Making My Place In The World A summary and evaluation of Aston Academy’s learning outcomes

1. Making My Place In The World A summary and evaluation of Aston Academy’s learning outcomes . • The overall aim of the project • To increase pupils’ sense of awareness about their own environment and community • Develop pupils’ speaking and listening skills • Improve pupils’ ability of using and understanding key geographical terms • To increase pupils’ confidence in using key geographical terms when answering exam questions

2. Background – The resources were developed for a cohort of year 9 GCSE students with target grades E-C. The students are following Ebacc pathway, so Geography at GCSE was not always their preference • Student voice has shown that the majority of the students enjoyed all of the speaking and listening unit of work • In addition most students felt more confident in taking part in class discussions and using geographical terminology • This confidence in speaking and listening skills also manifested into greater self belief when tackling exam questions. • The end of unit assessment shows significant increase in test scores across the whole cohort. • From my perspective students were fully engaged with lessons and really enjoyed their learning. • Pupils’ understanding and recall of key terms was dramatically improved. There was longevity to the recall • Time constraints, took much longer than normal to teach and therefore an issue at GCSE level. • To conclude Speaking and Listening are important literacy skills but are often under-developed. As we discovered, the overall impact of 9 lessons was limited. However, the improvements seen clearly demonstrated to me the values of the skills and the need to incorporate more into schemes of work across the key stages.

3. Key word learning wall – pupils encouraged to identify unfamiliar words or those they feel are important geographical terms during the lesson. Wall used as starter, plenary or a consolidation activity, with students defining key terms or using them appropriately in sentences

4. Key word learning mat . The aim for students is to produce their own working definition of the key terms during the lesson and therefore take ownership of them. Students given A3 laminated sheets so they could draw links between key terms and descriptive words during the lessons, so at the end they can produce their own definitions

7. Students to decide upon what were the important key terms from the lesson, certainly produces interesting discussions between students when they justify their decisions

8. Key word bowling – A fun quick starter which gets students talking and listening one pupil is selected as the bowler and all other students must think of one key geographical term connected to the work. All students stand up, with the bowler at the front of the class and the aim is for bowler to knock them all down by guessing their key term. By listing as many as they can remember in 2 mins 5 mins

9. What’s your opinion about your living space/community? Encouraging students to discuss their feelings about their local living space Strongly disagree Strongly Agree I have pride in my community Crime is a problem I like my living space Now time for one of your ideas There are not enough services There are lots of things for me to do I feel safe 15 mins

10. Think – you have 1 minutes Pair – you work with your talk buddy Share – talk and share your ideas

11. Diamond ranking is not an activity which you instantly associate with promoting talking and listening skills but like many of the tasks used normally in lessons it can be easily utilised to do so. In this instance it was one that certainly got students thinking , taking, listening and explaining their ideas to their peers. In 2009 Ipsos Mori carried out a huge survey of people of Sheffield for the council, one of the things they were investigating was: what are the most important things in making somewhere a good place to live? Diamond rank these factors from most to least important, firstly for young people then family and retired persons. Clean streets Shopping facilities Parks and open spaces Health services Affordable decent housing Public transport Education provision Level of crime Job prospects

12. We cannot wait to move into our new house, as long as I don’t get the pink one. I should save lots of money on my energy and water bills; the homes have renewable energy, spray taps and water efficient toilets to reduce water use. It has lots of open green space; back gardens and we are near the Norfolk Heritage Park. Norfolk Park Community School is five minutes away, also near by are shops, a doctor’s surgery, the local primary school. I might even sell the car because there are lots of bus services and the tram will take you to Sheffield’s city centre. Also, you become members of Sheffield car club, which provides “pay as you go” cars for hire from under £5 per hour. Make the pupils the expert and teach their peers, a very easy way to prompt talking and listening skills and independent learning The family

13. Key Word Splat – A fun review activity which gets students in teams to talk about their keys terms, explain and justify their choices Your task in your teams is to cover your key word grid, when you see a picture that links to a key term or hear a definition use a splat counter and cover the key term. Remember only one person allowed up to the front at once, so before you come, talk to your team about possible key terms shown by the slide and no more than three key terms per picture

14. What questions do you have for Amanda James of the Housing and Neighbourhood regeneration Team of Sheffield City council . remember make them complex (more open) To prompting questioning and listening skills invite a guest speaker to school. Aston was very fortunate that Amanda James of the Housing and Neighbourhood regeneration Team of Sheffield City council came in to speak to students about the History of Park Hill Flats in preparation for their fieldtrip.

15. Task 1- You need to investigate the History of the Park Hill flats and Urban Splash plans for the development Students to work in pairs, looking around the room for clues, they can only write the information down once back their desk and must take it in turns to collect the information, so really important that students communicate their findings with each other to avoid duplication. To fill in any missing information students pair up and share Redevelopment by Urban Splash Background to the Park Hill flats

16. good presentations Bad presentations in which the presenters mumble their words and don’t speak clearly. Students focus on developing their presentation skills using cue cards and not relying on text heavy Power Points that is well planned – the presenters know exactly what they are going to say. Do not use any key terms in which the presenters look at their audience and maintain eye contact and are not reading from pre-prepared notes. the presentation lasts at least ten minutes. the presenters go into a lot of detail – some of which is not relevant. Presenters take their time and do not rush PowerPoint has lots of detail writing on the slides that has been rehearsed.

18. A wonderful learning resource to help students to investigate the changes to the Park Hill flats Contains DVD clips Pod Casts Geo referenced photographs Radio programme http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=204508203963779953020.0004bdf50fb027be8333f

19. Task – To make learning notes from the Podcasts, Amanda James of the Housing and Neighbourhood regeneration Team of Sheffield City council will talk about the History of Park hill, rehousing and the new vision Listen very carefully and highlight any key words that she uses, we will be stopping every couple of minutes to discuss and then you can make your learning notes using the key terms highlighted

20. Encourage students to develop their descriptive vocabulary Write down five adjectives to describe Park Hill flats Now use the thesauruses to find alternative words, look for ones you are not familiar with!!!!

22. 10 mins Park Hill Flats before redevelopment What you could see Appearance- What you can see, think about colours, materials, decorations, what rooms did you see? What it feels like? Safe, homely, cold, uninviting What could you hear – Think about the sound cd you completed Encourage students to develop their descriptive vocabulary and share their ideas

23. Exam application – Students share their ideas and knowledge to produce the perfect exam answer 1) Make sure you understand what the question is asking, what are the command and key words/terms? (Share ideas with talk buddy) 2) Thought shower of the points, key terms and evidence you could use to answer the question (Share ideas with talk buddy) Use a named case study to describe how you can make an urban development sustainable. ( 6 marks) 4) Now you can answer the question, remember to use your plan looking at the order you selected. Tick the evidence off once used 3) Now sequence your points ,most important piece of evidence first and try to link any together