David Rogers

Getting creative with your (geography) curriculum from David Rogers Last Friday was busy.  Before heading over to BETT to give a talk at TMBETT15 , I spent the day at the Royal Geographical Society, of which I am a Fellow and Chartered Geographer.   It’s always great getting back to geography, I consider myself a geographer before a teacher.  But some of the points here are relevant for teachers of all subjects and ages.  Some of the specific ideas are clear in the slides, but my main points are below.  It’s always tricky when challenged to give a talk around the idea of creativity or inspiration.  With this in mind I started by thinking about creativity and have posted my thoughts here and over at Staffrm . To me, there are a number of exciting aspects of the current curriculum changes: 1. Teachers Standard 4. This, to me, is something to savour and celebrate.  Even though it came out of a Tory DfE, it’s bloody good.  The DfE are ...

Have you noticed that some teachers are becoming unable to think for themselves?  It’s a trend in the Twitterverse and blogs and CPD events and staffrooms.  You know the call: ‘But the new National Curriculum / GCSE specification doesn’t mention climate change, so how can we teach it?’  The trouble is, as I see it, that teachers have become used to the spoon feeding provided by the National Curriculum and publishing companies.  If we aren’t told to teach it, then we can’t teach it.  We comply, understandably, to meet the current trends in what we should be teaching. In addition, there’s a real danger that the curriculum in schools will become fossilised if we, as a profession, don’t think outside of the documents and texts produced.  This isn’t an attack on knowledge.  Knowledge should underpin teaching and learning.  I’m also not anti publishers, I write resources and textbooks so that would be mental.  The problem is that I wonder if te...

So, the Secretary of State for Education announced that Levels are going .  They won’t be replaced as they aren’t being used as designed and parents don’t get it.  In other ground breaking news, the capital of Wales is Cardiff.  Do bear in mine that these are personal reflections from time in classrooms and successfully getting young people to achieve and feel successful.  In my view, there are two purposes to assessment: To help children get better (formative assessment); To report on how much someone has learned (summative assessment). There’s no need to panic here.  Firstly, teachers are already professionals used to using a wide range of assessment techniques every day in every lesson.  As mentioned in recent research, the most effective (and cheapest way) of raising achievement is through effective teacher feedback.  I pop in and out of lessons every day and see all manner of assessment techniques that aim to allow students to get be...

‘An' here I go again on my own Goin' down the only road I've ever known,’ This is a post about the proposed National Curriculum currently up for consultation .  Before I start, read the document and give your thoughts .   I’m already fed up of the ‘nothing will change so why bother’ response.  My response to this stance is: grow up and take part in the democratic process.  Now that’s off my chest, a few caveats: This is a response to the Geography Key Stage 3 Curriculum.  It’s the one I know best and feel confident on. I’m a teacher of children, not a Gove basher.   My job is to subvert, change, work with, create, make relevant and bring to life the curriculum for the young people I teach.  I’ll probably not vote Tory at the next election. Then I never have.  I will lobby and support the work of the Subject Associations.  I will get students to hack the new curriculum.  I will help to lead The Geography Col...

I have always found exploring the concept of a sense of place difficult. The National Curriculum demands that young people use their geographical imaginations and build upon their own personal experiences. In addition, this lesson equipped the young people with a strong vocabulary to use when describing places so there are links to literacy. I should add, that this is a parallel group to the one talked about in the Our Place series of posts. Secret Geographies View more presentations from David Rogers . The lesson has been inspired by Noel Jenkins' Flickr photostream . We started by watching a slideshow of this set . Pupils wrote down adjectives. I was stunned by the response, for example: 'dank, dark, dusty, musty, drips, water.' The images were also excellent for spotting evidence from photographs- an important geographical skills. Most of the class thought that this was a place for children and had been bombed. Not bad when the only information they had to go on wa...

There are a number of items in my RSS reader that are just for fun. I've added another today thanks to a post on John Howarth' s blog. He included an image from the Gaping Void site. On further investigation, I came acorss this image: This gave me an idea for a lesson. As Geographers, we should be challenging stereotypes. However, I don't think that we should be making assumptions on the stereotypes our students hold. To avoid stereotyping stereotypes ;-) I created the map below using an OS map outline that a freely available . I have to point out that my annotation are tongue in cheek and no offense was meant ;-) For example, the Midlands are 'Blurry' as I most often see them form the M6 on my way to either the Lake District, Snowdonia or Scotland. This is also a useful activity for exploring and building upon pupil's own experiences of geography. On my return to the classroom, I'll be using this method with classes in order to explore stereotypes and pup...