The Hunger Games: A Cross-Curricular Project

Since being involved in resilience I hear many varied excerpts of books aimed at our pupils. One of the things that surprised me about this was just how few of these popular books I had read. Last Easter I decided to read The Hunger Games, as I had seen a trailer for the first film and my interest was piqued. Throughout the novel I kept making references to real world situations and couldn't escape some of the geographical themes that were explored in the book.

I decided to investigate the possibility of a cross-curricular project and was pleased when colleagues in the English Department shared my enthusiasm. Following several planning meetings with Amy Dare, we had roughed out areas that each subject could cover and identified themes that complimented both the Geography and English curriculums.

The dystopian style of the novel was a particular point of interest as so much of the geography that pupils pick up from current affairs is focussed on natural disaster and conflict. During the lessons pupils were able to draw on references to Syria, the Ukraine and Hurricane Katrina. It was pleasing to see that both the boys and girls were keen to read more about the story behind our scheme of work, a number of the Year Eight pupils even showed me their copies of the book they had selected for reading in resilience sessions.

The assessment element of this scheme of work was significant in proving, learning linked to popular fiction is an excellent way to make the geography relevant to pupils. In the lead up to the assessment we had studied natural and built environments that felt "dystopian" as places had been abandoned or ravaged by natural disasters. Pupils understood that dystopian novels combined difficult elements such as political problems and a lack or resources. To make the assessment as accessible as possible I decided to give pupils the choice between writing their assessment or debating it. Year Eight pupils have experience of using "talk" as a vehicle for assessment as the Geography department uses this in Year Seven and Year Eight topics the pupils had already studied. Many pupils chose to talk, whilst a smaller proportion were seated at the edge of the classroom at tables with paper. I am always impressed at the mature approach pupils adopt when debating. Very few behaviour sanctions were needed as pupils were engaged in listening to one another and looking for their opportunity to add to the debate.

For colleagues interested in trialling a talk assessment, I would recommend creating a tick column criteria sheet as this helps with recording how well the pupils perform and is essential to provide individual written feedback. I have generated a few short hand codes, that used along with some key words helps me to assess and level the pupils. Finally, if you are considering this type of activity but are uncertain of how pupils will respond, I would say that so long as pupils are given preparation time to script their ideas, on the whole each of my classes thoroughly enjoyed this change of activity.

Power 3 Planning

Power 3 Planning

This technique is designed to support pupils with planning the structure for a piece of extended writing that may have detailed sentences and paragraphs. I have continued to find this beneficial over the last few years.

I first observed this technique when I was fortunate enough to travel to Ontario, Canada as part of the DfE funded TIPD scheme. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic Dostrict Board for their hospitality and range of exceptional ideas. We saw the power 3 planning tool being used in an elementary school with grade 2 pupils who were around 7 years old. Pupils were completing some writing about their favourite activities to do at the weekend. With guidance and modelling from the teacher, pupils offered ideas such as going to the park. This was extended by explaining the the swings were fun as you could go really high. Pupils independently added two more ideas of their own to build the plan for their paragraph. What struck me as powerful was that once pupils had the keywords listed, they wrote cohesive sentences with little support from the teacher.

Since returning I decided that this would be especially useful to support pupils when planning assessments. I often find that the pupils struggle to know how to develop and link evidence about places. Another problem is waffling and repetition. Using the power 3 helps them to establish links and plan out their paragraphs independently. If pupils are allowed to plan collaboratively this can benefit mixed ability groups. I also find that when pupils complete plans on A3 paper in teams, these can be beneficial if a pupil has missed the planning lesson as the A3 plans can be bluetacked around the room for use during the assessment. Stem words can be provided to help support pupils, or completed Power 3 plans can be critiqued by pupils, this worked especially well when the power 3 plan was deliberately muddled as pupils were able to reorganise information to establish better links between facts and create paragraphs that made more sense.

Precise, descriptive language

Precise, descriptive language

I recently saw an excellent resource that was being shared by teachers on Twitter, to encourage the use of more precise language and to broaden the vocabulary of pupils. Geoff Barton has published his list of 100 words to sharpen your expression, this got me thinking as to how it could be used within Geography. 

I decided to work on some creative writing with Year 8 who are coming to the end of a topic on coasts and coral reefs. Pupils were introduced to 3 "Webber's Wonder Words" (thanks to Geoff's list). Pupils were given examples of poems available online and read them to unpick ways the author had made the poem appealing, including sentence length, rhyme and rythym. We then snowballed words that could make it into our poems including colours, sounds and feelings. Once pupils had a bank of words to choose from they were introduced to the words arcane, lurid and iridescent. One pupil was inspired to add translucent as he felt that would better describe the look of jelly fish (now they were really getting it about being precise with language)!

The results were a mixture of visually and linguistically interesting poems. Some pupils chose to echo the sea through their sentence length and layout of this work. 

Almost all of the pupils could confidently put these words into a sentence and they left being able to spell and define the selected words. Next time I plan to use a wider variety and encourage debate about the precise meanings of these words, maybe throw in a few red herrings and dictionary work to support their skills at questioning and defining words.

Lucy Webber - Head of Geography