Primary Geography Conference, 25th September 2008

As always the half day conference led by David Weatherly was a morning well spent. I always come away with resources and ideas that can be used or adapted easily for our curriculum.

Today David was quite excited about the Primary Curriculum Review which is due at the end of October. He suggests that there will be broader areas of learning experiences; there will be less in new programmes of Study. We will be encouraged to spend longer doing less and there will be greater inter subject connections. This is certainly good news and will involve better quality teaching and learning opportunities.

David always refers back to what we are looking to achieve when we teach geography – referring to it as a table with four legs and a table top.

1. Where / How do the children progress and what opportunities do we offer the children to ensure that they are able to exhibit level 2, 3 4 or even level 5 capabilities? What opportunities are there for the children to reach conclusions, to reason and explain, to use simple or appropriate advanced vocabulary?
2. Geography should be an enquiry, experiential, investigative, independent personalised learning. What do we do to find out where the children are now? What do we do to move them on to where we want them to be in terms of the learning activity? How do we help make sense of geographical Enquiry processes?
3. There are really very few PoS and there will be even less in the new curriculum.
4. The Primary National Strategy encourages us to be imaginative and creative ensuring that we are robust i.e. the children are being appropriately challenged intellectually.
On top of all this we have the topic / theme / issue / dimension.
If there is no BIG idea then don’t teach it!

Higher order thinking skills will be a key focus in the new National curriculum.

The buzz words (for interviews) then at the moment are metacognition, robust curriculum and appropriate expectations.

We then looked at the theme of RIVERS. The big idea being ‘Through erosion and deposition, river water changes the landscape’.
The unit hangs around a series of key questions which are

1. What is a river?
2. What happens along the course of a river?
3. Where do rivers get their water?
4. How does a river change from source to mouth?
5. Where do rivers start and how do they change the landscape?
6. Why does water suddenly fall along a river?
7. Why do rivers bend?
8. What happens at the mouth of a river?
9. Is this the most famous meander in the world?
10. How and why does the River Otter and its valley change from source to mouth?
11. How can we help infant children to learn about rivers?

Throughout the unit there are a range of activities to engage the children – many of which involve observing, discussing, describing, comparing, contrasting, reasoning, estimating, explaining, describing patterns, processes, links and relationships, suggesting explanations and conclusions. There are connections to many other curriculum areas.

In terms of attainment it was interesting to note that all agreed that attainment does not have to be replicable – it is a snap shot at that moment in time!

In December, Devon Education Services are planning a day conference which will focus on the current curriculum review emphasis on the importance of a strong flexible learning programme. The day is themed ‘Creative and coherent cross-curricular planning in the primary curriculum: the weather and our world’. I hope that I will be able to attend.

VIASL - IFIP 23rd - 26th June, Prague

Although I have kept a diary of my week in Prague on my wiki I felt I should add something to my CPD record. This isn't the normal CPD you might expect to be recorded in a teacher's record. It is a quite remarkable opportunity which arose out of an international partnership with Meadowbank Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand, maintained and developed on the whole by myself and David Kinane who is the IT Director. Our partnership which began in late 2006 instigated the "blog" Tohatoha in May 2007, as means of sharing our work and showing our collaborative projects.



