Geography is all around us — in both our physical and human worlds.
As part of the Irish Secondary School Geography curriculum, students have to engage in two classroom-based assessments (CBAs).
The first of these — in 2nd Year, where students are aged 13-14 — is a Structured Inquiry titled: Geography in the News.
Geography in the News gives students an opportunity to engage with the world around them.
This learning experience takes place during class time over three weeks, and students then submit their final project.
It is a wonderful opportunity for students to focus on a Geographical event that interests them and create a project in a format that best highlights their understanding of it.
I designed this journal, for use with Pages for iPad, to assist students as they engage with their structured inquiry.
They are encouraged to use the journal to suit the chosen format of their final project.
It is flexible by design, and can be used as a planning guide, interactive journal, or as a portfolio.
They can delete pages they don’t need and can add extra template pages by tapping ‘+’ in the bottom left of the screen.
First, they research and draw conclusions about a real-life geographical event, as reported in the media.
To do this, students focus on these key geographical questions:
Who, what, where, when, how, and why?
They can submit their completed structured inquiry in any format or in a mixture of formats. This could include video, photo, maps, artwork, text, graphic design, infographics, animation, a podcast, music and more!
This provides students with lots of choice, allowing them to personalise the format of their chosen project.
Students can use pinboard pages to gather their research and ideas, and then use mind map template pages as they interpret and evaluate their data.
Inspired by the title, ‘Geography in the News’, the journal has a news and media theme. There are icons and template pages based on newspapers, radio, TV news shows, and podcasts.
Some of these pages include media placeholders, making it even easier for students to add images, screenshots, and videos to their project.
Once they have researched and gathered all their data, it's time for students to get creative as they present the information in their final project. They can showcase their chosen topic in any format or in a mixture of formats. This could include video, photo, maps, artwork, text, graphic design, infographics, animation, a podcast, music, and more!
Although I designed this journal for use with the Irish Secondary School Geography curriculum, it could easily be adapted to suit any context. Feel free to edit, add and delete pages or content to suit your classroom and your students. (To edit, tap the elements on each page and then tap ‘Unlock’.)
Eoin, I love the flexibility of this inquiry, it is such a creative way to assess student knowledge! Your guide and instructions for students is so helpful. And wonderful students are given a variety choices of media to show what they know.
Such a good model for assessment. Appreciate the Pages journal download!
It is one of my favourite parts of their three year journey with Geography at that level. Such a wonderful opportunity to learn and develop new skills as they showcase their understanding!
The journal emerged out of necessity during the first Covid lockdown to help outline and scaffold the learning experience for them during remote learning, but has been very successful and central to how my students continue to learn and engage with the inquiry process since we returned to school.
It is so interesting to hear about the creative initiatives teachers put together during the Covid lockdown that remain viable and workable in any educational environment - inspiring!
I totally agree! Even in times of such great difficulty, a lot of great work, ideas and resources came out of those lockdowns. It is wonderful to see those continue to be used as teachers reflect on and evaluate those experiences.
Love this learning journal, Eoin! The scaffolding and flexibility to support students' creative expression make this a great tool for learning. Excited to share this post with others!
Yes, exactly! I think the strength of this definitely lies in the scaffolding, and the creative freedom this then afford students within each learning experience — whether it’s this example or others.
Beautifully designed scaffold for student inquiry! I enjoy seeing parallels to Challenge Based Learning, specifically in the Engage and Investigate phases. How amazing would it be to empower students to create an actionable solution from a Challenge they framed from their geography inquiry and research! You are so generous to share such high-quality content for the classroom-- thank you!
Posted on January 09, 2023
Eoin, I love the flexibility of this inquiry, it is such a creative way to assess student knowledge! Your guide and instructions for students is so helpful. And wonderful students are given a variety choices of media to show what they know.
Such a good model for assessment. Appreciate the Pages journal download!