Geography
I’m going to collect all my posts and ideas for my current Geography topic on this page – this will be copies of things I’ve already posted, but organised into sections rather than just in the random order that things occur to me!!.
We’re studying Weather, but I’m linking in lots of ideas along the lines of the Passport to the World QCA unit as well.
Our virtual journey
I’ve given each child a passport / travel journal booklet to collect information about different countries. Initially, I’m going to model how I want these to be filled in and I will choose the countries we visit on our virtual tour of the world. Later on, the children will be choosing their own countries and independently researching those.
I’ve started a class blog to record our comments and links to useful websites. I’ve written the first posts, but future posts will hopefully be written by the children (and approved by me before being published!).
I’ve been using images of the current country as the background for my desktop on the IWB. The easiest way I’ve found is to search Google images and select medium or large pictures. When you find the picture you want, right-click and choose ‘Set as Background’. You could also use your own digital photos. This has started a few interesting discussions and enabled the class to see photos of a wide range of locations.
I’m also going to use lots of pictures and videos to give children an idea of what it is like in the countries we study. Espresso’s geography passport section covers Scotland, Sudan, India, Australia, Madagascar and Chile. The geography news section includes videos about Icons of England, Find out about Germany, Changing China, Changing India, Arctic Explorers, The Queen in Australia, Drought in Kenya, Australian drought and Floods in Indonesia.
Languages
I’m going to try to teach my class a few words in the language of each country we travel to. I’m starting next week with France, then Germany I think. Enchanted Learning has resources for French, Chinese, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. There’s also lots of general geography and map stuff. Espresso provides videos and other resources on French, German and Spanish. There are also free resources on Schools Links for French, German and Spanish. This school website includes video footage of their children saying basic words in their language.
Tourist information role play
I used this site to contact a few tourist information boards, saying in the comments section that I was a teacher working on a geography project with my class. Only two days later, I’d already received information from Sri Lanka and Korea. They’ve sent me loads of useful stuff, including maps and cultural information booklets. There’s also a directory of tourist boards here, which sometimes has links to order brochures.
I’ve also spent this morning going round travel agents to collect brochures. I’m trying to find space in my classroom to set up a travel agent role play area, inspired by ideas from Trinity Educational (including a free download of ideas, photos and a booking form template for children to use) and Role Play Online.
I’m going to try to use this in maths, for example:
- data handling – weather graphs and statistics
- time – timetables, flight departure times, itineraries
- calculations – travel, hotel and attraction prices
- measures – weight and size allowances for luggage
I’ll also use it in literacy, for example designing adverts, brochures and tourist information. And obviously it will link in with geography!
Independent research
I’ve just found a website with links to various webquests. These may come in useful when I am thinking about independent research tasks for next year (more on that later!). The website includes information on how webquests link to the TASC wheel (Thinking Actively in a Social Context).
It includes a webquest about countries, in which pupils take on the role of a tour guide and research necessary background information. It is designed for KS3, but could be adapted for upper KS2. It includes links for finding out about Brazil, Greece and Australia.
I’ve set up another blog for my class:
http://class5k.edublogs.org/
This one will be used to set tasks for them as part of their independent research. They’ve each chosen a country to research and are going to do a short presentation at the end of term. I’m hoping that the blog will encourage them to continue with their research at home.
I’ve also set up a wikispace from there:
http://class5k.wikispaces.com/
I’m going to try having each of them write a page about the country they are researching, in a similar way to this one which Doug Belshaw set up for GCSE history. In his blog, he describes how he went about it. With much younger students I’ll need to provide a lot more guidance, and I don’t envisage them editing each other’s work, but I’ll try it and see how it goes!!
