Whilst not an authority on this matter I thought I would write a quick piece on this whilst I can still remember what its like to teach in the UK, its already a fading memory……

Whilst I realise my market is niche, there may one day be people in the situation I was in 12 months ago who are coming out here to teach and have no idea what to expect in terms of their day to day classroom teaching. There may also be others who are just interested how teaching and learning in secondary geography is different in the Indian Ocean, for those people this may prove a little interesting too.

Firstly, for reference I am teaching the iGCSE Cambridge Geography spec and its the first time I have taught that which in itself is a learning curve too, its more a watered down A-Level than a GCSE and very old school.

From a geographers perspective the main thing I noticed was how in tune with the natural world students were compared with their UK counterparts. In an early piece of fieldwork I wanted Y9 and 10 students to complete transects where they had to record the names of plant species found. Of course I armed myself with an extensive guidebook to the plants of the Seychelles lowland regions so that I could help them identify the plants they came across. This was not needed. Where UK students would not be able to distinguish even the most common local plants, Seychellois could tell me the names in Creole and in most cases translate them into English. This theme has continued, students here have grown up with an added interest in their environment and a passion for learning about it. Quite why this would be is a mystery but I put it down to there being such a wonderful natural environment here and their being not a lot in the way of games consoles and shopping malls and all the other things which UK kids have to distract them.

This brings me to another distinct difference, that being that Seychelles kids have no concept of celebrity or brands or fashion. This is very refreshing in so many ways but can also make the teaching of certain things like Trans-National Corporations and advertising very difficult. When they are not exposed to slogans or logos or anything like that its hard to teach them the power of them. Remember this is a country with no McDonalds, Starbucks, Burger King, KFC, Subway or even Tesco. There are no celebrities here due to local media having such limited funds and local sportsmen and music stars having such limited fan bases (think of a country with the same population as Burnley) and this means the concept of celebrity is very alien. In an early lesson I did in the whole of year 8 nobody knew who Beyonce or Didier Drogba were but they all knew Bob Marley, reggae culture is big here. Since then I have had numerous reminders of the lack of globalisation here. Students all support English football teams but know of no players by name, Formula 1 is unheard of here and Western pop music is not big here, very few British and American acts are on the radio here. A colleague of mine did a brand recognition task in a lesson and nobody knew the Nike logo for example. You might think this is not a problem for a teacher but when you have lesson plans built around UK kids it can spring surprises. In the past I have built lessons around ‘hooks’ which draw kids in, maybe a music video, a youtube clip or similar which would grab their attention as something they like and I use this as a basis of a lesson. We all do this. Out here, it often falls flat which can be a source of great frustration when a youtube clip you have used 10 times before as an inspiring or thought-provoking starter is met with shrugs.

In general though here very little is met with shrugs. The average student here is so much more enthusiastic and motivated than their UK counterparts. In general they want to work and will work hard on any task given to them. In particular I have noticed they take much longer over tasks than UK kids and this is both good and bad. The good is that they want all tasks to be completed to a high standard with much better standards of presentation than UK kids. The bad is that they struggle to work to a schedule. This is a country where time is not a currency, very little runs of time and most people are late for most things and so if you don’t complete classwork in time no matter. The problem is that when it comes to exams, not completing in time does matter. So far its been a painstaking process to stop year 10 students copying out questions in exams before answering them and stopping them from colouring in diagrams when taking notes.

Another issue is the opposite of one mentioned earlier, in that whilst they are very good at recognising and being interested in the natural world they have a much weaker understanding of some aspects of geography than their UK counterparts in particular urban geography. This makes sense as Victoria, the capital city of the Seychelles is a small market town by UK standards and differs greatly from the kind of world cities studied at GCSE. Certainly concepts like Burgess models and inner city issues are alien concepts here and ones which I have found students struggle with.

The final issue is specific to working in a new school here. All of our secondary students had spent a good deal of their education in the government school system here, which it is fair to say is very different to what is encouraged in the UK. From what I can gather teaching is very text book and teacher lead and discipline is given utmost importance over progress. This leaves us with students who are very well behaved but for whom independent learning and class or group discussion can be difficult. Student led lessons which I have taught many times in the UK and felt progress was excellent (including a lesson observed by OFSTED in May as outstanding) have failed here, whereas more teacher led lessons have yielded good student engagement and outcomes. Most students would rather be handed a text book and told to sit in silence than an interactive out of your seats style lesson. My world turned upside down!!! Thankfully, our head is keen to keep pushing us to push independent learning on them and slowly they are coming round. Exciting to see this process going on.

