Keeping Track of Geographical Skills

Here's some more organisational resources for you, this time for geographical skills.

When I first started teaching this course I found the sheer number of skills and the requirement to integrate them into lessons throughout the year to be a daunting task, especially because most of the textbooks seemed to skim over them so briefly or even not include them at all. It was hard enough interpreting the rest of the spec and planning lessons for that, let alone ensuring an even distribution of skills throughout the year!

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Describing Patterns and Using Locational Knowledge

A common question in the exam is to describe the pattern or distribution of something on a map. 

Many people lose marks on these questions due to poor exam technique. There are two things that can help you:

1. Make sure you know what distribution or pattern means and what words to use

Distribution = the way in which something is spread over an area

Pattern = they way in which something is arranged or sequenced

As you can see they are quite similar. You need to identify whether there is any overall arrangement or repeating sequence or shape to what you are looking at. Good words/phrases to use include:

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Are YOU prepared for the GEOG2 exam?

One of the THE MOST IMPORTANT things you need to do to prepare for your AS Geography exams is to practice your EXAM TECHNIQUE. Hopefully this post can help you do just that!

As somebody who has used hours and hours of my life trawling through hundreds of exam answers and trying to figure out what mark to give them (or trying to figure out what the heck they even say in some, or dare I say many cases) it still pains me to see how few people actually manage to READ THE QUESTION, let alone employ any other examination skills, such as knowing the difference between describe and explain... or what a pie chart is...

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How to do the Mann-Whitney U Test

I thought it was about time my A2 students got back into some statistics since the ones they learnt at AS so this week I introduced them to the creation of Henry Mann and Donald Whitney. Sadly some of my students seem to have a phobia of maths and the very mention of statistics sends them into a panic and they start expressing regret at having even chosen geography for A-level in the first place.

I had a similar experience myself at university until one of my good friends on the course showed me that it's actually quite simple once you approach it with an open mind! Since statistics forms an important component of many courses, not just geography, you may as well just accept it and do you best to understand, and you'll see, as I did, that it really isn't that bad! It's actually quite satisfying when you realise you can do it.

So, here are the resources I used for my lesson where I have tried to break it down to make it easy to understand.After re-capping which statistics they need to know for the AQA A2 Geography course, we did an example of MWU altogether on the board, then everyone tried out a second example on their worksheet. Hope it helps!

MANN WHITNEY U POWERPOINT

MANN WHITNEY U WORKSHEET

River Rejuvenation Experiment!

I found some of those little channels on the beach as the tide was going out so thought I'd try illustrating some river processes; try it yourself next time you're on the beach!