January 10th, 2017

Grade 6 (Primary) induction day event / french  school visit showcase 

I have run this lesson twice recently and it has gone down really well both times. The first was for the Grade 6 induction to secondary Geog just before the last summer holidays and the second was for a visit of a local French school to our school for a showcase Geography lesson. 

The game can be found on Richard Allaway's fantastic geographyalltheway.com website and I stole his chance cards as they worked really well as a way of exposing the EAL visiting students to English geographical terminology (with our students translating those words that were a little abstract). 

I started off by showing the following video that introduced the students to the concept of population growth ..... 

We then talked a little about the issues caused by rapid population growth and why population pyramids (age/sex structures) are an important tool in the forecasting of future demographic trends. We talked more about the raising of the retirement age here in France and I showed the students a 2050 population pyramid of France to see if they could work out why. 

The set up & resources (also see photo at base of post)
 

• Split the class into groups of six
• Put one A4 worksheet and one A3 structure sheet on the desk of each student with two mini boxes of smarties. 
• Put one bowl in the centre and pour in two mini boxes of smarties into the bowl. 
• Cut out the chance cards and place upside down in a pile in the centre of the table. 

When the class come in, tell them not to touch or eat the sweets! 

• Give each student a number 1 - 6 and ask them to fill in the top row of their worksheet.
• Then ask them to empty their boxes of smarties out and use the colour coding on the pyramid to sort the smarties out into demographic layers commenting on what could cause inbalances. 
• The spare colours can be put back into their smarties box / eaten if they are hungry etc! 
• Student 1 picks up the first card, reads it aloud and then acts. The chance cards are excellent and really do get the class going expecially when a large number of smarties (people) are gained or lost. 

The students start to talk about the cards and you will probably hear them applying the theory to real life events too (if they keep up with the news). 

• Allow the game to play for at least 30 minutes and sit back and watch the Geography in action! 
  
• Call and end to the game and ask the students to complete the second side of their worksheet and discuss the final population structure. 

Then lead some questions (if you have time) based on their experiences of the game:

• What led to a decrease in population? 
• What led to an increase? 
• What factors led to emmigration / immigration (very current)? 
• What factors affected the birth & death rates? 
• What wasn't fair? 
• What events can they see in current media / global events? 

That's it! Simple and fairly cheap to set up and very high in calories! 

Keep em away from those blue smarties!!! 

All Richard's original resources can be found on his site here

Good luck with it.   Matt