Generally I have found teaching in the Seychelles to be a interesting and exciting experience so far and I have enjoyed the challenge or trying to adapt tried and tested good or outstanding UK lessons and turning them into lessons which work here. Long may this adventure continue.

Not sure what most school’s policies are on listening to music in lessons but we don’t let students. When I first started we did and it was common to see KS4 groups around the school sat working with headphones in often working very hard in their own little worlds. Certainly many of us know how music can improve focus and enthusiasm and spark creativity in many many case (he says sat writing this whilst listening to the Manic Street Preachers) . This proved problematic as many students took liberties and used their devices for other purposes ‘whilst they had them out’.

It was rare that I let students listen to their headphones during the time they were not banned as I was new to the school and still trying to find my feet so playing things with a pretty straight bat with regards to classroom management. I have since the ban experimented with having the radio on in some select classes whilst students work but found mixed results with this. Many students use it as an opportunity but others would rear their heads between songs to complain about the selection offered by Radio 1 – me included at times. This is therefore something I have not done in a while.

So I wanted to compile a playlist for geography teachers with decent tunes with a geography influence which could be played in class. Sadly despite owning somewhere near 1000 CD’s (15 days worth of music on iTunes) I could find only a handful of songs which would fulfil the above criteria. Also many songs be not actually be used in class due to ‘language’ issues so some of the following are fairly tongue in cheek. Some have lyrics which could act as a starter others could use the video to help. A couple of these are only useful with the video so I have linked to the videos for those tracks. Feel free to contribute to the list….

My one useful and useable track was…

The Enemy – We’ll live and die in these towns (problems of inner city deprivation)

3 good videos I have used are…..

Green Day / U2 – Hurricane Katrina Response

Oasis – The Masterplan – Inner City area

Chemical Brother – Star Guitar (Urban zones and changing urban landscapes)

Thanks to http://www.digitalgeography.co.uk/archives/2007/11/itunes-music-videos-in-geography-lessons/ where I originally got those 3

Not so serious, but maybe of use but in some cases a shame that choice language stops them being useable….

A – Old Folks (problems of an ageing population)

Arctic Monkey – When the sun goes down (problems of inner city deprivation)

Chirs T-T – When the huntsman comes a marchin’ (Rural change)

Levellers – Cholera well (Problems of LEDC lack of development)

Levellers – Cardboard box city (Homelessness in MEDC cities)

Maximo Park – The coast is always changing (The fact that processes change the coastline)

Its got the title but not much else….

Manic Street Preachers – Tsunami

Manic Street Preachers - Australia

…and you will know us by the trail of dead…. - Monsoon

Battles – Atlas

Bedouin Soundclash – Immigrant Workforce

Biffy Clyro – Mountains

Bruce Springsteen – The River

The Cooper Temple Clause – The Lake

Frank Turner – Rivers

The Gallows – The Riverbank

The Gallows – The Riverbed

Hundred Reasons – Avalanche

Hundred Reasons – Savanna

Incubus – Mexico

Interpol – NYC

Maximo Park – Limassol

Pearl Jam – Oceans

Kid Harpoon – Riverside

Kings of Leon – Arizona

The Kooks – Seaside

Levellers – Riverflow

Placebo – English summer rain

The Stone Roses – Waterfall

Temper Trap -Down river

The Vines – In the jungle

The Vines – Rainfall

Yeah yeah yeahs – Maps

30 Seconds from mars – Hurricane

I noticed there is almost enough songs about Rivers there to do a hydrological cycle using this list. Maybe a lesson in there somewhere.

As ever anything else to add to the list would be great.

Whilst this perspective will offer nothing to senior members of staff within a school I thought I would offer a brief perspective on my recent OFSTED inspection at ordinary geography teacher in classroom level. Whilst this will clearly be out of date in not very long I thought that it might offer people one or two ideas if you happen to have an inspection in the not too distant future.

