About

This `Geography Goes Global’ WordPress website has been created to share teaching resources developed by the six teachers who were part of Year 2 of our project.

The major funder for this three year project has been provided by DfID with additional support and funding from The Geographical Association and South Yorkshire Development Education Centre (DECSY).

Using Sense Impressions

At the Global Geography Network Teacher Meet, held at DECSY on Tuesday 12th December 2013, Ann Hamblen describes a simple, yet immensely powerful, activity to take children on journeys to new places.

John Waller talks about his Global Geography work in school.

At the Global Geography Network Teacher Meet, held at DECSY on Tuesday 12th December 2013, John Waller of Dobcroft School Sheffield gave a 10 minute talk about his classroom…

Network Meeting

geognetworkflyer

Are you looking to include Geography with a Global Dimension in the learning going on in your primary classroom?

Then come along to DECSY for an hour to hear teachers like you share things they have done in their classrooms that have inspired and excited children to think globally.Tuesday 3rd December 2013 4.15pm – 5.15pm (refreshments from 3.45pm)

At: DECSY, Leadmill Road, Sheffield S1 4SE

DECSY Members FREE, others: £10

To book contact Helen: helenATdecsy.org.uk (substitue AT for @)

John’s Windows to Evaluate the Global Dimension in Existing Planning

4 windows to assess planning

Please click on the link above to see/download a copy of John Waller’s very useful windows tool – use it to assess your planning for the global dimension.

Concentric Circles: Session 3

I really enjoyed meeting everyone at DECSY yesterday afternoon – thank you!

These flowers gave us inspiration to learn more about the world and our place in it.

Here are the materials I used in my session about being aware of opportunities (in a school culture which fosters this awareness for all – children, teachers and all school staff, parents and the wider school community) to encourage global thinking around curriculum learning.  In my experience, my awareness has enabled me to pick up on chances I couldn’t have planned specifically in advance for – which doesn’t mean that we don’t anticipate where chances may occur.

Y1 and Dorothy’s Flowers

Blank Questions Ppt Slide

Four ways you could follow-up from the third twilight session of Geography and the Global Dimension

1. Locate the page `Living Geography’ which is part of the Geography and Global Dimension On-line CPD unit and then plan an activity that involves fieldwork and the children you teach.
2. Look at the case studies on this Blog site and choose one to adapt for your own teaching – they are all listed along the banner at the top of this page.
3. Download the PowerPoint from the Planning and Resources Page of the GA CPD Unit and adapt it for a unit of work that you are going to teach – you will find examples of ways our teachers have done this if you check out the case studies.  You’ll find Zoe’s version for her Chembakolli Unit here >>>
4. Share some of the work that you have done with your children so that we can build up a wider bank of case-studies.

Ideas for teaching younger children about Geography and the Global Dimension

At the last session of the Geography and Global Dimension twilight session some teachers of younger children expressed concerns that we hadn’t focused enough on early years.  Here are some suggestions for where you might look:

Using Picture Books to develop geography & Global Citizenship 

Starting from a picture book – What if? (ESD)

Start Local Think Global  scroll down the page until you come to `If you’re not from the …’ and `When I went to the …’

Geography and Food

Journey’s Place and Landscape (Foundation Stage)

Africa: Your School, My School (Year 1)

Activities which use photographs

What’s happening here? What do you think might happen next?

We held the second session of our dissemination twilights for teachers last night at Sheffield Development Education Centre where it was good to meet so many enthusiastic teachers from Sheffield schools.  Helen shared a number of activities which use photographs to develop critical awareness and challenge assumptions.

You can download her Word document here >>>  Photo Activities

Can you draw what might happen next?

In the Picture – using images to develop learning in geography and history

Something from Wendy with an ICT focus  (which we didn’t share last night but which might be useful:

Until I retired I regularly kept a blog called Everyday Geographies where I shared ideas and resources – a good place to start looking would be:

Map IT, Picture IT, Write IT   a presentation in two parts that I put together for The Education Show in London (2009).

Everday Geographies is worth a look as there are lots of useful resources/ ideas listed on the site.

First twilight dissemination meeting at Jump Primary School, Barnsley

We had a very good evening and the staff at Jump Primary were fantastic!  (Say thank you again to them from me Zoe.)  I changed things round a bit from my original programme, deciding that everything except the `Danger of a Single Story’ should go first.

So I began with a short introduction about the project- mainly for Lucy’s benefit as Zoe’s staff already knew something about the background.  I was able to flag up the online CPD unit on the Geographical Association website:

I then shared the address of this WordPress website/ blog and asked Zoe and John to say a little about their project – which they did as a quick overview.

Next, we talked about what we’d learnt from the project, i.e.  `Steps on our learning journey’ and then moved onto look at `The Geographical Questions’ that I had linked to our fieldwork visit around Wortley Village.  These can usefully be used in relation to places in our parts of the country/ world and our Year 2 project group found them very valuable. (They also enjoyed their fieldwork experience.)

We ended with the Danger of a Single Story, which went down very well with all of our teachers – we had some very positive comments at the end of the session which I felt had a significant impact on their thinking.  It will be good to see how they follow up this initial input.

Principles that should underpin any curriculum work which seeks to integrate Geography and the Global Dimension

A geographical understanding of the world (places and spaces and people’s relationship with them) supports a greater understanding of global issues / key concepts (interdependence, human rights, values & perceptions, global citizenship, social justice, diversity, sustainability, conflict resolution).

• The Danger of a Single Story: teachers need to be aware of the limitations of their own perspective on issues, places and people; to broaden and deepen their own and pupils’ understanding and challenge assumptions, prejudice and discrimination. 
• The Global in the Local: recognise the global context of our local lives.
• Recognise the interconnectedness of people, places and spaces locally and globally
• Here as well as there: we need to ask the same questions in our own locality / country as in other localities across the world.  Understanding their own locality helps children to understand distant ones (e.g. look at local forests when studying rainforests).

Some principles drawn from Year 2 of the project