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103 creatively simple ways to teach Geography.

Online collaboration by Geography educators

To contribute contact me via sharegeography.co.uk or Twitter @tonycassidy

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Idea 1- Dumpr

Use Dumpr to turn images into field sketches.

 

 

 

 

Danny OC

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Idea 2- Mystery Boxes

Littlemisssunshine via Noel Jenkins

A variety of mystery objects connected to the new topic to be studied, either all together in a big box, or in separate plastic jars (useful for things like water, soil)... students have 10 seconds to feel around and try to identify the topic.

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Idea 3- Google Earth Trip

Littlemisssunshine via Ollie Bray

Box/tub/bucket full of slips of paper, each with a World city, landmark or destination... first student to pack away gets to pick out a slip of paper, and you fly there as a class in Google Earth.

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Idea 4- Captials Register

Littlemisssunshine

Instead of "yes miss/sir" students answer the register with a country and its capital city... British Isles ones are banned, there can't be repetition, and when the class get used to doing it, they can be timed (competition against themselves and other classes)...

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Idea 5- Newsflash...

Tony Cassidy

Set aside time within a lesson to watch and map a B.B.C. news summary.

Not only do students practice place knowledge, they can begin to think about spatial patterns of news reporting and the relative importance of issues to different places/cultures.

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Idea 6-  Go local...

Blue Square Thing

Ask students to walk for five minutes in different directions from their homes, school, etc

After five minutes, they take a picture of what they can see at their 'destination'.

Students can produce a simple photomontage, perhaps annotated and linked to a map or a class or group could link photos together.

 

What part of town do I live in?

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Idea 7-  Know thy place...

Tony Cassidy

Set up a place knowledge league within your department.

 

Each half term play one for the Shephard Software games for each of the World's continents.

 

Give prizes for the class that wins each continent and an end of year prize for the league winner.

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Idea 8-  Adopt a rock

Tony Cassidy

Give a rock a home.

Explain the rock has 'rocknesia'.

Ask students to identify the rock's name, it's make-up, where it may have come from, what processes have shaped it etc..

The rock can be taken home by a member of the class over the holidays and photographed on it's travels, remember, 'every rock matters'.

 

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Idea 9-  Send a postcard...

Tony Cassidy

Ask students/staff to send a postcard whilst on their holiday to the Geography Department.

The postcards make a great display, but students can also present and analyse the destinations...

 

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Idea 10-  Give a mission...

Geography Collective

Set students a mission from the Mission Explore blog.

 

Ask students to feedback on their mission using any medium they feel appropriate. 

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Idea 11-  Use a BBC Class Clip

Noel Jenkins

Need a quick video?

Search BBC Class Clips 

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Idea 12-  60 second films

Noel Jenkins

Get students to summarise a concept as a 60 second film. This will develop their understanding and unleash creativity. A perfect field trip activity.

 

A pocket video camera such as a Flip Mino is the simplest solution in terms of filming and editing.

 

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Idea 13-  Instant publishing

Noel Jenkins

The quickest way to publish anything online is via Posterous.

Set homework, share URLs, upload videos and pictures or even get students to publish their work as part of a class blog.

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Idea 14- Importance of Geography

Year 7 students spend a couple of lessons looking at the importance of Geography. They then state their case. This can be a movie, Powerpoint, collage, model etc. Also a whole year group competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parents can then be invited in. Make an evening of it to raise the profile of geog...with wine and snacks! 'This is Geography'. Their work can be showcased.

 

 

                      

 

 

 

Liz Smith

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Idea 15 - A-Z

Produce an A-Z frieze around the classroom, and 'open the display up' for contributions: these could be country case studies, images of cities, examples of geographical skills, famous geographers, maps of areas of the local town, quotes from authors..

D is for Dartmouth...

Alan P

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Idea 16 - Can of Worms

When a controversial topic is discussed, it is often said that it "opens up a can of worms". Make a tin and print off thin strips of pink card each one with a statement relating to the topic - fill the tin, students take a worm, and have to talk about the contents for 1 minute - vary the difficulty of the worms...

One I made earlier...

Also ask students to 'create some worms'...