During the Autumn term, David contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in presenting a joint 'paper' at the Valuing Individual And Shared Learning: the role of ICT Conference, organised by the International Federation of Information Processing, which was to be held in Prague in June 2008. We had a story to tell about our partnership, the technologies we were using and the collaborations which we were undertaking. An abstract was drafted and sent to the organising committee, who asked for this then to be written in more detail before final submission in January 2008. Once our paper was submitted there was no going back and I don't really suppose I thought we would be accepted, but to my (our) amazement we were and in March we were invited to present our paper at the conference.
With the support and permission of the Governors and Head Teacher I began the logistical preparations of booking flights, hotels etc, as well as preparing my husband for the fact that I would be away for 5 days leaving him to cope with our three children on his own! June still seemed a long way off! David and I began planning the presentation for the conference. Courtesy of skype, email and wikis we transferred our work back and forth between New Zealand and Plymouth until we were happy with the results. The PowerPoint presentation and bulleted script complete we realised that we were ready and June had crept up on us. David's journey to Prague is far more impressive than mine (read David's blog from June 18). My first anxieties were obviously our meeting at Gatwick. We had been working together in a virtual world for the last eighteen months but now virtual was to become real! I needn't have worried - our meeting was easy, like old friends and soon we were finalising the presentation and making several back up copies. I shan't comment on the journey here as this has been detailed in my wiki!
The conference was held at the University of Prague's Faculty of Education and day one was intimidating. I (we) suddenly realised that we were part of a conference which consisted mainly of doctors, professors, lecturers and researchers in the area of education. Their papers represented research into aspects of pedagogy related to ICT, IWB, digital literacy, ITT etc. They were all experienced (some leading professionals) in their fields and in my mind we didn't compare. I was terrified! That night (Monday) David and I decided to go through our presentation, making sure that we knew which of us was covering which aspect of our 'story'. The fact that we hadn't researched, or weren't presenting facts and figures, but simply sharing our collaborative community and the technologies we used seemed so different to the presentations we had been listening to all day.
As Tuesday dawned I felt like a 'wobbly jelly on a plate'! Thankfully the keynote speech for the morning was more interactive than previous presentations and the content gave both David and I ideas as to possible future projects. Create-A-Scape: mediascapes and curriculum integration gave me all sorts of ideas as to how we might be able to do similar projects at Woodford and in partnership with Meadowbank. I've no doubt we will investigate this further at a later date. I can't say that I concentrated much during the next hour as 11:30 loomed and our 'turn'.
As the hour approached I was surprised to see so many people entering the room. We were now in split sessions and had only anticipated 15 or so. However as we began to get ready the room suddenly filled and people were standing at the back of the room as there weren't enough seats! The chair, Tomas O'Brian left us to introduce ourselves. With prompts in hand we began. Ours was a 'short' paper and therefore only 15 minutes with 5 for discussion. (Long papers were 25 minutes with 5 minute discussion time). We worked well together taking over seamlessly at the relevant points. That was the fastest 15 minutes of my life! We ran out of time, answered further questions and left the 'stage' to a room buzzing and full of praise. I was amazed! Here was a room full of academics congratulating us on our presentation, on our collaboration and the sustainability of the project. During lunch three of the delegates made a beeline for us at lunch in order to continue and further discuss the collaboration. Even at the end of the day during the reporting and discussion session, half of that block was taken up again with discussing us.
Wednesday was a 'cultural' day and we therefore took the opportunity to explore the incredible architecture that is Prague. Charles Bridge, Prague Palace (castle), St Vitus' Cathedral, St George's Basilica, Golden Lane, the Old town Square with its Astronomical Clock offer the most eclectic mix of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, Art Nouveau, and contemporary architecture. Prague really is breathtakingly beautiful!

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The final day of the conference explored further themes of educational research into pedagogic practices and the use of ICT. The final keynote speech of the conference focused on 'Embedding interactive whiteboards in teaching and learning: the process of change in pedagogic practice'. It was based on research carried out by the government which ran over 2 years to evaluate the effect of IWB in the classroom, i.e. did the use of the IWB have an effect on raising the standards in Literacy, Numeracy and Science. The research concluded that the length of time pupils were taught with an IWB was the major factor that raised attainment. A point to note however is that the IWB does not always have an impact on lower attaining pupils and these pupils may benefit from using IWB in different ways. How might we tackle achieve this at Woodford? The conference closed with thanks and presentations to the organising committee and goodbyes!

I have not noted the content of all the papers here but over the next few weeks I hope to write more as I review and consider my notes.

I have very much enjoyed my time in Prague. It has been a great experience to present at this conference of the International Federation for Information Processing. At the beginning of the week I was totally overwhelmed by academia and the papers that were being presented but the buzz and comments after our presentation about the work we have been doing with Tohatoha certainly helped put that into some perspective. We now have a peer reviewed, published paper! I even have a certificate as proof of our presentation. This is certainly something to add to my CV! Who knows what will come from this? It will certainly move our links with New Zealand forward as we push to develop our work further. All we need is to maintain the creativity and the enthusiasm.

Journey to Prague

Wenceslas Square, Prague

I have set up a diary 'wiki' to record the collabortaion and developments of the links between Woodford Junior School, Plymouth, Devon and Meadowbank Primary, Aukland, New Zealand. In particular the collaboration between myself and David Kinane which have led us on our 'Journey to Prague'

Learning Platforms – Transforming Learning In Your School

Session 1: Educational Drivers of Change and implications arising for leaders
Julian Nietrzebka and Jim Gardner
This session explored current educational developments and drivers for change, including globalisation, personalisation and the embedding of modern technologies in learning and teaching. The main thrust of the session was we need to be very clear about ‘our’ vision for the future. How do we educate children to enable them to move forward? It is important for schools to self reflect and evaluate where they are now and what the vision for the future is. Think about Global ways of working. What skills will the children need to be successful in a global economy?

It is clear that we live in a changing world. There is is strong focus on sustainability as well as a reliance on technology. We live in an ethically and socially diverse society with complex educational pathways and demanding employers.

