
• Temperatures can be updated if/when your previous high has been exceeded.

Using the map,

• Place a place mark on your school location, I’m using the sun one.
• Add a photo of your classroom if you wish.
• The place mark title should include the temperature in Degrees Celsius.

I thought temperature readings could begin on Monday 1st of June, but colleagues can join in at any time. In the mean time, please place your classroom marker in preparation.

The map project can be followed by RSS feed. A KML file can also be downloaded and use in Google Earth.

Please feel free to contact me for help.