Just put some new work together for the Tundra - Tropical Year 9 unit with the outcome being an assessed piece of writing.

 I have in the past asked the Y9's to to a Rainforest Essay looking at issues of sustainability in a chosen forest area but am fast becoming tired of that. I have wanted to explore the issues behind Palm Oil production for a while now and found a nice mystery linking Palm Oil & Orangutans. Although I couldn't access this without paying a fiver for the PowerPoint and a further fiver for the worksheet, I am going to try to make up my own inquiry based on this subject.  I have found it hard going resourcing it today and am not happy with the layout or progression but will have to play around with it again when I teach it later this week. 

http://gorgeousgeography.wordpress.com/about/ has helped me a lot in researching the work so thanks to Melanie Richards in Greenwich. 

Right. Home time. More later. 

Just added some work to the Y9 tribes of the rainforest piece of work (Tundra to Tropical) entitled "What if the plane had landed?" - This asks the students to consider the implications of first contact on remote and previously uncontacted tribes. Got some really good work in from the Year 9 on their art task.... but will post details and photos tomorrow when they are marked. Maybe the best examples I have seen so far. They certainly put my drawing skills to shame! 

Also, just adding to the IB Higher Interactions work on Political Outcomes and Nation States/EU. Found that the Greenfield Geography wiki is really useful for getting a grip on the issues and is great for the students to study first before getting their teeth into the case study.  

Lastly, our local area has been quite severely affected by flooding last weekend. Here is a picture of the river before (taken last Spring) and during (on Sunday) the flood event. We had very fast snow melt coupled with an extremely wet week. I am reliably informed that the last time it was this high was in the 1970's. It got to within 10cm of overtopping the leveé and the whole town was on alert! A lucky escape indeed.