Alan P

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Idea 17 - Draw it...

Take a topical news article of geographical significance and read it to students.

 

On the second reading, ask students to draw a representation of the issue or event, a picture speaks a thousand words...

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 18 - Fling the teacher...

Use Andrew Field's Fling the Teacher contentgenerator to produce a fun lesson starter or plenary.

 

Another generators are available for purchase.

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 19 - Newspaper mapping

Ask students to bring in articles of geographical interest to them.

 

Display these around a World map, linking the articles to the map with paper and string.

 

A discussion about the spatial pattern of news reporting can be discussed over time.

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 20 - Dominoes

Create a set of dominoes to use as a topic summary or for revision purposes.

 

Example here for weather and climate.

 

 

Tony Cassidy

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 Idea 21- Geography Alphabet

As a starter, plenary or time filler (and in a similar way to the register idea) get pupils in pairs to come up with an A-Z of terms related to your current topic. Put them altogether after the allocated time with the best ideas. To make it more challenging, ban them from using the first word they come up with.

Mary Cooch

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Idea 22- Mystery Voicethread

Set up an account on voicethread and upload a mystery picture or photo on the current topic - get pupils to comment on what they think it's all about.

Mary Cooch

MMM<M

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Idea 23- Bingo!

Who doesn't like Bingo?- print 3x3 grids for students and provide a list of key terminology.

 

Ask students to fill their grids with chosen key terms.

 

To play, read definitions  associated with the listed terminology. �

 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 24- Model...

Physical features with plasticine.

 

�� 

 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 25 - Cake me...

Demonstrate the development of a wave cut platform using Angel cake.

 

�� 

 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 26 - 

an alter ego in twitter for revision

Create a new twitter account for your alter ego, it can be obvious 'geoteacher' or an 'expert' such as Dr Goodnight, the chief examiner [Bond theme here].�Get the students to sign up at twitter.com and then follow Dr Goodnight who will tweet facts relating to the exam topics each day.  Students can DM for direct advice or receive the tweets on their phones ...

Mark Ollis, aberrantbee

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Idea 27 Screentoaster-

Pupils use the screen capture website www.screentoaster.com to record their GIS work from Googleearth or other software. The website software works online so no downloads are needed, is not blocked at school, and all videos can be embedded easily on blogs.

                                      

                                       

Paul Cornish

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Idea 28 - Play Taboo

Make a set of cards with key words for your topic. Pupils will define these words. On each card, list 5-6 taboo words which the pupils are not allowed to use in their definition.

Give the first card to a pupil. He/she describes the key word without using the taboo words. The first person to guess the word correctly takes the second card and the game repeats.

 

Katharine

Hutchinson

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Idea 29 - Odd One Out

Noel Jenkins   Tony Cassidy  Alan Parkinson Michael Palin

 

Which is the odd one out?

 

You catch my drift...

 

Unknown

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Idea 30- SurveyMonkey

www.surveymonkey.com This online questionnaire maker is an easy and excellent way for pupils to give you feedback when you have finished a unit of work or after option choices have been made. You are allowed 30 free responses per survey- any more and you have to pay! 

 

 

Paul Cornish 

� 

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Idea 31- Sing it...

Ask students to adapt the lyrics of a nursery ryhme to fit an issue or the development of a physical feature.

 

For example Old MacDonald updated to reflect current issues in farming.  

� 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 32- Look for Pictures

Hat

Hat

Face

Belly

Pants

Boot

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Idea 33- Become a poet...

At the start of a new topic, show students a PowerPoint or movie with related images.

During this, ask students to write down thoughts that enter their mind.

Using their thoughts, ask students to produce a poem reflecting the images.

An ode to a coast...

� 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 34- Tell me a story!

Paired work for any topic. Students are given a 6x6 grid of images and dice. They roll the dice, count along the corridor, up the stairs, land on an image and incorporate that image into their story. They can read them to each other at the end.

 

            

Liz Smith 

       

      A Fantastic Fishy Plaice...

