GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS PLEASE HELP!!!!

[Unemployable]

I´ve been offered a PT job teaching Geography out of the blue and starting next week!!! I worked as a French teacher for a while 10 years ago and have no real clue about what teaching Geography will involve.. Do you have any tips, good links to give me a headstart on lesson planning..? ANYTHING to give me a bit of confidence! Links to class management, discipline ideas would be good to. It´s a private school by the way. What about the pay scale?

Thinking through Geography is a great book by David Leat about using thinking skills and some more interesting techniques to present the suject. Loads of the publishers websites have 'taster' sections for their online content that are free.

Thinking through Geography looks great! Thanks.

Geogteach, I´ve got Thinking Skills on order.. How did you typically put accross the subject on a day-to-day level? I won´t be doing the standing up and lecturing bit to 14 -16 year olds for example. What are good techniques to lead in to the texts and activities in the course book? I have no teachers book to assist... Would really welcome your input

Do you know what sort of stuff you are covering? Here at this age it is obviously a gcse syllabus, are you following a set text? There is lots of new stuff around now about things like the geography of fashion / crime / sport which might appeal at this sort of age. If you can give me some idea of a topic you think you might be doing i'll come up with some ideas.

Ì´ll be starting with agriculture and settlements and urban growth with Years 10 and 11... haven´t dared look at 6th form stuff yet and want to get a feel of how things are before I have a look.. Former teachers seem to cover only 2-3 units in the course of a YEAR (this seems v little to me - what do you think? but don´t know yet how much work their English language skills will need. General school seems to encourage creativity rather than high academic standards.. REally grateful for your input Geogteach, as this subject is absolutely new to me and it has been 10 years since I stepped in the classroom...

Right, don't know if you are covering a syllabus but I think agriculture is very 'dry'. If you have some freedom then I would probably go for something like picking a product like a bananna and following its life cycle, start with growing conditions, where it grows etc, perhaps look at working conditions for producers,go on to stuff like fair trade. There are loads of resources about banannas.
Settlement is crying out for some sort of field trip in my opinion. At this level we used to do a piece of coursework mapping land use of a local settlement (can cover models if you need to) and a decision making exercise about where to build new housing in the town.
Given the language issues you face I would definately encourage some group work to allow them to support each other. Use photos for starter exercises get them to comment on what they see, or perhaps suggest what the place was like before or after. Data collection and presentation could also be a good approach as less language is needed.
If you actually need to get subject specific language accross to them a good exercise is to use cards with a word on one side and a definition on the other (not the right one). Each student has a card, first student reads their word, others then have to say if they have the correct definition (some discussion may be necessary if more than one thinks theirs is right), that person then reads the word on their card and people again volunteer if their card has the correct definition. Hope that makes sense.
If your students are from different parts of the world you could get them to research a settlement in their home country and present it to the class, maybe use what they find out to talk about settlement hierachies, or general characteristics of settlements.
Good luck it all sounds a bit vague, if you get more info and want more help let me know

This is v helful - thanks!

Did you teach 6th form too? I´ve had no experience of this and wonder how they are handled, what type of activities work well.. I seem to remember from A level that we spent most of our time just taking notes : ( Can´t remember why I enjoyed it so much!

Oh, I like your banana idea but all the reaources that I´ve found are either the wrong age range or have to be paid for. Have found a few lovely things though other than that though.. I really am fortunate in that I have almost complete freedom in what I do - I only wish there were English language resources somewhere near me : ( What do you think of the Waugh teachers books by the way, if you are familiar with them.. Are they worth buying? Will they be inspirational?

Inspiration is not a word I tend to associate with Mr Waugh! But you will find that an awful lot of places use them. The activities tend to be extremely dry. Have you tried any of the NGO's (Oxfam etc) for resources , they can be cheap or low cost.
I have taught A level and I would tend to down 'the kid do the work' route aiming for a presentation or display or something as an end product, if you've got lots of freedom i'd go with something topical - you are usually gaurenteed a good hurricane at this time of year (I know only geography teachers regard natural disasters as exciting!), or something more general like AIDS, perhaps the impact of a new development - stadium / supermarket whatever.