As a bit of background, I was observed in a tandem observation by both the head and the HMI lead inspector. It was one of 4 such observations done across the school in order to standardise and verify the judgements made by the school. The lesson itself was a revision session for year 11’s as I had finished teaching the course and was therefore in the fortunate position that I could get away with teaching anything and did not have to really worry about sequence as the lesson could be a one off targeting revision on a specific topic from any point in the last 2 years. The group in question vary in target grades from D to A* but in general are two thirds B or above candidates. It was a very hot afternoon in the world’s hottest classroom and my best efforts to justify a practical lesson based on the idea of what it would be like to live and work in a desert fell on deaf ears.

The lesson I delivered in the end was a recap on development indicators with a focus on mapping development and how to interpret such maps, something some of my students had struggled with in some prior past papers. On the OCR B course it seems that questions on this subject ion the exam may focus on simple interpretation but may go as far as students suggesting problems with or benefits of a given development map.

The lesson began with a simple development indicator starter. Students given a list of a few indicators and asked to interpret their meaning and what we can learn from each. This was of course differentiated with weaker students interpreting mostly conventional ones (GDP per capita, life expectancy etc) whilst the more able were given more abstract and complex ones (TV’s per 1000 etc). They were given 5 minutes to interpret these and we then had a brief discussion about the use of such statistics. It was during this discussion, around 7 minutes into the lesson that the observer came in and headed to the back of the lesson. I provided her with the seating plan, context sheet etc and took the opportunity at the end of the discussion to recap the learning objectives and suggest that we had already achieved the first one (To be able to interpret a range of development indicators and maps – C grade). The other 2 objectives were  set at B grade (To explain the problems and benefits of using certain indicators and maps) and at A/A* (To  be able to critically evaluate  the validity of certain development maps), although I took this opportunity to suggest to students that at the very top end the ability to offer critique on some development maps was beyond GCSE level and therefore would allow all students within the group to work beyond target.

I moved on to the main task in which each table was given 4 development map which they had to interpret. They were to identify areas of high and low development on the map and then offer some uses and problems with their maps. The students were in mixed ability groups of 4 and whilst they were told to work together on the task each student was to take ownership of the map they had been given. During feedback they would have to feedback on their map if their table was selected. I felt that this ensured that all students participated in the activity rather than just 2 or 3 within the group doing all the work. It also meant that I could allocate maps based on ability, giving the least able on each table a straightforward map (perhaps of GDP per capita or the HDI) and the more able a more complex or abstract map (like the happy planet index map or the Facebook connection map shown below). Students were given some basic information about what the map showed but were generally left to figure that out for them selves.

Students were given around 10 – 15 minutes to complete this task during which time I circulate as did the head and the HMI. The HMI also spoke to me regarding my rational for the lesson, why had I given certain student certain maps etc.

A discussion then followed where I directed certain table to feed back about their maps. Others were encouraged to contribute or challenge the views put across. This discussion lasted around 10 minutes.

Finally students were given some exam style questions about a map they had not yet seen during the lesson (Brandt line) and asked to interpret it and then explain any problems they can see with this. This was completed in timed conditions and then peer assessed. We discussed how such questions would be marked (this close to the exam students are well versed in that) and we modelled some answers which students had felt achieved full marks. There was a quick review of how many marks students had picked up and bar one or two exceptions all had scored maximum marks.

The above is not meant as a guideline for what should be done it merely serves to outline what was done in this case. The result was a grade 1 lesson and what is probably worth noting are the reasons why the HMI graded it that way as it will give people an idea what they were looking for, at least in this case anyway.

The inspector liked that pitch of the lesson with students all able to achieve something beyond their target grade and she liked my emphasis that at the top end the work was more like A-Level than GCSE. She thought that the method of differentiation was good giving students work at their level but as she said by allowing them to work together ‘cross-fertilisation’ occurred where the more able and less able shared ideas. An unexpected positive comment was that she liked the social and spiritual ideas which came out in discussion. There had been some talk during discussion of human rights and whether blocking websites like Facebook was a denial of a rights and also whether all people across the world want development and this was an aspect which was praised although I have to admit not something I had especially planned to occur. A final positive worth noting was that she liked the discussion and questioning that took place and whilst it is difficult to pin down why my questioning / discussion style worked, she said that she liked it when students were asked to paraphrase the answer of a peer and then extent it. Asking questions like are there any aspects of students X’s answer that you thought were especially good or any aspects you disagree with she said was particularly useful.