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Idea 35- e-cards

Create an e-card to send attached to e-mail about somewhere or something. Works for tourism, places and perhaps ideas like fair trade. One PowerPoint slide with 3-4 images and minimal text works fine. This can then be converted to a swf file using iSpring - a free plugin for PowerPoint.

 

            

Continued...

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Idea 35- e-cards

Blue Square Thing

Double whammy - it supports your IT department too (e-cards can make appearances on DiDA portfolios for example)

There's an example you can view - if I can work out how to embed it here it might even make it onto the presentation...

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Idea 36-Wordle Stereotypes

Use the lovely Wordle to gather together views on a place, group of people, company or organisation.

Works well at the start of a topic to bring together initial impressions of something.

 

            

Blue Square Thing

My year 9 class have a view of England clearly...

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Idea 37-Montage a Google

Tony Cassidy 

Use Grant Robinson's Montage a Google to create a set of images related to an issue or topic.

 

Useful as guess the image starter, several examples could be used within PowerPoint for a revision quiz.

 

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Idea 38- Create Earth Art

Tony Cassidy 

Using Google Earth/Flickr and the Big Huge Labs motivator poster generator create Earth Art related to a topic or issue.

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Idea 39 - Using Geograph

When using an O.S. map find the appropriate photos on www.geograph.org.uk to enable pupils to see what the area really looks like.

 

Simple but very effective - a fantastic resource to use and contribute to.

 

Meg

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Idea 40 - Describing photos

Sit students in pairs back to back. Give one student in each pair an image - they then have to describe the image to the second student. The second student then draws what is described onto paper.

 

This works really well as long as they don't 'peek'. I use it to introduce a topic or when doing skills.

 

Tania

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Idea 41 - Stop a disaster...

 

Tony Cassidy

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Idea 42 - Tundra Temperate Desert

Cold

Warm

Hot

Three vertical lines on the whiteboard to explore the concept of the unseen question. COLD Give out a question paper and ask them to do part 1 unseen. 2 Stop them and CUBE part 2 - Circle the command words, Underline any key terms, Box the resouces and Explain the question = Warm. 3 Finally Hot = going through the whole of part three and discuss the answer before they write it down. Breaks up the tedium of going through past papers and open dicussion channels mid exam paper. Can also work as Desert, Temperate and Tundra

Mark Ollis aberrantbee

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Idea 43- Warm up maps

I have a stock of A5 maps of the World, Europe, UK and other continents and countries with up to ten boxes with place names around the outside.  These are on desks when students enter the room and they simply draw arrows to connect labels to locations.

 

Terry Jones

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Idea 44- It's a ning thing...

Use a Ning to encourage shared revision.

 

gcsgeog.ning.com was my attempt this year. Year 11 all uploaded a case study each to share and produced some revision movies to share with each other.

 

They liked the shared idea (i.e. do one case study and get 25 ready-made ones!)

 

Helen Nurton

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Idea 45- Connect 4

Have a grid on the IWB and a list of questions. Divide the class into a red and yellow team. The teams take it in turns to choose numbers that correspond to your questions. First team to connect 4 in a row (column or diagonally), by answering the questions correctly, wins!

Have a short task prepared in the event of a tiebreak!

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 Liz Smith

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Cuts and scrambles flickr images which then can be used as lesson starters or activities on IWBs where pupils drag pieces of the image into the correct place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Cornish

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Idea 47- Create Geogames with Umapper

http://www.umapper.com/blog/?p=1088 

Play the dart map game on full screen on your IWB or design your own game to help with pupil's knowledge of countries, places, case studies, cites etc..This link is an example of a case study revision map that I have produced for my year 11s.

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Cornish

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Idea 48 - Don't get 'blogged' down

There are many blogs written by geography teachers, which contain their latest findings. As time passes, these move to the bottom of the page, then disappear. Why not browse the archives of some of these blogs to 'rediscover' a gem... 

e.g. the idea on the next slide was from 2006!

Geo Blogs

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Idea 49 - Lyrical Geography

Use songs in the classroom.

For example, the Lemon Jelly Track 'Ramblin' Man' features a long list of place names..