One of the key elements of Every Child Matter is to achieve economic well being but do we fuly understand the learning expereineces of our students today and what skills they will need to be successful in a global economy.

What are the skills and attitudes that employers value?
Being able to communicate orally at a high level
Reliability, punctuality and perseverance
Knowing how to work with others in a team
Knowing how to evaluate information critically
Taking responsibility for, and being able to manage one’s own learning and developing the habits of effective learning
Knowing how to work independently without close supervision
Being confident and able to investigate problems and find solutions
Being resilient in the face of difficulties
Being creative, inventive, enterprising and entrepreneurial

There are four main challenges facing schools, including ours:
1.Personalisation
When children were surveyed as to the key changes they would like to see in their learning they were:
The structure of the school day; greater use of electronic devices; Freedom and choice; More technology

2. Transforming of pedagogy
The consideration of the transforming pedagogy is one which highlights the challenge of changing:-
group - personalised, content - process, individual - collaborative, subject - cross curricular, low ICT capability - high ICT capability, short time slots - extended time slots, school based - anytime, anyplace

3. E-maturity
Would we class our school as an e-mature school? Looking at the elements which combine to build an e-mature school I would say no! Some may think this harsh. All the staff use the IWB on a daily basis and the children have access to the ICT Suite twice a week for discrete and cross curricular ICT sessions.

Having recently perused the BECTA self review tool, I feel that e-maturity is most definitely a long way off for us. There are many aspects of ICT at which we are good, but technology is moving forward at such a rate that we are slowly being left behind. Some of us are keen to move forward but are constrained by the blocking of services or by the availabilty of resources. The ICT Suite may have helped develop the skills of the children and is a conveneient way to teach ICT skills but it does not allow the ability to offer real ICT education. An interesting article by John Naughton in the Guardian expands on this.

4. Learning power
We have to consider "How do we enable learning with technology?"

The aspiration is that by 2010 all schools will have integrated learning and management systems so that each individual will be able to maximise their potential through the personalisation of their learning and development.

The changes that need to take take place are time, space, pace and place and that ICT skills become an ICT education of learning, researching, creating, publishing and sharing.

Session 2: Assessment for learning and learning to learn – collaborative online tools
Owen Johnson
Session 3: Enhancing learning, communication, collaboration and information management in the secondary school
Ann Duffy for FROG and Colin Hampton and Peter Twyman from Lipson Community College

Both these sessions were really a sales pitch by the relevant companies for their products RealSmart and FROG. RealSmart includes solutions SmartAfL and ScreenFlash, and integrates a peering system, web content creation, learner controlled calendar, and casting technology to provide a 'real' learning environment centred around the learner. This is currently aimed at the secondary market. It is difficult to see how this might look or operate in a primary environment.

Session 4: Effectively using a Learning Platform to extend learning opportunities
Fiona Aubrey-Smith
This session highlighted how primary schools might really use an LP (in this case from UniServity cLc learning platform) to offer a range of interactive / global learning activities. It showed how LP’s could be used to support collaborative projects, key stage transition and peer mentoring.

Session 5: The Local and Developing Context in the Southwest
John Pering and Ian Southwell
This session looked at the developments occurring within the SWGfL area and at local authority level. It tried to identify the support solutions that will be made available to schools as they build their learning platforms to meet current teaching, learning and administrative needs, but above all to bring transformation into teaching and learning for the future.

George Harrison— “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there”

Transforming Learning is not about Government targets. It is not just about IMPACT but also ENTITLEMENT. It is the opportunity to learn through new methods—Learning Platforms. We shouldn’t be driven by the technology but by what we want to achieve.

The final session really highlighted the inadequacies and unpreparedness of the South West for VLE / LP. Fourteen of the fifteen LA s in SWGfL have agreed to use Merlin which is still in development by RM Netmedia. It is hoped that this will be ready for pilot during the summer term and early adopters in August / September 2008.

It was evident from the atmosphere in the room during this session that there seems to be very little faith in SWGfL / Merlin, especially given the problems which have arisen using the SWGfL Portal! I suppose the question to be asked here is, when 14 out of 15 LAs in SWGfL agreed to take Merlin on board, who made and how was the decision taken? Were Head teachers and teachers in the classroom learning environment consulted? I think from the queries and unease around the room this was not the case!! I await the developments and news from our ICT Coordinator in due course.

Geography Primary Focus Day - 11th March 2008

Reason for attending: Although we do not currently study this Unit, in looking how to improve the cuurent Geography Scheme of Work at Woodford, I felt this might offer ideas for improving those units which we already study.

