Earth Day

I did a lot of tweeting about earth day, because I believe that it should be celebrated. Here are the activities that you could have and still can do, to teach children of any age about the importance of our only home planet!


https://ed.ted.com/earth-school - Endorsed by the UN and several other organisations, there are loads of activities here that can keep you going for a month. They are not too taxing and yet still educational and fun.

https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2020/wanted-rainfall-observers/ - If you have a rain gauge, you can get involved straight away. All you have to do is record rainfall each day and email it. You can keep a log yourself and become a UK climate expert in the future.


https://www.nationalgeographic.com/family/2020/04/neighborhood-safari/ - We actually did the activity at home as, surprisingly, Salford has a lot of weird wild animals. It's goo to keep your knowledge local and maybe go out, explore and collect things to put in on your picture.

https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate-friendly-communities - See how environmentally friendly your local area is and how to make it better. I had a little competition on Twitter, but I only received 3 areas - would be interesting to see how the rest of the UK is doing.

https://www.earthday.org - The official Earth Day site - There were several live events on at the time but these can be watched back and competed in your own time. This was more of a global focus, looking at what is happening around the world to help combat climate change and appreciate our Earth.

https://news.disney.com/magicmoments - Disney got involved this year - on the back of the National Geographic. either way, there's loads of activities for students of all ages, which was nice to see.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/earthdayathome-with-nasa/ - My favourite - NASA. They always seem to pull it out of the bag every year. They don't just do art tasks, they involve technology like mapping, coding etc. Well worth a look even when it's not Earth Day.

Finally a knitting pattern of a globe. Roughly the size of your hand when completed but can be made bigger depending on wool, tension and needle size. It's a great pattern and can be found here


Have a go - let us know which ones you liked best! Or even show us your results!

Kind Regards,

Miss Cox

KS3 fieldwork ideas - Weather and Climate

This live lesson is also from the FSC, but looks at how you can investigate weather and climate. I apologise, the start (1:30 mins) is missing as their servers crashed with the amount of people trying to access the site.

The missing part was an explanation about the difference between weather and climate, which is a common misconception, which if not careful, can be carried through to KS4 and 5 and make the biomes topics and atmospheric circulation much more difficult to pick up. This is why I feel that this lesson should also get credit for its importance in the curriculum.

Weather - the daily, hourly changes that you see from sitting outside or the weather forecast on TV.
Climate - the 30 year average weather, which has been recorded over long periods of time and is used as an average to predict the weather conditions that we should be seeing for this time of year. e.g. that is why the 'beast from the east' was such a big deal, as a weather event like that had not been seen in the climatic data.

The excellent thing about this lesson is that it lets the student complete hands on learning along with the presenter, to record weather conditions, and also talks through the equipment that is being used. This equipment could be used in their KS4 and 5 fieldwork, so it's a great addition. There is also a consolidation exercise, where students use data, answer questions, look at the causes of weather and climate and summarise what they have learned.

It's very comprehensive and detailed - you should definitely give it a go and let us know how you get on! If you're stuck, then tweet or comment for help. We will be having a go at recording weather at home as Storm is learning the words for the different weather types - she likes clouds.

You can find the resources to print here: resources
The lesson here: lesson

Kind Regards,

Miss Cox

KS3 Fieldwork - exploring soil

As a note: This is a live lesson, which I attended this morning from the FSC. It's pitched at KS2, but from my experience, students either don't remember covering soil, or haven't done it in their primary school. This can therefore also be pitched for KS3, with added challenge if necessary for your cohort.

However, As soil science focussed heavily in in my degree, and soil is also a focus in the KS2, 3 (uses for geology), 4 (carbon cycle, ecosystems, resources) and 5 curriculum (Earth life support systems, ), I think this practical deserves some recognition.

It's never too early to learn about soil, or appreciate all that it provides for us, from food, to carbon storage.

The prior knowledge and lesson resources can be found here

The lesson can be found hereThe lesson can be found here:

Let me know what you think, or find in your gardens! We're going to investigate ours this week.

Kind Regards,

Miss Cox

Topic 3: The urbanising world

Hello everyone, welcome to my online support for students sitting the EDEXCEL B GEOGRAPHY specification.

This topic is about how people and cities are changing around the world. There are lot of new words that you won't have come across before, so i've included a glossary, which you can use to as a dictionary when words come up in lessons that you may not have heard before.

Glossary here:

Lesson one is here for you as well. This explains how cities have grown and how these are classified and how they might influence decision making. This will also be looked at in more detail in the coming lessons for this topic. There will be 6 overall, with a closer look at a case study, also.

Lesson 1 click here:

If you have any questions, then you can comment here or on my twitter account, which also has other bits of information, activities and news articles to read. The twitter account is located here:

Twitter account, click here

I hope you're all doing well - please remember that I am here for you to ask questions. It's OK to not understand everything and need extra support - just let me know how to help you!

Thank you, Miss Cox :-)

Original powerpoint is here