As ever I hope this will help someone draw their ideas together for OFSTED. Clearly on any given day with a different group, time of year, inspector, star alignment etc the grading may have been different but the above outlines so strategies on the classroom which a very recent inspection verified as being ‘good and then some’.

Having run several coastal field trips now I thought I would compile a run down of all the techniques I have used with a bit of a review of their success, what groups they are good for, the likely results, how to present the data and how to go about doing them. When I first embarked on field trips I found limited information on the internet about specific methods that would work and how successful the students would be at each. It is my hope that someone finds this useful in putting together their own trip. I will add to this as time goes by and I try alternative methods.

General Advice

• Pick the methods to suit you group – you will know what will work and what will not
• Pick the methods that will give the right results to answer your question set. If this is for a controlled assessment task this is of course very important, whilst at KS3 you may have more leeway to design a question to suit the methods you want to use.
• Practice the methods before you go, it makes a massive difference if they already know how to do it before you get there. This could range from counting breaking waves on a youtube video, to measuring pebbles brought in from your drive to measuring the slope of the hill on the school field with poles and clinometers.

Beach profiling

A great piece of fieldwork which always yields decent results in my experience. Select 2 or 3 locations along a stretch of coastline and get students to profile the beach at each location. Make sure you invest in trundle wheels rather than tape measures as in the wind the tape gets destroyed very easily. You will need ranging poles of course and clinometers but the process itself is straightforward and the students usually enjoy working as a team of 4 or 5 to get the results fo this. Absolutely essential to practice this with the students before the day, I always take them out to an undulating bit of the school field to have a go at this in advance. When back in class it is easy for the students to draw up the results and come to good conclusions about the types of waves and processes at each location. I have found that even the weakest GCSE students can access all elements of this piece of fieldwork but would not attempt this with a key stage 3 group unless they are a particularly small / sensible group.

Pebble Analysis

Again a simple piece of fieldwork and one that yields good results which are accessible for students right from key stage 3 to key stage 5. Students again visit a number of sites this time measuring the size of pebbles found and, using a rock matrix record the angularity of those pebbles. Below is the matrix I have used over the past 3 years. I encourage students to try to measure the angularity numerically but some, especially weaker students prefer to classify. Students come up with their own way of random sampling and this I discuss in the lessons in advance, we also have a practice with a sample of pebbles in the classroom before we go. The key is to ensure that students get a large enough sample, 20 at least, otherwise trends are difficult to find. The display of this data works well in scattergraph or box plot format although for the weaker students bar graphs for the various classifications works ok. I have found that the key geography here (the idea of rates of attrition, linked to destructive waves) is accessible to top end key stage 3 students and almost all students at GCSE level.

Field sketches

A very straightforward way to get students to try to interpret features which you might see at the coast. This works well at all key stages and is great for controlled assessment as it allows students to revisit the sketches once back in class and add annotations of the features. As a back up plan make sure you take photos too, I find many students will produce poor sketches in the field, or time constraints mean that they don’t produce much and many students benefit from copying a projected image once back in class. If possible allow  a good amount of time for this in the field and provide students with a clipboard to help them do it.

Long Shore Drift

Measuring long shore drift is a difficult process during a one day fieldwork visit. I have experimented with a number of ways to do this and perhaps the best is very simple (although whether it does actually measure LSD is open to debate). What I have done in the past is place 2 posts 10 meters apart along the coast, parallel to the sea. Then at one post I throw an orange directly out to sea (biodegradable, bright and it floats) we then time how long it takes for the orange to float past the second post. This has yielded decent results for me in the past as if you have a strong rip it is likely that long shore drift will also be taking place however I think I have been lucky with my results in the past and this could of course produce peculiar or misleading results if you went on a given day. The whole issue of bad results is not actually too much of a problem as it allows students to easily find fault with their fieldwork in an evaluation if one is required. There are further issues with the above fieldwork as it may present a problem with risk assessments and safety. Many people will specify in their risk assessments that students do not go past high water mark (I know I do) and this creates a problem in places with a large tidal range if you are there at low tide. In the past I have had to trek down to the sea on my own to carry out this experiment leaving the students with other staff further up the beach. All in all a fairly hit or miss task, would be interested to hear any advice on this.

