Rachel Norman, GA Conference April 2013
Geographical Enquiry: A Practical Approach
Lesson stimulus
Use the websites listed below to find interesting Geography stories or facts to use as a question:
•
Twitter – @NatGeo @TeachitGeog @OxfordEdGeog @The_GA
•
National Geographic - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/
•
BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment/
•
Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment
For example –
Why did Tim and his grandchildren hide in the sea? – Bushfires
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20959468
Why has coffee been found in the ocean? – Marine pollution
http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2012/07/120730-caffeinated-seas-pacific-northwest-caffeinecoffee-science/
Why might bananas replace potatoes? – Climate change, food security
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20126452
Examples of enquiry lessons
1. Why did Harry Truman and his 16 cats die? - KS4 lesson
Mount St Helens eruption, 1985
2. Why did Jan cancel the pub quiz night? – KS3 lesson (used in conjunction with Geog. textbooks)
Guardian website, 25 November 2012
Causes of flooding and impacts
Flooding case study
3. How can a city be powered by the sun? – KS3 lesson (Impossible Places, cities and sustainability)
Rachel Norman, GA Conference April 2013
Masdar City, United Arab Emirates
Sustainable city
Renewable energy (solar energy)
4. What do you want to know about Antarctica? – KS3 open-ended enquiry
1 lesson to plan enquiry in groups
2 lessons and homework to complete enquiry
Peer assessment/self assessment
How to construct an enquiry lesson – based upon Davidson (2002) and Roberts (2003)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Idea – stimulus – question hook
Series of questions to answer – using Bloom’s Taxonomy
Activities (and differentiation)
AFL – Progress
References
Rachel Norman, GA Conference April 2013
Bloom’s Taxonomy can be used to structure questions and to check that higher order thinking skills are
being used in tasks throughout the lesson (adapted from Bloom’s Taxonomy, 1956)
Q - Which do you think is the
best strategy?
T – Extended writing
Q – What would your
sustainable city be like?
T – Designing own city, writing
a travel blog
Q – Which earthquake caused
the most damage?
T – Comparing statistics
Q - Is this an environmental,
social or economic effect?
T - Sorting tasks
Q – What is the climate
like?
T – Reading text, graphs,
photographs
Q - What are the different types
of volcano?
T – Quiz, find a definition
Useful activities to use in enquiry lessons
Card sort
Diamond Nine sorting
exercise
Videos
Draw what you hear
(teacher reads a story)
Storyboard
Peer and self assessment
Writing a story,
newspaper article, blog,
series of tweets, diary
entry, letter, news report,
weather report, play
Describing photos
Carousel activities –
finding out information
to complete a table
Quizzes
Conflict matrix
Back to back drawing
Revealing a picture to
guess the location/topic
of the lesson
Bingo (key terms)
Reading newspaper
articles
Creating a guide for a
year 7 student
Labelling maps
Ranking exercises
Acrostic poem
Role play
Just a minute (speak
about a topic for one
minute without
hesitating)
Using play dough to
model features/concepts
Writing a hypothesis (can
be modified during the
plenary to show
progress)
Pictionary