Geography & integrating Learning

Lesson Planning-

Curriculum vs Concepts - In geography there are a number of concepts I as not previously aware of (not really having done geography at school) which aren't explicitly stated in the curriculum statements. It seems to be quite a task to combine these two together!

Using Different Activities:
Using fieldwork - not something that I had really considered before!
Graphical info - really useful for Inquiry Based Learning. Can use lots of questioning
Inquiry Based Learning is becoming a really big feature in humanities!
 - Interpreting questions and learning to build more concrete examples of how to present questions. Great examples in the VCE Geography Text book by GTAV.

Geographic Concepts:

• Location
• Distance
• Scale
• Region
• Distribution
• Movement
• Spatial Association
• Spatial Interection
• Spatial Change over Time

Intergrating learning:

There are so many concepts in geography that can be combined with other learning areas. eg

history - using geographic concepst to discuss history (the importance of locatin, time, etc)
design,  - using geographic concepts to inform design principles eg location, scale, distribution

Curriculum & Assessment

I went to a staff meeting on Monday for current teaching staff and they were talking about the transition from VELS to AUsVELS. I think everyone would be comforted to know that even current teachers find progression points really confusing!

It started an interesting discussion about gaps in learning. That is, if a student misses a progression point in Year 7 for example, that would put them behind in all future years, as often teachers don't have time to get students lacking in specific areas back up to speed. It also made me think about trying to make lesson plans fit multiple learning levels. It could be totally possible that there could be a wide range of abilities within one classroom. How can we adjust teaching to foster development in these young people?

I've recently had an experience with a boy who completely hates school, and no wonder. His maths is still at a primary school level (he's in Year 10) and his English probably is too. So I wonder then, what is the teaching and the curriculum achieving while he feels so frustrated as he falls further and further behind? He now refuses to participate. How can we counteract this and give him confidence and learning when his current learning standard doesn't meet with the prescribed progression points set for his level.


I suppose this is really my reflection on this topic. It highlighted for me the complexity of devising appropriate assessment for curriculum that is set by another body.

It also made me question how I establish whether the assessment is too easy or too hard. How do I determine that? To me it covers the progession points but I could easily have created an assessment that totally misses the mark? How do we learn to make assessment not only meet the progression points, but also the learning needs of the students in front of us?