Wave counts

A very simple process of counting waves for a set period of time at each location. Clearly this is wildly open to error but I find all students can make the link between the number of waves and the nature of them. I start by showing the 2 videos below in class and we talk about constructive and destructive waves, what they look like and how many we are likely to get in a minute. Presenting the data for this is very easy indeed, maybe even just a bar graph and I find students of all ages and abilities can draw meaning from the results and relate it back to their ideas in class. Again the results could be warped on any particular day but again this allows the students to evaluate this piece of fieldwork.

As I said above I hope this helps someone get started. I will blog in the coming weeks about some of the urban fieldwork I have tried and tested but hopefully this enables people to get off the ground with their coastal work.

When you look at this photo, what is the first thing that comes to mind??? Where do you think it was taken???

Well your wrong, it was taken right in the middle on Manhattan just last week and not in Central Park. It was taken on New York’s newest tourist attraction, the High Line which runs from the Meatpacking District (Gansevoot), through the Art Gallery District and finishes in Midtown (11th Av and 25th Street). The project has turned an abandoned railway line into a designated park space filled with grasses, trees and some open picnic spaces. The series of pictures below shows the park and its surroundings, it makes for quite a unique location.

 

I read about the High Line 2 weeks before my trip to New York and was really interested by this clever and unique use of public space. Firstly, along the High Line is a smattering of market stalls selling sustainable produce and locally grown and sources items, many of which claim to have been sourced on Manhattan itself. In the place so obsessed with mass production and economies of scale it was refreshing to see tiny independent retailers selling genuine local items.

However, the High Line has done more than just add a small open space and sustainability to New York it was clear to me that it is being used to try and regenerate an area of some urban decay. At its farthest point south the High Line runs through what seems a reasonably affluent area with the Meatpacking District having a range of high end shops and expensive apartments (for reference this is where Friends was set). However as you walk north along the park the apartments around the line decline in quality until you reach the area furthest north, near the bus depot and Madison Square Garden, not famously a high end part of New York. In this area the High Line is being used as a selling point for a range of new properties which are quickly being put up. Alongside the park were several clearly brand new blocks of apartments, as yet with nobody living in them and several more being built. All of them were adorned with huge signs advertising the properties fantastic view of the High Line, not their view of the skyline of Manhattan. Clearly this is a new USP for these properties as it is unlikely that they would of been advertising a view of an abandoned railway line.  These new properties seemed much larger and modern than those around them and would clearly fetch a much higher asking price and therefore a higher earning tenant, increasing income levels and reducing deprivation levels in this area.

The High Line was an excellent new attraction to visit and whilst it remains to be seen if it has any impact on the area it certainly seemed popular with tourists and New Yorkers alike. Well worth a visit.

 

 

I have been teaching the ongoing redevelopment of Stratford in London as a case study of urban regeneration for 2 years. As I am sure you are all aware the area is undergoing huge changes for the Olympics next year as 6 major sports stadiums, an athletes village and a media centre are all being built. The hope is that the redevelopment will bring with it further investment into the area and there are already signs of this with the large Westfield shopping centre being constructed right by the Olympic site. Having recently visited the site with a group of students I thought I would add a few thoughts to a case study that I am sure many people are teaching.

Prior to the Olympic bid Stratford was one of London’s more deprived areas, not a no go zone by any means but unemployment rates were high income was low, housing quality was pretty poor etc. The case study lends itself well to both GCSE and A-Level specs as a lot is being done to ensure the sustainability of these games and clearly the current exam specs have a real focus on sustainability. The world marvelled in 2008 when the games went to China at the impressive show put on in Beijing but the feeling was that the games in London needed not just to impress but to leave a legacy. The stadiums in China will, in all likelihood, turn into white elephants in the future, seldom seeing use and slowly rotting away. Unfortunately this is the case with a number of events which have preceded it, with the Montreal,  Atlanta and Athens stadiums all being victim of this fate and the 2010 world cup stadiums in South Africa already falling into some state of disrepair. The exception to this doom which has followed after Olympics is Sydney where the games were planned with sustainability in mind, the result is that the venues continue to make money and create jobs for the people. London therefore used the success of Sydney to model their ideas on and tried to adapt as many of the good ideas from those games as possible (I use information on the success of Sydney as a starting point for my GCSE and A-level lessons – which ideas could work for London).

