Planning for your first school trip abroad🌎

We are well into the first half term of school now, and a trip that I started planning over 18 months ago has very suddenly sprung itself on me! 

I'm hoping to write a couple of posts about anything I learn after the process, but for now let's go with a few pre trip tips!

1. Research your company
Planning for Iceland was interesting. I knew it was going to be an expensive trip and almost cried when I saw most prices for a half term travel. However after contacting a few companies I had a better idea of what I really wanted and needed to be included. Musts included at least breakfast and dinner, blue lagoon tickets, south shore and golden circle excursions, and finally a field studies guide.Make sure you do some looking around and find the deal you really want. Remember you want the easiest and most convenient time possible whilst away.

2. Visit the location before if you can
Most companies will offer some kind of teacher incentive so you can visit the hotel and surrounding location beforehand. Check what they offer and if you can't find it, ask! I was lucky enough to have two days accommodation in Iceland all paid for - it was really comforting to be able to see the place we are staying and get to know the area before arriving with 45 excitable teens and 5 staff all looking to you for answers. 

3. Talk to other teachers
Just having a chat with colleagues was so helpful when it came to planning this trip. You walk into trip planning completely blind, hoping and praying you're doing well,so it's helpful to have a natter with a colleague so they can pick you up on any bits you may have missed. One particular colleague said 'make sure you have money to buy them all a bottle of water and a chocolate bar on the way home' - best advice ever! Grumpy, hungry, tired and thirsty teens are not what you want on the journey, so saving some cash (from the budget) will save you a battle.

Hope these tips help you with some planning of your own!

Geoggoss 🌍

An earthquake close to home

An earthquake in the news, and this time very close to home. Students often find thinking about earthquakes a bit alien to them. In the UK we live in such a safe area, in terms of geophysical hazards, and on the whole weather hazards (I say as I'm writing a new lesson on the increasing severity of UK weather).

When this cropped up on my BBC app this morning, I had look twice. Having just got back from Italy, it seems crazy that this would happen. Sadly the death toll is already rising, and we all know the impacts will be severe in a HIC country, which gets fairly few earthquakes so high on the richter scale.

Hopefully we can use this to show students that hazards don't just arise in places a million miles from them, in another world, or universe. But that the earth is moving beneath all of us, in a place they may have visited in their summer holidays. I hope I can use this example at some point this year to help students visualise the impacts this would have, and bring geography a little bit closer to home.

Sending my thoughts and support to all those affected.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37171953

Image from BBC News

How do hurricanes form? A video for your classroom

Having never taught about hurricanes, I've been a bit apprehensive when planning new the new scheme of work for GCSE new spec. I stumbled upon this brilliant video when browsing through the BBC App and thought it would be good for using in the classroom. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/24056514

A tip to help you differentiate

We all find it hard at times to ensure sufficient differentiation to meet the needs of all our students.

In each lesson I try to ensure at least 1 activity is staggered so that all levels and abilities are able to access the key content of lesson. Not every lesson has to have a written activity, but it's good to use this levelling method to develop students' understanding of different 'questions' so to speak, but also helps them develop their written skills in just a short paragraph or two. 

What I personally love about this method of differentiation is that i've found if you give students a chance to pick their task, they will often aim higher.

I find the easiest way to differentiate is to break something big into 3 or 4 smaller chunks. For example, main lesson objective is to 'Identify the impacts of the Mt St Helen's Eruption'. This can be broken down into a 5-10 minute activity:

Aiming for 4? Describe 2 positive and 2 negative impacts of the Mt St Helens Eruption

Aiming for 5? Explain (using the word because) the positives and negatives of the Mt St Helen's eruption

Aiming for 6? Explain what you think the most damaging impact of the eruption was. Justify your answer.

Aiming for 7? Suggest how you think the impacts of the eruption could have been reduced. Justify how they would have helped.

I love this type of activity and ensure students always write the level they have aimed for in the margin. This helps me when I mark their work, but also means we can track their attempt against their target grade. 

Hope this helps some of you when you're struggling with differentiation!

Starting out a Geog Blog

And here I start my first geography blog! 

I am not claiming this will be a regular, weekly post as I'm sure any teacher can appreciate the time constraints that come with the job, and I would like to spend a bit of time with my other half. I am, however, hoping this will be a space to share techniques, news articles and other useful bits and bobs that can help other geography teachers! 

In October half term I'll be running my first trip to Iceland - I'm hoping to give any one who hasn't run a trip/wants to run an Iceland trip some help and advice on what we found worked and what didn't! I've already spotted another teacher on my reccy dishing out chocolate bars and bottles of water on the flight home... one tip noted down to keep a happy troop!

Feel free to comment and share opinion on anything on this page.

See you soon!