Use songs with physical or human features. Others tackle issues e.g. The Specials: "Ghost Town"

 

Sign up for Spotify to stream any music you want into the classroom. Also try musicovery.com

Alan Parkinson

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Idea 50 - Immersive panoramas 

The website 360 cities.com features very high quality QuickTime panoramas. Search the site for examples to use in the classroom - Cheddar Gorge for example.

Or browse the 360 cities layer in Google Earth where the panoramas appear as beautiful shimmering globes you can fly in and out of.

                                 N Jenkins

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Idea 51a - Landscape in a Box

Take a burger box, and ask students to create a landscape that fits inside the box, so that when it's opened the landscape is revealed. A map is put on top of the lid. This example was a pavement cafe in Spain made by a Year 7 pupil complete with menus on the tables.

Coming soon to 'Teaching Geog'�Alan Parkinson

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Idea 51b - Landscape in a Box

After blogging the idea, I was contacted by Susi Noot from Bolton, who had used the idea with students, and the canteen at the  school had then

served meals which were

based on the landscapes

that had been produced by

the students !

 

Alan Parkinson

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Idea 52 : Post it Notes

Different coloured notes used for catagories

  • On an interactive development compass rose display (photo to come)
  • Exit ticket in plenary
  • Stuck on a map, poster or photo
  • Putting them on pupils' backs with a key word written on without the them seeing to play walk about taboo
  •  To compare opininons about an issue along a line or piece of string before and after a debate.

   Paul Cornish

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Idea 53 : Adopt a webcam

 Regular 'visits' to the same location give pupils an excellent impression of the changing seasons and a real familiarity with a distant location.  Start with S Georgia -seals and penguins from Nov to March, snow and ice as now in the S Hemi winter. http://tiny.cc/7L27N

Val Vannet

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Idea 54: Continuum or Opinion Line

Have students stand somewhere along an "opinion line" (from front to back of classroom) showing how much they agree with a given statement, eg. "Antarctica's resources should be exploited to the full" and "All human activity, including scientific research, should be banned from Antarctica".

Also works well with statistics, eg "What % of the world's population lack access to clean water?" - 0% at the front, 100% at the back...

 

Victoria Ellis

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Idea 55: Science Songs!

Some great songs here to help students to understand physical processes - "The Water Cycle Song" and "What does the glass of a greenhouse do?" are particularly good.

Getting students to listen to the song and then draw a diagram on their second listen is a good way of using the greenhouse one...

 

Victoria Ellis

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Idea 56: Show me the links!

Pupils to write down on a blank piece of A4 everything they can remember about a topic.  This can be done as a group activity on the board.  After 5 minutes of brainstorming pupils join up words that are linked.  They can also give reasons why they are linked.

A Foster (Beazley)

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57 Ski Poles

Identify revision strategies at the beginning of a year.  Mine are called Ski Poles - supports for learning; and a poster sits on the wall.  

 

Each time you teach a new topic identify the technique you are using so the students learn the revsion strategy simulataneously. slideshare

 

Aberrant Bee - Mark Ollis

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58 Mini Washing Lines

Supply pupils with a shoe lace, paper clips and card to rank information along a mini washing line (continumn). 

For example, when looking at development and development indicators. Print the names of 6 countries onto cards. Read out a development indicator such as GDP per capita. Then ask pupils (in pairs) to rank the countries from highest to lowest. After a set amount of time ask pupil to hold up their washing line with cards attached to show lace using paper clips. Move onto next indicator.

John Barlow

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59 Classtools.net

Use the excellent classtools.net by Russel Tarr in your lessons. From tools for giving pupils time limits on tasks using the countdown timer, to using the Venn diagram tool get pupils to identify the economic, social and environmental impacts of an issue such as deforestation.

 

I also like the random name picker, where you can import a class register from Excel and then use the picker to pick names at random. Especially good when pupils have written an argument, but may not be confident to put their hand up, this encourages them to speak if their name is picked out. Also keeps pupils on their toes!

   John Barlow

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60 - 10 Questions

Pupils sit at the front facing away from the IWB.  They must ask 10 YES or NO questions to find out what the picture/clue/keyword etc on the screen is.  The picture can be made cryptic to make the rest of the class think!