An example of the typical housing and tower blocks in Stratford with stadium behind

With that in mind the London games looks to be sustainable in 3 ways, economic, environment and social. The main aim for the venues is to provide income for the next hundred years. However the capacity for the venues was considered to be too great for events following the Olympics and so the major stadiums were all designed to be partly dismantled after the Olympics to create smaller venues which can be more regularly used. Notably the main athletics stadium is to be reduced from a capacity around 65,000 to nearer 30,000 and will become the home of West Ham football team (although Spurs are doing their best to prevent that from happening). This should create thousands of permanent full and part time jobs in the area and this should help to provide a better economic situation in Stratford as the multiplier effect kicks in and local businesses benefit from higher rates of employment and increased tourists and visitors. A major issue for the games was the environment and so a vast area of parkland has been created around the area to offset the damage created by the stadiums. Local waterways, much of which have suffered with environmental pollution, have also been improved to encourage wildlife back into the area. Certainly on out visit we saw evidence of this with canals far from the stadiums looking to have oil and other deposits on the surface and lots of rubbish floating around, whereas waterways nearer the games were cleaner, with green algae floating on the surface and resurfaced towpath’s. The games also wanted to create the minimal carbon footprint possible and this is to be achieved by retailers within the park selling food and drink in biodegradable containers and supplies will be sourced from local producers wherever possible to keep air miles etc to a minimum. To ensure social sustainability the games is looking to not disrupt and hopefully improve the day to day lives of those in the area. Previous games, notably Barcelona, have brought the host city to a standstill during the event and London was keen for this not to happen. To ensure this, public transport in the area has been greatly improved, an infrastructure which will clearly last well beyond the games, and public transport costs have been reduced for those with tickets to events to try to encourage most people to travel to the games by train and not by car. Additionally the athletes village will be converted into affordable homes after the games many of which will be set aside for those in ‘key’ occupations such as nurses and teachers. 

So what has been the impact of all these developments? Well clearly the true impact will only be realised in the years after the games have happened, but already Stratford show signs of improvement. Beyond the Westfield shopping centre, residential developments like the one below have begun to spring up in the area, with the whole Stratford area looking like a construction site at present with high end residential and commercial properties appearing. Indeed the architect I spoke to on our visit was saying how the area was now experiencing an influx of higher earners and city types and with that bars and cafe’s in the area were profiting from new customers with higher incomes. So clearly even with a year to go before the games, many people in the area are beginning to benefit from the changes.

An example of the sort of modern development taking place in Stratford

However, clearly the problem like with many urban redevelopments is what has become of the people who previously lived in the area who are no longer able to afford the rents being charged by landlords. Well, i didnt take us long to find out that what is being done in nothing. On our way out of Stratford we stopped at a McDonalds, located a stones throw from the stadium, and sat outside was a group of ‘hoodies’ in their late teens and early twenties. Perhaps not very wisely I decided to talk to them about what impacts the developments were having on them. All of them agreed through some conversation that the improvements did nothing to improve their lives with one or two commenting that lower income jobs were now harder to find in the area (especially part time jobs for teenagers) and council housing was in short supply as many tower blocks were being shut down and demolished to make way for new developments. Simply put, many of the poorer residents of Stratford are being marginalised, losing work and having to leave the area.

Clearly this example is more complex than I could ever outline in a blog post and this serves as just a simple outline of what is taking place there. Hopefully this will help some people feel a little more informed when teaching this case study or simply debating the concept of redevelopment or gentrification. If anybody would like any of the resources I use for teaching this at A-Level or GCSE please feel free to email me at markhowell101@googlemail.com.

As ever thankyou for reading.

 

On 22nd July 2011 we visited Wembley Stadium, Wimbledon and the new Olympic site. In the coming days I will blog about my thoughts on how the Olympic Park might change Stratford (geography case study style) but for now I thought I would just post a few photos from the trip.

