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Geographical Association Conference – Workshop Resources

Thank you to all those who attended the 2 workshops on Friday.  The resources for each are below.  If you view them on Slideshare, you will also find the acknowledgements and links to further resources.

Both workshop inputs centred around expanding geography's influence.  The morning session run by Tom from the Secondary Phase Committee gave some political advice, while my session in the afternoon aimed to give some practical approaches.

The main points were:

  • Pinky and the Brain never took over the world because they planned too much.  Planning is important, and the department that I work in has detailed schemes of work.  Many of the ideas presented appear in them.  However, every now and again I think that it is essential for good learning to plan a little less, take a risk and let the pupils take charge.  An example can be found here. What is important to remember though is that Schemes of Work should be living, organic documents that change often, otherwise and learning is in danger of becoming fossilised. Schemes of work should also be contextualised with individual schools, locations and young people in mind.
  • We need to get away from Dr Pepper thinking . By always thinking of the worse case, we often stop being creative.  We need a bit more ‘What if.’
  • I see Geography as being the Duct Tape of education. The subject has the ability to link many others together; it helps young people to understand the real world around them and the subject can be a powerful vehicle for learning as a whole
  • From a Subject Leader point of view, these ideas must be:
          • scale-able: used by other teachers in the department or school
          • sustainable: be able to be used more than once, across year groups.  Any idea must also be used sparingly to avoid young people becoming bored of it!
          • embeddable: to become part of the curriculum and used year after year.

Putting Geography back on the map

I want to break free! Expanding geography’s influence

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Comments

  1. Anonymous12 April 2010 at 16:33

    Hi David,
    I wasn't at GA conference, followed on twitter and just catching up on the slides. Can I ask how Will Smith fitted into the presentation? :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. David Rogers12 April 2010 at 17:41

    Hello, Thank you for your comment.

    Will Smith linked on to a lesson that was used to exemplify Floating Topicality. Around the US Presidential Elections, we wanted to explore the links and interdependence between the UK and the USA. Will Smith appeared on the Chris Moyles show on BBC Radio 1, and helped to sing the song 'Barak Obama.' This was one example of where the media is geography :-)

    Details of the lesson can be found on this post: http://daviderogers.blogspot.com/2009/01/citizenship-and-geography.html

    I hope that answers your question, if not feel free to get in touch :-)

    ReplyDelete

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