Paul Sturtivant

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61- Noughts and crosses

Very much like the connect four idea but I always play noughts and crosses. 

 

Have 9 questions ready,

girls v boys and away

you go...

 

Paul Sturtivant

 

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62-Before, Before, After, After

Choose an image and ask pupils to consider what happened before the picture was taken and what will happen in the future.  

You can choose the time ranges . e.g 10 years before.

Amy Foster (Beazley)

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63- 5 Ws

The simple ones are the best.  Write a series of questions about an interesting image. Who? What? Where? Why? When?  Then spend the lesson finding out the answers.

Image source,

Beazley  (Amy Foster)

 

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64- Map from Memory

Pupils work in groups of 4-6.  Pupils each have 20 seconds to study a map or diagram and go back to the group and draw what they can remember!

Amy Foster (Beazley)

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65 - Landscape Words

Use and collaborate with the visual dictionary by:

  •  asking students to add geographical words to it
  •  questioning how words are used in landscapes
  •  create 'brands' for words or places from the images
  • create stories about urban environments using images from the dictionary

 

http://thevisualdictionary.net/ 

Daniel Raven-Ellison

ActionAid

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66 - Animated Thinking

Ask students to bring...

 

- concepts

- physical processes

- human processes

... to life by creating a quick and easy Flipbook animation.

Daniel Raven-Ellison

ActionAid

http://www.benettonplay.com

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67- Mnemonic Devices

� 

There was a Jersey cow named Georgina, wearing yellow underwear, standing on the Empire State Building, singing two Christmas carols. Under one arm she held a Virginia ham. With the other hand, she played connect the dots with a pen. The picture was Marylin Monroe on the road to mass.

13 original American colonies- New Jersey, Georgia, Deleware, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Conneticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

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68- Send and Receive Postcards

Sites like Postcrossing allow you to send and receive postcards with others around the world.

Set up an account for your class and identify where postcards are being sent to / from using maps and atlases.

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69 - Make a map...

UMapper is still in Beta, but allows you (and whoever else you want to help you) to create a map... "What's the weather like where you are?"  Or maybe spatial analysis of cheese-on-toast making methods..

The voice of bitter experience says "Be a bit wary if you leave it open for anyone to edit though..."

Victoria Ellis

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70 - Musical register

Pretty simple idea... Registers are rubbish so liven them up with a sample of music from the country/place being studied that lesson. Call the students names out in time with the beat. 

Award a prize to anyone that can identify the mystery country / place.

Noel Jenkins

image: Jeff Dahl - source wikipedia

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71 - Create a Mini-Geog

Brilliant idea from Alan Parkinson which needs to be revisited- great fun exercise.

 Collate class mini-geogs in a PowerPoint and add the 'Gallery' music from Hart Beat- can they guess the case study or feature?

Tony Cassidy

Mini-Geog Depression

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72 - Model your place on a paper plate

This idea was used with Year 4 but could be adapted for any age.��Use plasticine or cut out paper to recreate an environment.  For example, children could create a new design for their school grounds.

Wendy North

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73 - Make an instant 3D map

You can use it at the start or end of a topic.

Revise the main physical features of a case study. Ground rules – they can use anything in the classroom/in their pencil cases or on their person to make their maps but nothing must be cut up or destroyed and everything has to go back in its place at the end.Annotate your map with labels made from scrap paper

Take an aerial photograph at the end ( stand on a chair!)

Pauline Wright

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74 - Articulate (Alternate Taboo)

Divide the class into 2 teams. Give one person from each team a handful of key geographical terms. The first team has 2 minutes to describe as many terms as they can without saying the word itself, their team has to guess the words correctly and they can only have 1 pass. It is then the turn of the other group. The winning group is the group which guessed the most terms correctly.

Sarah Balsdon

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75 - Argument Tunnel

Sarah Balsdon

This is a useful way to get everybody involved in expressing opinions and looking at different values and attitudes. Get the students into 2 lines facing each other, have a topic that you wish to discuss e.g. developing Greenfield sites, immigration etc. one side will be arguing for the idea, the otherside against. They have about a minute to ‘argue’ their points with the person opposite then move 1 side up 1 place so�that they can ‘argue’ with another person.  At the end you can have a game of argument tennis where you choose three people, two of whom take it in turns to make their points and respond to the other persons points, the third person scores the argument by awarding the person who makes the best point with tennis score (5 – love, 10 - 5 etc.)