As a student I never worried about exam results but as a teacher I have quickly found that I get very apprehensive about how my students do. Having now been at my school for 2 years my first meaningful results day is approaching and I felt I would reflect on the 2 years before I see the results. Whilst I had a year 11 group last year I inherited them half way through year 11 and whilst they did well and I was able to take some of the congratulations for this, clearly much of the credit needs to go to my predecessor. This time my GCSE students have been with me for the entire 2 years and it would be nice to build on the success of last year.

Initially the signs for this group were not so great, in terms of both work ethic in year 10 and in terms of ability they are just slightly below my previous group and so I had expected their results in the controlled assessment and DME to be slightly worse. However the DME results were reasonable and after 2 months of hard work on DME’s the results in January were outstanding (40% A* and A and only 4 resits needed, will take that any day) so I am hopeful that this performance will continue into the January exam. We also worked hard on the final aspects of the course through the last 2 terms and did a lot of really productive revision.

I hope the results are good as almost half of them are looking to continue Geography on at AS Level and I feel like they deserve to do well. Its also not often I say this but I feel like I deserve a good set of results too, I feel like I got my teaching just right for this group over the 2 years and have really maximised their knowledge, understanding and exam know how. This was confirmed to me in the last week of term when I received notification that my GCSE group had nominated me for a national teaching award. Whilst I was so pleased with this it means nothing if the results are not good.

I have had a week now to have a good look through the first OCR B exam in full on the new specification and thought I would reflect how I felt about it as a paper and how it matched up with the material previously available, the information gained at the OCR day I went to in London and with the spec / official text book.

My first impression of the exam was relief. It had been my belief throughout most of these 2 years that the format would allow students to choose between questions on rivers and questions on coast, between questions on population and questions on settlement and between questions on climatic hazards and questions on tectonic hazards. Having taught population and settlement and tectonics and climatic in equal measure this gave my students the opportunity to choose the easier set of questions or the ones which suited them better. However, due to doing our controlled assessment on coasts we had spent roughly twice as much time on this topic than we spent on rivers. I had thus suggested strongly that my students should answer the coasts questions. Clearly the nature of always doing the coasts controlled assessment means my students will always favour this over rivers, however, I learned late on in the process from a colleague that OCR had told them that the board reserved the right to set 2 of the same type of questions and I therefore spent a lot of time working on rivers stuff in the run up to the exam. It makes sense for the board to do this to stop unscrupulous teachers just teaching half the course in lots of detail and directing students towards only the questions they have studied. That said I think it is unlikely that they would ever do this simply because it would polarize results. By setting only rivers questions they potentially put at a disadvantage all those who did human or coastal controlled assessments. Only by setting questions on rivers, coasts, population and settlement do they ensure that all students have a fair crack at the area they have spent probably most time on and have experienced fieldwork it.

The exam turned out as I initially thought with a question on each of the 6 topics included (with questions of tectonics and climatic hazards, population and settlement and rivers and coasts kept apart) but I will not bank on this every year, making sure my students are prepared for every eventuality.

The first section got students to choose between rivers and coasts with similar questions set for both (incidentally all 32 of my students did rivers). The opening questions on both disciplines were fairly standard map reading and interpretation exercises for up to 4 marks. I think it is very likely that the map skills will be a fixture of the rivers and coasts section in future papers and will make sure that students can identify some river / coasts features on maps in future (obviously this can’t be the case in 2012 as rivers and coasts are the DME options and will not be in the exam). Both sets of questions also featured a 4 marks describe with the aid of a diagram question where students had to explain a features origin, again fairly standard. The coasts case study was fairly predictable for me as students have covered the natural features of a coastline in their C/A and I therefore was confident that management would be the topic of the exam case study. I would anticipate that this will be the case in the majority of years that the terminal exam will ask the opposing question to the question set in the C/A and will therefore alternate annually. I was glad my students were doing coasts as I felt the rivers case study was tricky. In the spec students are asked to know about 2 case studies of flooding (MEDC and LEDC), understanding 3 things about each: the causes, consequences and management. In the specimen papers and practice questions the case studies had always asked for 2 out of the 3 aspects, for example causes and management and so I felt it was tricky to expect students to respond to just 1 of the 3 elements, in this case the management. Something to consider in future.

