Upcoming GA Gloucester Branch CPD - 'Digging Deeper'

I've just finalised the plans for a session for GCSE and 'A' Level teachers and students later this month as part of the programme of events offered by the GA Gloucester Branch.

It's an upate of a session I created for the GA Oxford Branch last year.

I explore some of the ways that teachers and students can research case studies they need to remember for exams to make them come to life a little more, and ensure they are a little more authentic, contemporary and relevant, as well as memorable for the exam when it comes to revising.

Why not sign up?

This will be one of my Worldly Wednesdays....

AQA Pre-release 2022

I was told yesterday that the AQA GCSE pre-release material for the 2022 summer exam season was based in / or mentioned Ely, so I asked for a copy and discovered that it was based on an application by Amey to add an incinerator to their existing waste management park near Waterbeach / Denny Abbey to the south of Ely, along the A10.

The scheme was controversial, although the benefits were clearly stated by the company. A protest group was set up, and commissioned a report on the impact of the proposal, which included mention of the chimney which would be taller than Ely Cathedral and spoil the view towards it from Madingley (a place of geographical significance).

Interestingly, for a pre-release where students usually have to weigh up whether a planned development should go ahead, the decision has already been made in that the scheme was .... spoiler alert.... turned down in 2020.

I tried to add some local contexts - newspaper articles, campaign group reports, local landscape character analysis reports etc. into the mix and shared to the community - AQA is the most popular GCSE specification choice so there will be lots of teachers looking to prepare something on this, and we are all working at our limits at the moment with hybrid learning for many still due to students recovering at home from COVID.

Anthony Bennett has added a copy of the document to his page of pre-release materials. This is available to subscribers and non-subscribers of Internet Geography.

An editable version is below or on this link...

Feel free to download a copy and add your own ideas to the document - there have already been some deletions from the document which is a little disappointing, but I have been able to recover to previous versions.

Images: Alan Parkinson and shared under CC license

New OCR GCSE B Geography textbook

It's now just over two and a half years since I went to a meeting at the offices of Hodder down in London, to start the process of writing a set of textbooks and support materials for the then-as-yet-written OCR GCSE Geography specifications for first teaching from September 2016.
The authoring team of Jo Payne, Jo Debens and myself were joined by Simon Ross, and we had the editing talents of David Rogers helping to steer the project, as well as Ruth Murphy from Hodder and numerous editors and other publishing professionals at various points during the project. Earlier today, the postman brought me a package, and I finally held the results of hundreds of hours of effort in my hand.

I wrote quite a few chapters in the end, and also helped to create the digital support materials, and the answers to all the various activities that have been included in the book. These all form part of the support materials that are available.

More details about the books are here, where you can find out about the various options for ordering. There are various options for discounts and inspection copies if you look at various sections of the website.

Thanks to all those who helped me with writing the books in various ways, including Ian Ward, Bryan Ledgard and Richard Allaway for the use of their images in my chapters. I managed to get quite a lot of my own pictures in, which was nice.

If you're teaching OCR specification for GCSE, please consider making our book(s) your set text. Order plenty just in case… It would be a pity for it not to sell a lot after all that effort...

Bob Digby - Eduqas session from GA Conference 2016

Now available to watch…

Good teachers need good textbooks...

Here's one I co-wrote...

Sample material for @OCR_Geography GCSE B spec now available! https://t.co/94MPJM8p28 #geographyteacher Save 20% with code WK0003733

— Hodder Geography (@HodderGeography) March 1, 2016

GCSE Geography Request

I'm interested in the support strategies for GCSE Geography that seem to work the best for you.

I've also set this post up to show the potential for using GOOGLE FORMS for collecting data. This can be used for data collection for KS3 and GCSE/'A' level projects. It features in a new book on 'Fieldwork through Enquiry', which I wrote for the Geographical Association, and will be published later this year.

If you have a GMail account, you will already have a Google Drive available to you, which you can claim by visiting the site.
There is a HELP PAGE here.

If you had a minute or so to fill in the few questions that I've added below that would be much appreciated. As any entries are made, they will appear on a spreadsheet, and can then be analysed. There are also some immediate visualisation options....
Thanks in advance...

Badger Book in stock...

Thanks to Graeme Eyre for telling me that he had already received his copy of the Badger GCSE Grade Booster book that I wrote, and been using the activities today...
Here's a picture of some of the books in the warehouse ready for distribution, with thanks to Gracey at the warehouse for the pic...

Order yours now to avoid disappointment...

Further feedback welcome...

You know you want this book :)

One way to kickstart a new term is to get yourself a new book with lots of ideas in it...

At the start of the year, I spent rather longer than anticipated putting together a book for Badger Publishing. It brought together some of the ideas I'd been working on for a while, along with a few more that were kindly  lent to me by colleagues (who are all acknowledged in the book, and will also be listed here once I have my hands on a physical copy of the book....)

The book will be useful to those who are preparing students for external assessments, but I would say that a lot of the ideas are transferrable - they are basically good geography....

The book is now available to pre-order (it will be out in April)

GCSE Grade Boosters: Geography Contents

• Introduction – what does a C grade geographer look like, and how can students raise their grade to a C and beyond.
• Memorable geography – a range of geography activities which can be re-versioned for other topics or particular pupils; includes thinking graphs, lucky lines, maps from memory, and ideas funnel to name just a few.
• Students as experts – establishing students as experts and joint creators of resources.
• Enquiries – how to introduce, explore and communicate the Big Geographical Questions.
• Controlled assessment – how to approach controlled assessment, complete with examples to illustrate the support that can be provided.
• Revision techniques – graphic organisers, memory techniques and the power of blogging.
• Help from the examiners – exam specs and question types – where and how marks are gained and lost.
• Memorable vocabulary – key vocabulary for exam success plus techniques for learning it.
• Exciting new tools – word clouds, triptico, google docs and google earth.
• Geography after the exam – why a good grade in geography can take you places.

Author: Alan Parkinson an experienced and award-winning teacher with an international reputation for creative and innovative teaching. He has worked with thousands of teachers at hundreds of CPD events in the UK and Europe. This title draws extensively from the experience of successful schools around the country.
Featuring:

• A wide range of activities to make the topics covered memorable. Activities can be used for class, group, pair and homework tasks. They can be versioned by you for other topics or particular pupils
• Support for exam preparation including a distillation of examiners reports to pinpoint common errors and show
• how easily marks are lost and gained, as well as revision and memory techniques that have been shown to work
• Help with controlled assessment and how to approach it to get the best results
• The key vocabulary for exam success plus techniques for learning it
• 80 page photocopiable book with re-versionable activities on accompanying CD-ROM. 

A perfect gift for Easter.... :)

Controlled Assessment

A new area for GA members is being launched in the next few days

It provides guidance on CONTROLLED ASSESSMENT.

This will be particularly helpful for those who are going through the process for the first time....

Update:

Area is now "live" on the GA website.

Sections include:

Background

Research

Analysis

Use of Secondary data

Marking

Planning

Weblinks