Geogra3: Geography awareness days in July

In this week’s Geogra3,  I’m sharing three geography awareness days that are coming up in JULY that you might find useful for topical lessons, extra-curricular activities or for assemblies.

1. Canada Day 1st July

I struggled to find any specific resources that would be appropriate for the secondary age range, linked to Geography.  However, as a big fan of BBC’s Race Across the World series, I remembered that last year’s competition saw 5 teams navigating their way across Canada.  So if you were looking to mark the day, I would recommend showing one of the episodes as inspiration (see BBC iPlayer/website for episodes).  Then ask students to follow the same route across Canada, firstly plotting on a map.  Then ask students to act as travel agents providing a travel itinerary to each of the checkpoints.  I would put in various parameters e.g. set a budget, the need to be sustainable, a time limit and the potential landmarks to visit along the way.  They could then present to the class and get points for each element they manage to achieve.  Just an idea!

2. Plastic Bag Free Day 3rd July

As a stark contrast to Canada Day, this day has a wealth of resources suitable for use in Geography lessons!  I’ve limited myself to three to let you know about.  

Firstly, shameless plug, I am just working on a question and answer sheet resource to be added to the GTB vault in July linked to this video on plastic: 

To get this and over 100 other resources linked to geographical documentaries you can join the GTB vault via this link.

Secondly, the Royal Geographical Society has a variety of resources linked to ocean plastics including a mapping exercise linked to the container ship of plastic ducks that made their way around the world.  You can find the webpage here.

And thirdly, a resource I’m particularly excited about, is a full scheme of work on ocean plastics available at Encounter Edu 

As a teacher you can subscribe for free and download resources.  This unit offers lots of activities including a decision making exercise that can be used as an assessment and also fieldwork opportunities both on the school grounds and in the local area.  I’m keen to explore the site further as there seem to be a lot of other ideas too.

3. World Population Day 11th July

Official information about the day can be found at the UN website where there is in-depth coverage about the current situation as well as links to relevant short video clips which you can find here.

However, if you wish to address the concept of an ageing population in your lesson, here are some FREE resources that you might find useful.

• Lesson presentation - here you will find a starter activity introducing some keywords for the lesson, as well as an initial consideration of both the positives and negatives of an ageing society.  There are also some suggestions for further application and follow up tasks, linked to the documentary.
• Video - the lesson centres around this documentary: The demographic time bomb on the Bloomberg website which is about 40 minutes long.
• A student worksheet to accompany the video can be found here and the answer sheet can be found here. More resources like this can be found in the GTB vault.

Don’t forget, if you’re looking to overhaul or revamp a full unit on population, there is a classroom-ready scheme of work, lesson presentations, homework and end of unit assessment available inside the GTB vault.  You can see the lesson titles included on the learning journey below:

And finally, a little extra - there are two major sporting events starting this month:

• Wimbledon tennis tournament starts on 1st July.  Twinkl have a variety of resources including one on the location of past winners and another one on practising grid references.  They are also offering a free 30 day trial at the moment so might be worth grabbing these now.  Alternatively, there is a workbook available on TpT that has been compiled introducing students to the global links within sports, specifically tennis.  Or, for a spot of wider reading, you could turn this article into a homework task, based on the 50,000 mile journey of a tennis ball.

• Paris Olympics begins 26th July.  The Geography Geek has published a marvellous mini scheme of work on TES.  It includes 3 lessons: Medals - looks at the success of countries and compares this with level of development; Venues - uses maps to look at where the Summer Olympic venues will be located; Sustainability - evaluates the attempts at sustainability for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

And that's it for this month!  If you'd like to keep up to date with more upcoming awareness days, why not grab my FREE calendar here.