Celebrating 5 years of the Primary Geography Quality Mark

Nine primary schools from across thse country came to Sheffield on Wednesday 16th February to help us to celebrate the PGQM fifth birthday.  This is the first time that we've held an event that involved children from different primary schools and the day was hugely successful.  The children behaved in such a mature way in our out of school environment and many of them said how good it had been to meet and work with children from different schools.  I think it will be a day they remember for a long time.  The youngest children were Year 2's (6 years old) while the oldest were eleven.  Teachers and children worked together in different workshops which included: `Philosophy for Children (P4C), investigating chocolate and the Cote d'Ivoire and creating route maps on the back of T-Shirts.  Our workshops were led by Anthony from St Peter's Smithills Dean Primary, Bolton; Arthur, Matthew and Laura from Liverpool Hope University and Ann, a freelance writer in education and P4C facilitator in Sheffield.

To find out more about the Primary Geography Quality Mark please go to http://www.geography.org.uk/eyprimary/primaryqualitymark/

Leading the way in primary geography

I'm running a series of conference at the moment focused on `Quality Geography' and the Primary Geography Quality Mark and have been doing some additional thinking about subject leadership for a conference seminar, held at the Birmingham NEC, yesterday.  In practice this proved to be a bit like performing in the middle of a circus ring with the whole Education Show going on around me - not really my style!  I did meet some very nice and positive people who smiled at me and nodded just when I needed the reassurance.  I've just been looking up the word `seminar' in an online dictionary and the following definition:  `any meeting for an exchange of ideas',  is much closer to my own understanding of the word than anything that was possible yesterday. 

Leading the way in Primary Geography

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I've become really interested in the idea of `leadership and vision' and the way this can help to shape the kind of curriculum we offer children.  Having a vision for what we want to teach and why within a subject context is going to become increasingly important as we move towards a more integrated curriculum following the Rose Review.  If this doesn't make sense as a freestanding PowerPoint I'll be very happy to chat about it if you want to contact me or leave a comment here.

As part of the session I also introduced this interactive `Nine Number Grid' to explore the idea of what contributes to `distinctly geographical activity'.

What is geography?

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A CPD unit designed to support Primary Geography Subject Leadership, written in collaboration with Paula Owens, has just been launched on the Geographical Association website.  We'd love to hear from you if you find any parts of it useful.

`MapIT Picture IT Write IT' seminar at the 2009 TES Education Show in London

It was really good to meet everyone at my seminar session at Olympia yesterday and absolutely fantastic to meet so many people who are enthusiastic about geography. I've updated the PowerPoint and credited photographers & schools where appropriate. I'll send everyone who left me their e-mail address a copy of the PowerPoint (probably later this week) and I'll also be sending you an invitation to join the Primary Geography Champions NING - though if you don't want to wait you can click on the link above and register today. If you'd like to contact me directly my contact details are on the Geographical Association website.

The PowerPoint has been split into two halves to make the download size more manageable:

Map It Picture It Write It Part 1

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Map It Picture It Write It (Part 2)

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Getting ready for the GA Conference in Manchester

I've just about completed my presentation for the Geographical Association Conference in Manchester (17th - 18th April).

I'm running a session called `Mapping Images the Digital Way' as an introduction for teachers to the use of online image galleries and online mapping. The central aim is to create a `My Walks' map using Google `My Maps' and to introduce the Northumbria University website called My Walks.

I'm currently experimenting with the integration of the Google suite of programmes and this post is a result of `clicking on' the Blog link at the bottom of the Picasa 3 editing page. I think Picasa is one of the best of the free photo-editing tool and it now comes with some great new features, for example a simple tool to create a video from still images. Because it is so straightforward to use I will be recommending it for simple editing projects in the classroom.

As the focus of the session is on creating digital maps to display the location of photographs I will be demonstrating how easy it is to drag images from the online gallery onto the online Google Map. I intend to use my Dartmouth collection to demonstrate how easy this is.

Geographical Association Conference

Life has been very busy during the last month so it's almost a month since I lasted shared anything through this blog.

I've just returned from the annual Geographical Association Conference which was held in Guildford this year. It was attended by over 700 people and the overwhelming feeling is that the conference was a real success. Kate Russell and I ran a workshop on behalf of the ICT working group with thirty + enthusiastic geographers attending. Our message to the group was that we need to extend the use of online mapping in the primary classroom. I was able to provide an overview of the work I've been doing with the Y5 class on using Local Studies and Quikmaps. see the embedded PowerPoint below:

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Find out more about the conference presentations at:
http://www.geography.org.uk/events/annualconference

See below for a quick guide to creating a personalised map using Quikmaps

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Reflections on a Primary Cross-Curricular & Creativity Conference

On Friday 25th January I took part in a conference for a pyramid of Wakefield schools. What follows are a few of my thoughts linked to the keynote presentation.

The first thing that strikes me is the influential role of some of the independent educational consultancies in shaping the direction that primary schools take when reviewing their curriculum. In this case our conference was led by a well regarded keynote speaker from a prominent commercial education consultancy. I heard some conflicting messages.

Some were excellent, i.e. we need to provide `hooks’ at the beginning of a new (topic/ unit/ theme/ project) to ensure children engage with the learning; use questions to focus learning; engage with the local area; help children to make connections about their learning experiences so that they are joined up and make sense in their minds; provide opportunities for pupils to share `what they know’, e.g. through making a video to show to other children in the school.

While others messages appeared muddled, i.e. the synonymous use of literacy/ English and numeracy/ mathematics; the use of sub-grades in subjects such as geography (what exactly does a 5c look like?) and very definitely the Primary School Year 3 planning for geography, `How will Global Warming change my life?’

[I want to return to two of these areas, i.e. the ones that relate to assessment in geography and to Global Warming in a later entry.]

So, do the solutions to the primary curriculum lie with the published advice and guidance that commercial educational organisations provide or do the solutions lie with teachers in the classroom who know their pupils and want to provide a curriculum that starts with the child and takes into account the needs of the child and the community in which the child grows up?