The focus for the day was based on Unit 13: A contrasting locality in the UK, focussing on Lochinver rather than Llandudno (with strong environmental, sustainability, Literacy, Numeracy and ICT strands). This unit is a good way to address environmental issues.
As always the day provided us with a fully resourced Scheme of Work based around a tiny village of Lochinver on the Scottish West Coast.—photos / activities / ideas—all in hard and soft copy.



In the recent review of KS3 there has been a swing to “integrated topics” - however the appropriate expectations have disappeared. These need to be addressed in individual subjects – e.g. what are the key skills that are subject specific?

This could be the next challenge facing the Primary Curriculum. However, it is important to remember that the level descriptors / expectations should be the spine of the approach.

By the end of KS1 most children would be at Level 2. By the end of KS2 most children will be at Level 4 with some aspects of level 5. It is important in planning a scheme of work to incorporate levels (P)1—4 (even 5).

What’s the point of Geography?
At its heart—it is the study of the physical and human environment and how the two are linked / related. It is not assessment driven but led by intellectual development. Geography should be a range of enquiry based activities—a broad diet of differentiation by activity—a range of learning activities. Think! — where are the children now? What do I want them to do to move on? —How am I going to help them to move forward?

Remember Enquiry based activities are where the children do not know the outcome—they are challenged to come up with answers. Higher order thinking skills are therefore inherent in geography.

The Excellence and Enjoyment document allow us to be creative, imaginative, - intellectually robust whilst maintaining the expectations. This Unit certainly fufills this criteria.

From the Geography Programmes of Study the areas the children should study are:

Key Stage 1
Local Area (referring to the immediate area of the school)
Contrasting local area (UK and abroad)

Key Stage 2
Rivers /or Coasts
Environmental issue
Settlement
Contrasting UK locality (larger area)
Contrasting locality in a less economically developed country.

These were the Key Questions and activities for this unit on Lochinver but they could easily be adapted to any locality study:-

1. What is the site and location of Lochinver?

A great speaking and listening activity to start any study of a place is to consider its site and situation. I’d never really considered these as different before now but this became clear. (not being a geographer by first choice) Situation is where the place is in relation to its complete surroundings. For example Plymouth is in the South West of England in the south of Devon. It is on the coast. It is linked by the A38 to Exeter. It is south of Dartmoor. Site is the original reason for its location. Ask the question why was Plymouth located here? Using maps and photographs of any area is a good way into a study of that locality (especially if it is not easily accessible)
2. What things can you see from the grounds of Lochinver school?
4. Why is Highland Stoneware in Lochinver an example of a manufacturing industry?
5. Is the fishing of langoustine at Lochinver sustainable?
6. Why does Lochinver have such a large number of services?
7. Where do people stay when they visit Lochinver on holiday?
8. Why do people come to Lochinver on holiday?
9. What happens at a fish farm and is it a good thing?
10. How does the environment around Lochinver Primary School compare with the environment around our school?
11. What do I like about living where I do and what would make it better?
12. How and why is the environment at Little Assynt changing?

This unit contains a sustainability issue about the fishing of langoustines which are flown to Spain. It allows a cross curricular link in using Numeracy to work out the ‘carbon footprint’ of this industry comparing it to average household carbon footprints. This can then link to a climate change issue which allows us to personalise the issue of climate change. Using a picture (in this case) of Elhaji cleaning shoes in Banjul and a photograph of a Lochinver fisherman and asking how the two are linked.

Another environmental issue / science link is the life cycle of salmon which are farmed in the bay. The study also looks at how the area is being changed and looks at the recolonisation of pine martens to their native habitat. This provides great links with Science / habitats and adaptations.

In considering the Geography at Woodford Junior School and reviewing the curricular map—we currently cover 5 units of geography, where we need only to cover four.

In Year 3 is a study of Chembakoli (Contrasting locality on a less economically developed country)
In Year 4 there is a study of Climate Change (Environmental Issue)
In Year 5 is a study of Totnes (Settlement) and Rivers
In Year 6 a study of World Heritage and Coasts.

The Rivers unit in year 5 is being developed to include a study of rivers in Gambia to develop the Global Dimension of the curriculum. The World heritage and coasts Unit also allows for study a contrasting locality in a less economically developed country.
The Units on Climate Change and World Heritage and Coasts are new units and have been resourced through previous geography focus days. They are therefore enquiry based units of work. They also include a global dimension and have allowed the development of cross curricular work. A deeper study of the other units need to be made to ensure that these units also allow the children to develop a range of skills at all levels of expectations, as well offering activities which will encourage the development of good geographers.