I have written up some ideas for teaching about Montserrat
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I tried this with three different year 7 classes last week and they all loved it! I agree about the noise however, and I made the mistake of not warning my neighbour, who was fine once he saw what was going on, but I reiterate the message to let others know if you do this lesson! We did it with no technology, just an OHP to present the scenario. I cut out and put into envelopes each of the ‘helicopter reports’ and called out every few minutes that another one had arrived; the information gatherers from each group came running up eagerly to get them. You could hear them discussing the alternatives, although perhaps unsurprisingly the high ability extension set spent longer on their discussions than the lowest ability set who seemed to have made their decisions in under a minute and were hanging around waiting for the next report. They appreciated the points scoring and were interested in the genuine red/amber/green zones of the volcano risk map they had tried to estimate. I put a red/amber/green OHT overlay on the given map as I felt its colours didn’t tie in with the colours they were meant to use
An excellent set of lesson materials thanks. The starter movie produced a spontaneous round of applause from my rather cynical Year 9 group! And then mayhem ensued! But it was worth it they got a lot from the lesson, rotated roles and discussed their decisions well. Thanks for such a great set of resources!
One of those lessons where you overhear students saying how much they are enjoying themselves-memorable as it happens so infrequently! Thanks a lot, classroom was buzzing and bought out a really competitive edge in my class. Would reccomend that others try this
Kenny
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Thank you so much for developing and sharing such fantastic resources. We’ve used them with 5 Year 7 classes over the last two weeks and have also been working on the second part on restructuring the island, It has led to many interesting discussions, Best working groups have tended to be mixed groups followed by all boys - the all girl groups with one or two exceptions have found the action plan task more difficult.
Excellent lessons - good for challenging all levels of ability
Do make sure you warn colleagues in adjoining classrooms noise levels do tend to go up considerably! Did one very manic lesson with two classes working at the same time. Looking forward to doing it again next year.
Used these resources last year, and am preparing to do them again this week with Y9 because they were so successful last time. Thanks again for sharing these super things with Geography teachers of the world, Noel!
Hi
Just like to say the resources about Montserrat are really excellent. I’m hoping to use them for my year 9s after half-term.
We are also looking at ways of including lessons that reflect the hertigae of Afro-Caribbean students, some of whom have connection with Montserrat. So these resources really meet this need. Thanks