pilotgcseradicalgeography.co.uk » Blog Archive » Changing Perceptions of Antarctica…

Changing Perceptions of Antarctica…

Another hot one in H5. Overall I was pleased today, I wanted to really push the group and find out what they are made of, they worked extremely well under difficult conditions and we covered a lot of new concepts and ideas. As a class we are just beginning to get the measure of each other, but I think great things could come. I would like you to be a little more responsive, are you finding this course interesting? Are you learning anything? Let me know!

We started the day with a ‘ starter for ten’ , basically ten questions in PowerPoint timed to ‘ Cold as Ice’ by Foreigner. I think this worked well as a settling activity, and I think I’ll repeat it again on double lesson. What do you think gang?

I then reminded students that next week their afternoon will be spent with Andrew Cooney, the youngest person ever to make an expedition to the South Pole, looking forward to this. Good news is that we are still going to North Wales in July,Â a quick show of hands showed that all were eager! Great

We then began to look at our past perceptions of Antarctica, using a timed PowerPoint of sources put together my Mrs I, the music that accompanied it was Cold Water Music, not sure of the artist. Some great thinking here, as we brainstormed some of our thoughts from the presentation. My favourites that spring to mindÂ were Tatler’s suicidal (which I needed a dictionary to spell, well done Reece and Stefan), Chris’s locked, and Adam’s morbid. Some nice thinking gang.

We then went on to look at dry valleys, I introduced the topic using a video I hastily knocked up last night, it can be downloaded here.(26mb wmv)Â Not that impressive, it was a rushed job. I’m well aware that I haven’t uploaded any of our resources yet, but if someone could give me an extra five hours a day the job would be done! We then used a primary account of a visit to a dry valley, we considered

what they looked like.
what images they evoked.
where they were.
why they were dry.

To be honest, I didn’t interrogate the subject material well enough, and my description of their formation was poor. But I also only wanted this to be a introduction, so that students could complete a more in-depth piece of independent research. If you are wondering where the homework task is, it is after this post. I was alsoÂ well aware that I was flogging dead horses at this point in the afternoon; perhaps ‘ starter for ten’ would have been better placedÂ here.

We then moved onto look at a video by the British Antarctic Survey, about our past perceptions of Antarctica. We were looking for peoples’ motives in exploring and traveling to Antarctica, some interesting little discussions developed some this, but we didn’t finish the video. So onÂ Monday we need to rap this up and begin to look at climate.

We finished the afternoon by looking at the Bangor videoÂ of last year, how time goes by!

Well done, a hard afternoon’s work.