Full lesson of activities to guide KS4 students through the features of the upper course of the river.

This is a lesson looking at trends in extreme tornadoes and where they occur. Activities include a mapping activity, analyzing data and a group facts race exercise, followed by a journalistic report.

Full lesson looking at the different properties of tectonic boundaries. Students extend and finish the mind map example based on the information provided in the powerpoint.

This structured talking exercise can take place between small groups of 2 or more people. Each person rolls 2 die to be directed to co-ordinates on a grid which lead to a question or discussion point. Most questions are intended to be reflective and make connections between geographical understanding at GCSE level ( years 9-11) and the current pandemic lockdown and social distancing measures. This encourages students to form opinions and make wider connections with their geographical knowledge. It is appropriate for a classroom, or distance /home based learning and could be done with a parent or carer.

Pinterest is a great search enguine and social media tool to use when you want to make something visual and create impact. I often find myself browsing creative Geography teaching ideas on here and so I thought I would put them together as a ‘board’ for you to pick and choose which ones might be fun ways to deliver geographical knowlege and understanding, with a fun, artistic twist. Almost all the resources on here are freely available to use, download or recreate with a range of ability and challenge levels for KS3 -KS4. These learning tasks can easily be used for home learning / home schooling, or in the classroom and outdoors. From origami cactus, making portraits with maps and using lego to build a soil profile, there is sure to be something for each class and learner.

Review slides recapping on how the following features are made:ask asks students to work in groups to produce a poster presentation to deliver to the class on one of the features

Group research project based on the volcanic eruption at Monserrat in 1997.

This is a full lesson introducing the water on the land topic. It covers a recap game from KS3, an overview of the course content from exam specification and some activities relating to the long and cross profile of a river. Can be used for other exam boards.

Mercalli scale, Richter scale, Super volcano Full lesson with a starter recapping on how super volcanoes form (close passage/ gap fill) then moves on to look at how earthquakes are measured. A practical task on classifying earthqake damage by analysing video footage from youtube is included.

Differentiated resource to allow students to show what they know about the causes effects and solutions to climate change (global warming).\n\nThere is a level assesment criteria and a writing frame to help less able students.\n\nSuitable for years 7 and 8

This building-off-grid project is ideal for delivery in the classroom for years 8 through to 11 or set as an independent task for distance-learning or home-based study. Also suitable for celebrating ’ Earth Day’ in April with a focus on reducing carbon footprint. Since being stuck on lock-down I have been binge-watching episodes of USA based TV-series like ’ last of the Alaskans’ and ’ Building off Grid’ which follow families as they design and self-build their own cabins and earth-ship style homes in remote areas of Arizona and Alaska. The aim is to live sustainably and in harmony with the landscape and ecosystem around them. This lesson / project will help GCSE/ KS4 students make connections in their learning with the Geography ’ Living World’ topic, especially around explaining how humans have adapted to the opportunities and challenges of living in extreme conditions such as the Tundra Biome and the Hot Desert regions. Students could easily talk about home design and crop growing/ subsistence farming in their examinations following the AQA spec A curriculum. The students must choose where they want to live their off grid lifestyle; either Arizona or Alaska, and the Power Point goes through the benefits and drawbacks of doing so in each ecosystem. There are video links to relevant video content showing some aspects of cabin-building in both of these environments. Then students enlist 3 helpers to help build their cabin, and roll a dice to determine their allocated budget they can use to buy materials for the cabin project. Using this budget, they can chose from a ‘menu’ worksheet of construction options to custom-build their cabin. They have a choice of sketching out their design with a floor plan, or actually building a model of their cabin from lego/ cardboard/ paydough etc. If submitted as a distance learning activity it would be great to make it into a competition, and invite students to submit pictures of their designs electronically for display. There are some ideas for follow-on activities on the slides.

This FREE resource provides a comprehensive list of keywords that your students need to know and be able to define for the paper 3 Fieldwork and skills exam for GCSE Geography AQA specification. It may be applicable to other specifications also.

A FREE home or classroom learning resource to get students familiar with a range of key vocabulary from the AQA GCSE Geography topic ’ Urban Issues and Challenges’. Urban areas include towns, cities and megacities that each have unique environmental and social challenges that need addressing in order to become more sustainable; pollution, poverty, education inequality and so on. This is a comprehensive list of keywords and their definitions to help build student confidence in applying specific key terms into exam practice questions on this topic. A full answer sheet is provided. To help support th creation of FREE resources please consider grabbing a copy of my workload management book for Geography teachers ’ Time Smart Teaching; 8 insider tips to reduce workload that schools don’t tell you’. Click on the link below and FREE to subscribers of amazon

In this 3rd lesson on our cold environments series ’ Pole to Pole’ we explore how the resourceful and hardy ’ Nennet’ tribe have made a lifestyle herding reindeer throughout Siberia, Russia. Students must use their geographical enquiry skills to gather information about the tribe through an information hunt activity, building in kinathstetic learning experiences into the classroom. There is a link to video content from Simon Reeve’s 'Russia ’ series in which he faces frost nip whilst travelling with the tribe.

This is a great visual revision resource for GCSE AQA Spec, covering the basics on causes, effects and sustainable management strategies for the Amazon Rainforest case study. I initially gave students blank copies of a tree and asked them to fill in their own knowlege, then gave my filled out version to lower ability students. They then used this infomation to help answer a range of past paper questions on the case study. There are 2 exam questions below the work sheet to test their understanding.

A great fun kinesthetic task. Students cut out and make a learning wheel to help them remember some of the European flags. There is a mini memory test to go with it.

Extreme weather can be defined as atmospheric conditions that lie outside what is normal or expected based on location and previous climatic averages. Some experts argue that climate change is leading to more extreme weather events becoming more common in the UK and globally. This lesson examines the role of the turbulent jet stream as a key influencer on UK climates, and how if it gets ’ stuck’ our weather patterns also become static leading to heatwaves, droughts and flooding. This lesson includes article analysis from the Guardian, the use of the blue Oxford GCSE textbooks to fill in a table plus infographic analysis. Past paper worksheet included. Full lesson.

The physical geography of the UK can be briefly split into NW/ SE divide. With glacial valleys and high mountains in the North, and rolling hills and river valleys in the south. This lesson serves as an introduction to the GCSE AQA ‘UK physical landscapes’ topic. The lesson is designed to be used in conjunction with the blue Oxford GCSE Geography textbooks. Students look for map clues at the start to figure out where in the UK the photo was taken. Then they annotate a UK relief map from the powerpoint slides. There is a great True or False additional starter activity too.

This excel spreadsheet system allows customization of marking or assessment feedback onto a word document, which can be printed out onto stickers and placed onto student books. The examples given can be used and customized for any year group. The focus is on key vocab and the English to Spanish translation. This resource and framework can be adapted to other languages or subjects.

This study aid has been produced to help students use subject specific describing words in their examination writing. The Mat gives a visual stimulus to show at a glance a range of vocabulary that students can use when describing places or processes linked to Human Geography topics and landscapes, in relation to paper 2 and 3. These have a range of uses, and could be given out during mock examinations to help the lower ability students. They could be colour printed an stuck into student books or laminated and stuck down onto desks. They would be really useful for teachers to don’t always teach in the same classroom who have portable displays. These learning mats were taken from my other resource ; GCSE Geography Literacy displays’ and made more pupil friendly.