Hexagon Templates - SOLO Activities

I've put together some hexagon templates of differing sizes for those who want to use them in classes for SOLO activities. I've seen some great examples of hexagon activities to check, consolidate and explore student knowledge. 

I've made small, medium, large, extra large, and extra extra large hexagons. Feel free to download them for use in your classes. They are all A4 templates. 

Small - 18 hexagons

Medium - 10 hexagons

Large - 4 hexagons

Extra Large - 2 hexagons

Extra Extra Large - 1 hexagon

#geogsolo

This is why I love Twitter. It's a dynamic environment filled with intelligent, enthusiastic and committed people. 

A short conversation by @johnsayers regarding his idea to create a website of SOLO-based resources for the Geography classroom spiralled into a global effort, with our first #geogsolo (our Twitter hashtag) meeting scheduled for the 16th of June at 12pm GMT/ 3pm UAE/ 9pm AUS EST. 

Follow the #geogsolo hashtag on Twitter to find out more, to locate resources, and to meet other practitioners. The more the merrier!

UNESCO World Heritage Sites Task

I just designed a task for my Year 7s around the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The focus here is on developing and utilising higher-order critical thinking skills, such as evaluating and creating. As this is quite a lot of work for KS3/Lower Secondary students, mine will be presenting it in groups (encourage the use of technology in presenting - PowerPoint, Prezi, Animoto, Google Presentations, etc). 

The Lowdown:

Students must answer the following key questions:

• Why should we care about protecting cultural and natural sites?
• What do you think should be the key criteria for protecting a place? (Students will design their own key criteria re: what makes a place worth saving)
• Can UNESCO's criteria be made any better? (Students will evaluate UNESCO's criteria, providing an overall opinion, reasons, and potential improvements)

They will also need to research a current UNESCO World Heritage site (or a location of their own choosing that they feel needs protection), provide background information on their site, and evaluate it using their own list of criteria to decide whether it is worth protecting/preserving. 

Other things:

I would also recommend printing out images of World Heritage sites to provide inspiration. 

You will need to scaffold and model thinking - I talk it through with my students and use Project Zero thinking techniques e.g. Think, Pair, Share, plus graphic organisers and coloured pens to get students generating, sharing, and writing down their ideas. You will probably also need to discuss the UNESCO criteria with students - I've greatly simplified them, but the language is still quite formal - if anyone can simplify them further, I'd love to get in touch with you. 

We've just started, so I will let people know how it goes and share insights re: the final product. You could probably get 8s and 9s to do this as well. 

The assignment handouts are available below - feel free to modify them for use in your classrooms. 

Resource 1: Should We...? Task

Resource 2: Group/Record Sheet

Resource 3: UNESCO Criteria Sheet (Simplified)

UPDATE:

Resource 4: 'NIP' Graphic Organiser (use this for evaluating UNESCO's criteria)
Resource 5: Should We...? Criteria Sheet (Mark sheet)

Depending on which sites you're looking at, this website on World Wonders + Google Earth/Maps could be very useful. It doesn't have any African sites, and very few Asian ones, but there are plenty from N. America and Europe on there. It provides students with a VFT (Virtual Field Trip) experience. 

Scoop.it!

One of the many lovely Twitter users that I follow, @geographynerd (Rebecca Nicholas) clued me into Scoop.it. I'd seen it before, but had never really thought about using it. Bec explained how easy it was to use and voila! I was hooked. I've now started my own Scoop.it at Geography - The World Around Us. While I use mine to curate articles on all aspects of Geography, Bec has demonstrated how it can easily be used for a class. She collates articles regarding climate change for one of her Geography classes, so they have a constant supple of quality links and source material. You can find it here. 

Enjoy!

Google Apps in Education

Hi all,

Having recently attended a PD on Google Apps I'm interested in putting together a resource looking at the ways that Google Apps can be used in education, both in a classroom and at a staff/management level. I'd post it here in a Google doc (with credit given for all suggestions used) and on TES resources.

What I want to know is:

1) How might you use Google Apps in a classroom? (Theoretical ideas)
2) How people have used Google Apps in a classroom, and
3) How people have used Google Apps at a staff/management level.

All ideas welcome - feel free to communicate your ideas using the comment section of this post, by emailing me (email in the column on the left) or by tweeting me @thegeophyte.

Thank you!

Derwentwater: Change over Time

Since the drought in the UK is quite topical at the moment, I thought I'd put up two of my photos of the Lake District. The first one was taken in 2007 and the second three years later, in 2010. These images are of the southern end of Derwentwater, not too far from Lodore Falls. The difference in water level is quite obvious. The summer of 2010 (against all weather predictions) was very hot by UK standards. One local shopkeeper told me that several of the jetties on the lake were rendered unusable by the dropping water levels. 

In 2007

In 2010

Feel free to use these images in your classrooms to demonstrate change over time and the effects of drought in the UK. I've made a quick worksheet using these images that can be downloaded via the link below:

ChangeOverTime