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76- Picture Reveal

Template can be dowloaded at:

 http://www.mediafire.com/?1jzyjzemtie

 

Pupils take it in turns to answer questions and get to reveal a piece of the picture if they are correct.

A nice easy homework as well for pupils to make their own from the template.

From an idea orginally posted on SLN website. 

 

 

Nik

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77- Watch Matt dance and smile

Where in Google Earth is Matt? and all the dancing videos:

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/videos.shtml?fbid=iF09q7bRO5e

 

 

 

Just a simple way to put a smile on faces. Pupils could produce their own 'Amazing Places' versions.

 (best not to think about his carbon footprint though..)

 

Nik

 

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78- Piclits

Choose a suitably geography image from the site and drag and drop your own words to create a free verse.

Thanks to Tom Barrett for this idea.

Wendy North

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79 - '3D' excel models

Enter numbers (negative too!) in spreadsheet and use surface (charts) to create '3D' model. Can rotate model to see your landscape from different angles.

You can download sample  spreadsheet from here:

http://is.gd/BqIO

Indra Persaud

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80 - Album Atlas

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/album_atlas/

Homework task: choose an LP (what are they ?) OK, a CD cover which shows a location, and mark its location on the map. Check out HUNSTANTON for my contribution. Label must have geographical feature of some kind.      

Alan Parkinson

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81 - Two Gun Texas

A simple game to encourage students to find places using an atlas as fast as they can - great for getting them to understand that there is more than one way to use it!��Really simple: Tell students to make a gun shape with one hand, they are to find the place, when stated, as fast as they can, then place the tip of their gun upon the atlas (fingers on the place and be the fastest to put their other hand up to win).

 

Playing the game:��Students work in pairs - start off with Atals closed on desk, both stand up behind their chairs.�Teacher says the name of a country, city, town etc depending how hard you want to make the task.�Students then have to quickly find the place in the Atalas, put their gun (fingers) on it and sit down with their other hand up.�Fastest pair wins!  Students love the game - have played it with all ages!

Marie Sweetlove

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82 - Dizzy Directions

Put each of the compass directions on a different wall in the classroom.�When a direction is called out by the teacher, students then have to stand up and turn as fast as they can to face the correct wall. The slowest students, or those that turn the wrong way are out, they can then help to watch for who is out next.�Keep playing until you have one winner - you can make the game harder by using eight points on the compass.

Marie Sweetlove

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83 - Shanty Town Game

Aim: Groups have 30 mins to construct a dwelling capable of protecting their baby (pocket tissue) from the rains (watering can).

Give each group some materials to get started. After a time they either start begging or stealing from the 'city dump' (store of scrap paper!). You can introduce 'work' (atlas tasks) but if they don't negotiate wages, I wouldn't pay them! Exploit them as much as you like! To create more order you can enforce only 1 man away from group at one time. 

After 30 mins the 'rains' come. Water each one and the driest group win. Tidy up and then plenary - what were the problems when trying to build a shack? What is the local crime rate like? why? What is employment like?

It's chaos but a lot of fun and I'm always surprised by the links they make to the prior lessons on rural-urban migration & favelas!

 

Origins a wonderful SLNer

Clare Rose

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84 - Whereabouts is that?

To develop students' observation, map work and team work skills (or just to spend a lesson outside in the sunshine...)

 

Take a set of photographs around the school site - close-ups and/or unusual angles - and number them.  Provide pairs of students with a set of photographs and a blank map of the school site - their challenge is to identify the locations of the photographs and number them on their maps...  Most correct in allotted time is the winner!

Victoria Ellis

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85 - Jelly Babies Game

Use jelly babies to illustrate how the population of a country can change. I use it with sixth form as an intro to population. Use a revision/intro ppt, give each a piece of A4 with name of own country at the top. In groups (5-6) each pupil takes 10 jelly babies from central pot & sketches pyramid. Take it in turns to pick an 'event' card and respond (removing or adding population as wars break out, influenze strikes, condoms & free health care are introduced). Sketch pyramid again and so on until the pile of 'events' is exhausted. Snack and discuss!

