"Look at it this way"

Thanks to Rob Chambers for the link to this fun quiz. Locate that Landmark would be useful for younger students to find well known places, which they could then investigate further. Which of them are: a) natural features b) man-made c) located in National Parks d) World Heritage Sites etc. You could also do it as a competition, as speed is of the essence as well as accuracy. On my first go on my phone I scored 10,750 on Level 1 - can you beat that? Also useful for UK Geography introduction - UK is important in GCSE Geography under the new specifications. Those taking the UK Citizenship test also need to be aware of many of these places too.

I went to UEA earlier in the week to see Robert MacFarlane in conversation, discussing and reading from his book Landmarks. It was part of the Norwich Literacy Festival. I've blogged about the book previously with an early review, and also the long association with Robert's work and Geography since 2003 and ' Mountains of the Mind '. I've used it as inspiration for a number of projects over the years. It was a chance to hear Robert read from the book, and talk about his personal inspirations and the process of creating it, starting with a trip to Lewis and the discovery of a glossary of peat moorland terms. The section he read has an important message about landscape and the difficulty of writing about it, particularly when it was so apparently uniform. There was also a reminder of the phrase mamba , which I've used before ... I didn't take notes but preferred to listen. As Robert said, if he was to take notes while on trips that would be a barr...

An initial ‘review’ of a book I've been looking forward to for some time... Robert MacFarlane’s books have appeared on this blog regularly since it started, and featured in numerous teacher CPD sessions, and lessons with my students. I’ve been looking forward to the latest book as it continues the exploration of landscape and the way that it is described in words that was a feature of previous books. Regular readers will know that I used ‘The Old Ways’ and ‘The Living Mountain’ as a way of exploring the Cairngorms and developing mapskills using Digimap for Schools at the SAGT Conference a few years ago.  I’ve also referenced books such as ‘Mountains of the Mind’ in my KS3 landscapes toolkit book ‘Look at it this Way’. Landmarks starts by explaining that it is a book about “ the power of language…. to shape our sense of place”. Chapters on different types of ‘lands’ are interspersed with entries from what is called the ‘word hoard’: a collection of dialect words ...