Using a Range of Texts in the Geography Classroom

Geography is the study of the world around us, including people, the places they live and the environment. On the Geographical Association‘s website they state that geography as a subject “speaks directly to young people’s curiosity, wonder and concern for the world”. There are many ways in which we can ignite this curiosity and wonder

Reading in the Geography Classroom – Why is it important?

Reading is an important skill for our students to develop and has many benefits to the geography classroom. The National Literacy Trust defines literacy as “the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world.” This definition alone highlights many of the reasons

Developing Writing Skills in Geography

Freya (@Engteacherabro2) gave a fantastic talk about academic writing at the TeachMeet International Icons event a few weeks ago (the recording of the whole event is available here and definitely worth a listen). This made me think more about writing in Geography and what we can do to support students with this in our subject.

What happens when the words we teach have different meanings in other subjects?

Tier two vocabulary appears frequently across all school subjects and consequently a knowledge of these words is essential for students to be able to fully access our lessons, reading and examinations (more on this in my previous post). With over 7000 tier two words, identifying which words to teach can be challenging. This challenge is

Embedding the Teaching of Tier Two Vocabulary into Lessons

Back in February, I wrote my first blog post looking at how I teach tier two vocabulary in lessons. Since then I have been exploring this area further and, following my talk on this topic at ResearchED Germany last weekend, I decided it was time to write another post on this. This post will focus