How can students engage in geography beyond the classroom?
In this blog I will discuss some of the ways that we can encourage students to enjoy and engage in geography beyond the classroom. These are some ideas that we have found successful in our school.
For all year groups
Geography Awareness Week
We ran this in school Monday-Friday and had various drop in activities during lunchtime to highlight the importance of geography to students. We had an options drop in for pre-GCSE students to discuss with sixth formers what the geography GCSE involves. We also had a documentary day where students enjoyed watching David Attenborough’s most recent series on Asia, a kahoot flag quiz (which was particularly popular!) and a competition to create geographical landforms from Lego with plenty of entries from KS3 and 4. We found this week was a lovely way to raise the profile of geography and allow students to experience tasks different to lessons.
RGS-IBG Young Geographer of the Year Competition
We actively encourage all year groups to take part in this and always get a healthy selection of work to submit. Although we are yet to have any finalists at our school, we run an in school competition, award certificates and badges to young people who take part and these are presented in celebration assemblies. Our internal winners also meet the Headteacher for a commendation recognising their efforts. We get great feedback from students and it allows them to demonstrate their creativity and own thinking beyond the lesson topics. We launch this before summer allowing them time to work on their projects, before submitting towards the end of September.
Websites
We encourage awareness of geography websites and use these in lessons to encourage confidence with varied resources
Students love using the Geography Visualiser from Teach with GIS for a variety of topics and we always try to use some GIS, even if just for 10 minutes, to encourage confidence using these websites. Year 8 loved creating maps on Teach with GIS showing a link between tectonic hazards. If you don’t feel confident using this, the RGS offers some great CPD on this. We also love using Gapminder and Dollar Street when looking at demographics and economies with all years and it allows students to address misconceptions as well as compare different countries.
For Sixth Form geographers
We encourage classes to read articles on the Routes Journal, setting some as wider reading or encouraging students to submit articles on this. Students have commented it is nice to read work of peers or those in the early years of their geography study as it allows the content to be more accessible and to see how geography links to the wider world. It also opens up new topics to their knowledge that they didn’t previously know about!
Use of the Our World in Data website - this is an amazing resource that we use in lessons to show predictions, patterns and changes of a huge variety of topics. I also encourage students to look at their information pages to find out the reasons for various patterns and use this to base wider research and understanding on.
Reading lists - these are shared with students in their very first sixth form lesson in year 12. As well as having a list of wider reading books available in the school library, we also include a list of blogs, university reading list recommendations and websites to help develop their interest beyond the spec.
Engaging in podcasts - the RGS Soundcloud resources are amazing for student learning. Sometimes we use this for flipped learning and ask students to listen to the podcast outside of lessons and share their ideas in class. These are freely available for all and a great way to get students learning, even whilst they complete other tasks.
Rachel Munday CGeog FRGS
Head of Geography, Royal Latin School
@RachelMunday_