Sharing Ideas for the New Primary Curriculum - `The Curriculum Catalyst'

Tom Barrett has recently initiated a very interesting project which he calls `The Curriculum Catalyst'.  The idea is that interested teachers/ practioners (from around the world) collaborate via online voting and Google Docs to choose a particular `theme'.  The most popular idea is then chosen and everyone is invited to share their ideas. The first theme is `Sea Life' which has sparked quite a few ideas in my own head, though I found myself gravitating to the idea of `Oceans, seas and sea-life' as this lends itself much more to geographical (and historical) thinking too. I also wanted to encourage an `enquiry' approach to learning as I feel I'm seeing far too little of this in those schools where I have had recent contact.  The New Primary Curriculum emphasises `Learning and Thinking Skills' as making a significant contribution to `Essentials for learning and life' and geography can have a significant role to play in helping children to think through the issues that we face in the world today.  I also think that Philosophy for Children (P4C) has much to contribute to the development of thinking through issues and can encourage high levels of debate in the classroom.  This prompted me to come up with one of my ideas, i.e. `Is it right for us to eat wild fish caught in the ocean?'  What kind of ideas do you have for the New Primary Curriculum and how could you be involved in sharing them with others?

You can find out more and join in with the project by visiting Tom Barrett's Blog >>>>

Workshop: Geography & Food

My workshop focus for the Outwood Pyramid Conference on the 25th January was `Geography and Food'. This was a shared workshop aimed to encourage teachers to make links between geography and `food preparation. (More cooking/ healthy eating than food technology.)

The PowerPoint that I used to summarise the focus of my planning is shown below:

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There are a number of projects linked to food and farming on the Oxfam Education website, including Making a Meal of It. Activity 5: Unpacking the supermarket bag is referred to on slide 6 of the presentation.

There are lots of links to online materials for teaching about food. Some are strongly geography focused while others focus more clearly on other curriculum areas, e.g. science. I'll be sharing some of these links on this blog over the next few weeks. If you have successfully taught geography through a food topic why not contribute your ideas.

Planning with `big ideas'

The focus for the second session of the `Young Geographers' project was `Planning with `big ideas' or key concepts. (See below for the introductory post on this subject.)

Currently KS3 are being asked to focus their planning for geography around key concepts. Paula Owens (my job share partner) and I have been thinking about whether a similar approach could be useful in the primary school. We believe that the use of `concepts' as a planning tool might help ensure that geography does not disappear from the curriculum if schools move towards cross-curricular approaches to learning.

The first half of the presentation exemplifies the idea of planning from key concepts or `big ideas.

The second half of the presentation shows `Living Geography' in action in school.

The last three slides provide guidance for project members on the format for writing up their materials to be included on the GA project page - Young Geographers

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