David Rogers

Well, the school ski trip heads off tomorrow with me on it so I won;t be able to post for a while. We're heading to Jay Peak in Vermont - a part of the world that I have never ventured to so I'm very much looking forward to it! Hopefully there will be lots of geography related issues and I am keen to compare the impact of the ski industry in the area and how this will contrast to the European resorts (by the way did Scotland have a ski season this year? I usually venture up for a bit of winter mountaineering but couldn't this year!) I hope that everyone on their Easter break is having a great time!

I've been doing this for a little while now and have been reflecting on the impact. I do find that the thought that I have to put in to a post before it is published is very useful - having a wider audience certainly means that I have to think through things very carefully. Indeed - having my words quoted to me during a recent interview (in a positive way) demonstrated the scope of this audience. This leads me to recent news coverage that employers are reading blogs and basing decisions on what they see - it seems the culture of the recruitment process is changing. I welcome this development as potential employers have the opportunity to form a more accurate picture of a candidates strengths and weaknesses.

Well I've finally seen my name in print! The 'banned words' idea I first flagged up on the SLN forum. I hope that after this success others will do the same and highlight the excellent ideas and practice out there in the geography community. I also mentioned the blog and hope that people who were not aware of the many excellent blogs out there (many far greater than this one!). There seems to be a bit of debate at the moment whether people should be making money out of sharing ideas so I'd just like to point out that my motives for sending this idea in was the lack of geography in the TES magazine.

It's been a while since I posted about the compressed curriculum experience. The school is now 2 terms into compression, with Year 7 being the only cohort. This should mean that these pupils sit their external SAT examinations in Year 8: next year! As I've mentioned before, this has serious implications for the recruitment of KS4 geographers. On Monday we were given the day (well most of it anyway...) to focus on what to do at Key Stage 4. This went some way to reassure me as I felt this was being ignored. As a department we have decided to investigate the following as possible 'pathways' within the geography department. Pathway 1: Year 9 and 10 : GCSE Geography, Year 11 Short course (if they exist?) in environmental science/management or geology. Pathway 2: Year 9 Foundation year focusing on geographical skills and containing a significant fieldwork element. Year 10 and 11 GCSE Geography. Pathway 3 : Year 9 and 10 VGCSE Leisure and Tourism, Year 11 some other short ...

This happened a couple of weeks ago now but I'm only just getting around to writing about it. March usually means it's time for the Year 7 trip to Sparsholt Agricultural College. The School's Centre there has been providing a day of activity for Year 7 for some years now to our students. We are still the only department that manages to get the whole of a year group out - although over 5 days! The focus of the visit changed this year. Instead of focusing on farming systems participants tried to see how the centre is sustainable. This will allow the students to plan their own enquiry into how sustainable our own school is. The day was a great success (I only went along on one trip this year) and the sun shined for once! One interesting point that came out of the day was that the solar panel on the schools' centre is connected to the National Grid: providing a small amount of power! I hope that the Year 7 environment unit will expand to allow them to make real changes to ...

Just about to launch the Duke of Edinburgh's Award with Year 9 after Easter. Have to say that interest in the scheme has really taken off this year, with around 50 particpants involved. I'm using the scheme as the foundation of a wider Outdoor Learning provision. I intend to use Year 10 students who have completed their Bronze Award as Outdoor Leaders next year. This will extend the leadership opportunities available to pupils. The video above is a short promotional movie for promoting the Award and in particular the Expedition Section. I've used it for parents information evenings. I did plan to upload it into 4Shared, but the file size is too big! So far this year particpants of the Award have taken part in a Fire Safety course run by Fire Fighters at Portchester Fire Station and taken part in the Linvoy Primus Enterprise Challenge.

Just spotted this on Alan's blog and had a few minutes to kill! Read my VisualDNA ™ Get your own VisualDNA™