Development: Death Rates

This will be my last post on the topic of development and then I will be posting on Migration!

So death rates, a highly exciting topic and if teaching it can be a very sensitive topic too, for all of our development topic I had taken out infant mortality rates due to one of the students personal experiences.

They started off with a card sort and had to put into 3 groups:

1. Illnesses have been stopped
2. More people can be cured
3. Education and changes to our environment

Once they had done this (in pairs) they had to write about which they thought were the top 3 reasons and the least important, there is a space for a picture so that I could assess whether they understood what the card meant.

I have a rather difficult student in this lesson, one of the reasons is because he is very poor at writing so I decided to try him out on a laptop and have all the work on there for him to complete, print out and stick in.  I had done this the lesson before (I haven’t posted that lesson on world population though) and it worked excellently, however this time he just refused to even log into the laptop) maybe the sheet will get used by one of your students!

Example will be up soon.

Development: Showing Inequalities in Development

This was a lesson where I got the students out of their seats to find out the information for themselves.  They were given an Inequalities table sheet which they had to fill in by going round the room looking at the Flags and Figures, figuring out which flag was which and then reading through the information and choosing the correct parts to go into the table.

We all then got back together to check that they had managed to get the correct information (see powerpoint for correct answers).

We then as a group worked out the ratios and wrote them in.

They then had to use their table to describe what countries had the most and the least, for this I gave them inequalities sentence starters.

After that we looked at proportional maps which was a bit of a difficult concept for many of my students to understand we then created our own. (there is one in the powerpoint – if you are to use this it will need tweaking a lot as I managed to not save my final one!)

As my last post I will add an example when I have scanned it in.

Development: Comparing Countries with Top Trumps

This lesson was used to get the students to find out about MEDC’s and LEDC’s and then to be able to choose ways that they could compare them.  Find out information about them and then play a game!

Students had to write on their mini whiteboards 4 MEDC’s which had to be different from the person next to them, to do this they looked at their map from their previous lesson on What The World Eats where we had looked at the North/South divide and then could choose any 4 countries from above the line.

Once I had checked these they got to fill in their Top Trumps cards using the information from the atlases on Wealth, Water, Food and Doctors.

They then did this with 4 LEDC’s.  Once they had finished it was cutting out time and time to play with the cards.

There were various games I made them play:

1. With all their cards MEDC’s and LEDC’s
2. Just with MEDC’s to see which was the best country using the factors I had chosen
3. Just with LEDC’s to see which was the worst country

Whilst they were playing I went round and questioned them all as to what they think was the best way to compare countries and why they thought a certain country was winning or losing.

When I have scanned in one of their books I will add in my example!

Blooms Taxonomy and NC levels

I am currently on an Improving Teacher Programme along with a couple of other newish teachers at my school.  We get to go in and observe lessons focusing on specific things each week.  This week we were looking at questioning.  In a history the teacher was fantastic, different techniques, all the students were engaged and the environment they were in aided to this.

There was on the wall (which was referred to during the lesson) a Blooms Taxonomy scale in student speak, with example history questions and there was the curriculum levels.  I struggle with accessing my students higher level thinking and having it on the wall for the students and myself to see I thought would be really helpful.  Some of my higher ability students are also very aware of the level they are working at and want to progress and so by having this up it will hopefully help them figure out what they need to be doing to access the higher levels.

Feel free to print it out and stick it up in your classroom, let me know how it impacts on your teaching if you do.

Blooms and NC levels powerpoint slides – can print, could show before you do a question!

Development: Development Compass Rose

This lesson was introducing the class to different ways of asking question we started off by asking lots of geographical questions and with me writing the first word they said on the board: who, where, what, why, when and how.

I then asked if there were any other ways of asking questions which left them a little stumped, so I showed them the Development compass rose, which I had simplified and added pictures, they then got one to stick in their books.

We talked about each of the sections and then I showed them this picture which they also stuck in their books, but this time in the middle with lots of space round the outside.  My higher ability group had to come up with their own questions about the picture and write them in the rose, this lower ability group got a lot of short questions of strips of paper that they had to place around their picture.  What we had done with the picture was to write the words: natural, political, social and economic on each of the sides of the picture.  Once they had done this, I checked and they stuck them down.

They then had to create their own questions based on the picture and the development compass rose.

Here is an example of their work:

Development: Perceptions of development

This was a lesson trying to break the students thinking about what countries are like in general.  They were given two sheets and had to choose whether the country was an MEDC or and LEDC and then use some of the words from the word box to answer some questions, and then come up with something themselves for each of the questions.

Some of the words in the boxes don’t get used as they are there so that I could figure out how much some of them actually understood (as I have a few EAL students in the class).  In general the task was done well, I also put the pictures up on the whiteboard which we then analysed parts of them to figure out what made them think it was an LEDC or and MEDC.

Here’s another example of some students work:

 

Development: if the world were a village

Some of you may know the “if the world were a village” book by David Smith and Shelagh Armstrong, there is a powerpoint slide show based on this by GeoInteractive who produce some really good geography resources.

This sheet If the world was a village of 100 people was used for them to fill in as the slide show played (I put each slide on a timer so that I could go round the room and make sure they all knew what they were doing).

Here’s an example of a good one filled in:

What’s this all about?

Right, so I have created this blog to share geography resources with others!

This is my second year of teaching, and this year we decided to ‘set’ our groups, I don’t know what other people’s opinions are on setting, I am yet to make up my mind.  Due to the setting I have got 2 very low ability year 8 groups and it will be their resources that I have created that I will be sharing.  Many of the students in these groups are also badly behaved and this (obviously) is taken into account when planning their lessons – short activities, short bits of discussion, card sorts, spot the odd one out etc.

I hope that you find my resources helpful, and if you do use them I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks

Becky