Hi all,
Sorry, I have gone a bit quiet with blogging lately. I have had a few other things in the works and have neglected this blog. I have a few saved up so expect to see more very soon.
Cheers, Steve
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Author Archives: stevemouldey
Guerrilla Poetry
April is National Poetry Writing Month in the United States where people are challenged to write a new poem every day of the month (see more about it here). You can also follow peoples efforts on twitter through the hashtag #NaPoWriMo.
I thought I might propose a different challenge for the month. Choose a landscape near you and write a short poem about that landscape. Then publish it in that landscape: paint it, write it on the concrete with chalk, write your poem on paper and stick it up somehow, record it and place an audio player in that area. Just get the poem into the place it is about so it may prompt others to think about the place/landscape in a different way.
So there you have it, a Guerrilla Poetry Challenge for National Poetry Writing Month
Guerrilla Geography as Hacking a Place
Last night I was privileged to have been invited to tell a story at a Live Storytelling event at National Library. There were 5 stories told around the theme of “Over the Edge.” I was invited to speak based upon an Ignite talk I gave last year on Guerrilla Geography. This session was all about oral storytelling and was a great event with bean bags and chairs sat around a fake campfire which created a lovely atmosphere for sharing stories.
What follows is what I wrote to prepare for the evening. The actual story told diverted in places as I got wound up with the story but the general gist was this:
Advice from Paul Ego
For this week’s Staff PD session at school we had Paul Ego come and talk to us. As a comedian who has worked on stage and television he was an inspired choice to talk to teachers. He mentioned early on how teachers are performers with the most judgemental audience.
Making Muriwai
We had our Year 13 Geography coastal fieldtrip this week. As a follow-up activity I brought playdough into class and gave them the simple instruction to “Make Muriwai.” Here’s the great results: Continue reading
Year 10 Inquiry Questions (Hopefully Ungoogleable)
Our Year 10 class are studying how societies in the past have influenced modern times. To start this topic we focused on the Vikings for 2 weeks and looked at their contributions to law systems, marine technology and navigation. Now we are going to break up into an Inquiry phase based upon student interests around this theme. I gave the class the question development guide outlined here and these are the inquiry questions that they came up with (hopefully ungoogleable):
- Has religion had a positive effect on society, and what would life be like without religion?
- How did the gaming economy become what it is today?
- How has the Victorian era influenced society today?
- How did the French revolution affect the world?
- How did Hitler’s actions impact on our lives today?
- How does consumerism affect America?
- What events in the past have made [student’s name] the way she is now? And how or why does this make her different?
- How does the formation of the Soviet Union impact modern society?
Guide to Developing Good Questions
This question development guide was one first developed in a previous school which I have updated recently. The Word version of this is formatted nicely but this gives a good idea of how it works:
Brainstorm of your early ideas
Questions/topics/areas/issues related to theme that you may be interested in developing further Continue reading
New NZ Geography Competition
The New Zealand Board of Geography Teachers has changed the way that the New Zealand team is selected for the International Geography Olympiad. This is so that the selection process more closely mirrors the tasks that the students face once they are at iGeo. A new competition has been created which forms the first part of the selection process. It is a quick turn-around (closes March 26th) so check out the link below:
My thinkpiece for this week’s #GeoEdChat
When looking to measure students’ conceptual progression I tend to use Building Conceptual Understandings in the Social Sciences (Ministry of Education, 2008). This publication stated five ways that teachers could identify learners’ conceptual progressions:
· Level of their understanding and use of abstract concepts increases
· They make connections between multiple concepts
· They apply and transfer their understandings to more complex and distant contexts as well as to those that are familiar
· They take responsible actions and make informed decisions that are based on their understandings
· They begin to understand that concepts can have different interpretations
We often keep strong records of student achievement but how many of us keep data tracking students’ conceptual progress? The issue with measuring conceptual progression is that they are complex, abstract notions that are constantly shifting. So what data to collect to track this progress?
Ensuring conceptual progress may be…
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Coastal Processes in Action
Resources for today’s lesson!
We have started our Coastal Environment topic by looking at the elements and features that exist. Today we were starting to focus on the processes operating in our coastal environment of Muriwai. The introduction to these processes can sometimes be dull as we trudge through the necessary diagrams and explanations. This year I was determined to make this more interactive. I borrowed some sidewalk chalk and a bucket of balls from the PE department and we spent the period moving back and forth from classroom to a courtyard outside. Continue reading
Steve Mouldey 