'Breaking down geographical barriers' workshop

This workshop was focused on breaking down ‘assessment’ barriers at GCSE. The key aims of this interactive workshop were:

• Confidence building for EAL and lower ability learners
• Accessibility of exam questions (deconstructing)
• Strategies for success (focus on language)

A number of teaching and learning strategies were discussed to support students in learning key terminology (which there is a lot of in geography) and in breaking down questions to make them accessible in the examinations.

All workshop attendees experienced the activities as if in the position of the ‘learner’ so they could evaluate their potential use with their students in the classroom, this led to a number of helpful discussions on techniques / strategies the teachers currently use. The teaching and learning strategies which we discussed can be found in detail on the power point attached and these included:

Deconstructing language

The focus was on a range of ‘stimuli’ and activities to get students to use geographical terms.

Breaking down exam questions

We discussed the use of colour to highlight parts of a question and a pizza template (to ‘slice up’ the question).

Vocabulary building and embedding understanding

Explored through a key term glossary, with definitions and images. From here students build sentences supporting them in ‘getting started’ with tackling an exam question.

Getting students writing

• Sticking with the ‘food’ analogy we looked at the ingredients for student’s answers to exam questions and how they could be supported in this process through
• We explored a planning tool (framework) for getting students writing;
• Techniques to develop ‘full’ answers such as gap filling or mix and match answers

Breaking down geographical barriers presentation

Resources can be downloaded from the link below:

Workshop resources folder