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!