On balance I felt the human questions were the most straightforward with half being on population (pop pyramids, changes in pop, links between development and pop, ageing pop and pop management) and the other half being on settlement (urbanisation, squatter settlements, counter-urbanisation and changes to retail provision). My students almost all answered the population question on the basis that we had a couple of pretty memorable case studies they could use for the long question. Students felt that both sets of questions were pretty reasonable and straightforward with no surprises. This was a relief as there were no pop and settle questions on the specimen paper provided and neither were there any on last years short course paper as these topics are not in the short course. At least now we have some questions to use as mocks and in class tests which look like the real thing. I am torn on whether to expect pop and settle to be separate every year as the topics do cross over more than the physical ones and it would be pretty reasonable to mix up the questions. That said both topics are controlled assessment options and therefore students doing human fieldwork ought to have the same opportunity to attempt questions on their area of most knowledge.

The third section covered the 2 natural hazards options and again this was split as expected with the first set on climatic hazards (specifically drought) and the second set on tectonics (volcanoes). My students mostly opted for the questions on volcanoes but most felt they would have been ok to answer the drought questions without any trouble. There were no specific questions on earthquakes or tropical storms, although case studies were open so that students could use case studies of these hazards if they wanted to. It remains to be seen whether the exams will always focus on one of the hazards in each category or whether in future they might look to mix up questions on say droughts and tropical storms or even droughts and earthquakes for example.

Overall I was pleased with the exam and really pleased that I seem to have gone about teaching and assessing the course over the 2 years in a way which prepared the students well for the final exam. Hopefully the results will be what I expect in August.

I am someone who didn’t get revision going through school and as a result didn’t do enough (in fact doing almost none). It is therefore then not surprising that I underachieved at GCSE and A-level dong enough to get by but in reality had to go to college during my year out to improve my A-levels to get onto a decent uni course. It was only at university where I discovered what worked for me and the only way revision worked for me was hour after hour in the silent room at Plymouth University library reading and writing practice essays through exam season. This hard work paid off and I did very well in my degree.

Revision season has therefore been hard for me in both PGCE and NQT years as I have struggled to help students revise in the best way possible. To expect them to revise in the way I did for uni would not be appropriate for many of them but I want to find a way to get them all doing something. Thankfully one success has been the podcasts which all of my classes have downloaded (new Manor Geog Pod on the way) and all have listened to which if January’s results for me were anything to go by this has been a good result. My struggles have come in class with trying to create a focussed environment where students revise the right sort of things and can improve exam technique without it being too dry which might switch some students off altogether.

This was my problem last year where with the majority of classes I encouraged students to sit and read through notes or text books in close to silence and threw occasional past papers at them. Whilst this worked for some, a great number did not gain a great deal from this and though my results were good last year I felt this was not as a result of the 2 or 3 weeks before the exam in which I felt learning had not been maximised.

This year I feel much more positive about the experience and hopefully the results in August will affirm my higher expectations. With all of my exam groups I have 100 minute lessons which allow me to do a few tasks. I have been starting each lesson with a pub quiz style quick fire questions on a part of the course spec (I teach on the AQA B Religious Studies SPEC, AQA Geography A-level and OCR B Geography GCSE spec) then depending on what questions students answer badly they then attempt different revision tasks. So for example if they did badly at questions 1 to 5 they do the population revision task I have set and if they do badly at questions 6-10 they do the settlement revision task. This quiz style intro to lessons has been really fun with prizes and a nice relaxed end of the year kind of feel, a nice break from a lot of the heavy revision I know is going on elsewhere. It takes maybe 20-30 minutes out of my 100 and I then get them doing a revision task for the middle 30-45 minutes. This I make sure is more focussed and addresses areas which have been identified as weaknesses in the quiz. The final half hour or so is given over to exam practice where I set prior exam questions and they answer in timed, exam conditions. We then peer assess these at the end with students reading out answers and us discussing the marking of them.

This method for me has been head and shoulders better than last years approach and I can really see their exam answers improving lesson by lesson. For me they have been a lot more focussed and gained more in the 45 minutes or so directed revision time this year than 100 minutes of unstructured stuff last year. Hopefully the results will show this improved approach and then I can use this method for future years. Lets just hope it doesnt take me as long to find a method that works in the class as it took for me to find a personal method that worked.