Origins some wonderful SLNers...

Clare Rose

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86 - Quiz, Quiz, Trade

Have a 10 question quiz, using white boards on a revision topic or new case study. Give out article, textbook page etc and get students to find the answers to the questions. Score quiz.Give each student a number corresponding to a quiz question and get them to write the question and answer on a white board.Give 5-10 mins they have to quiz, quiz and trade boards as many times as they can in the time allocated.

Sit the quiz again and mark up their progress.

Clare Rose

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87 - Play an online geogame

Plenty here to choose from.

Tony Cassidy

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88 - Produce a pseudo- globe

Tony Cassidy

An end of term treat? Use the outline versions, ask students to label the continents and oceans, shade and make.

 

Models can be hung from the ceiling.

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89 - Atlas Race

Each pair of students has an atlas...  Shout out a place name (the more obscure the better) - first pair of students to have a finger on that place in the atlas wins (a commendation/merit, or a sweet, or just the glory of winning).

Victoria Ellis

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90 - PMI

Give students a scenario - eg "The world's temperature has increased by 15oC" or "We can no longer import any food from abroad".

 

Students have to come up with two pluses, two minuses, and two interesting things that might arise as a result of that situation.

Victoria Ellis

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91 - Play Darts

Use a magnetic dartboard and this template to create a fun active revision quiz, starter or plenary.

Tony Cassidy

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92 - Video Emotion Graph

Instead of passive watching or active note taking, ask students to create an emotion line graph of their response to a video over time.

 

An example template can be found here. Students can consider the results and the overall impact of the video footage on their emotions. Works well with emotive issues.

 

 

Tony Cassidy

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93 - Throw a globe...

Use a globe shaped stress ball or a blow up globe for questioning.

 

Throw the globe to the individual you want to answer a question, this student can then throw the globe to another student....

Tony Cassidy

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94 - Create a round-robin

Similar to the dominoes strategy but for a whole class. Example template can be found here.

Once the template has been adapted, cards can be produced. Just make sure all students have a different answer and question. Ask one student to read their question, a student should then read the correct answer and proceed to read their question.. 

 

Tony Cassidy

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95 - Use GeoTube

GeoTube - a collection of Geography videos from YouTube and other online sites. Join GeoTube and you can add your own favourite Geography videos.

 

Tony Cassidy� via David Raynor

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96- Use a Mobile in the Field.

Range of ideas from @Kenny73, feel free to contribute more ideas.

 

Tony Cassidy� via @Kenny73

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97- Produce a collaborative map

Use Google Maps in a spatial collaborative project, student and staff holidays, where students have relatives, weather conditions. Example here.

 

Tony Cassidy� 

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98- Produce a pop-up

Create a physical feature pop-up. Example of a river basin here.

Tony Cassidy� 

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99- Produce a wheel

Two circles of card, one with a cut-out window, attach together with a butterfly clip in the centre.

 

Student can draw images in the window to show change over time- for example the passage of a depression. Remember to move on the window each time...

Tony Cassidy� 

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100- Use a shower curtain...

 A world shower curtain is a useful addition to the classroom, it can be displayed on a wall or used on the floor and annotated with non-permanent pens.

 

Tony Cassidy� 

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101- Create a time-lapse

 Use a webcam and the Microsoft power tool webcam timershot to produce a batch of images over time.

 

Alternatively save images from your favourite webcam or take your own. Images can be imported into Moviemaker and edited to produce a time-lapse video.

 

Tony Cassidy� 

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102 - add unnecessary drama!

You've reached the point in the lesson where something particularly fascinating needs to be introduced...

 

Announce the item with a fanfare from the drama button

Noel Jenkins

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103 - Keep Calm and...

The Keep Calm and Carry On generator can be used to make pithy pronouncements during the lesson.

As a plenary, try getting students to sum up the learning as a Keep Calm poster

Noel Jenkins