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.

West & South Yorkshire Primary Geography Champions

As the new Primary Geography Champion for West and South Yorkshire I am very keen to develop networks of teachers who can share creative ideas for geography.

The Primary Champions have been recruited from across England and support primary geography through an online Networking site or NING.

There are lots of good ideas for teaching primary geography on this site already. People share ideas in the form of `blogs’ which appear on the home page and there are some particular contributors that I would highly recommend you follow. My favourite being the The Hampshire Primary Geography Network which is run by Sharon Witt.

I’ve now set up a group page for West & South Yorkshire.

See the full flyer below. Click on the page (and then again if you want to enlarge further).

Everyday Geographies

Over the last month I have been writing a contribution for the Primary Geography & ICT section of the Geography Teaching Today website - the full text should appear on the web in late December/ early January. I have become interested in thinking about how we use our everyday experience of the world to engage children in geographical learning. The following extract is a quote from the materials that will appear on the GTT website.

Everyday Geography
An exciting and meaningful debate is currently taking place within the geography community about whether we engage effectively with our own and children’s everyday experiences of the world. If you read Primary Geography (Autumn 2006) you might have seen Fran Martin’s article entitled `Everyday Geography’. I would like to use this article as a starting point for reflection on what we teach in primary geography and how we can make this more meaningful for pupils.

In the article, Fran describes an activity that she carries out with her students. This is something that you might want to try now:

`Sit and think for a moment.

If you remember the geography you were taught at school what comes to mind?

Now think about the geographical experiences you have in your everyday life.

How did your own experience compare with Fran’s?

How often do you start from either your own experience of the world or from the children’s direct experience of their world?

Find out more … If you are a member of the GA you will have the Autumn edition of the magazine in which the article appeared. When the full version of this distance learning material appears on the GTT website you should be able to download a pdf copy of the article from the web.

http://www.geographyteachingtoday.org.uk/