Congratulations!!!

Yesterday was A Level Results Day, and the Year 13s achieved the best A Level Geography results that there've been during my time at Swanwick (and quite possibly before that too!)... all nine of them got C grades or above!

They were the first cohort to go through the "new" A Level course, and this was the first year that it was possible to achieve an A* grade at A Level. And two of the geographers - Jo and Michael - did just that!! (Their A*s were two of only seven in the school!)

Well done Year 13 (and I guess that makes you officially "the best A Level Geography group"!!) - very best wishes for the future, whatever you are doing (even if it's not a Geography degree...).

More congratulations!!

More congratulations - this time to the Year 11 geographers who achieved a FANTASTIC set of results... A*-C grades for 73% of the group... Very very well done!!

Photo ChrisIrmo (Flickr)

Good luck to those of you going elsewhere, and I look forward to seeing lots of you again in the AS Geography group in September!!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the Year 12 and 13 geographers who received some very good exam results today, as a result of lots of hard work.

Photo ChrisIrmo (Flickr)

The very best of luck to Year 13... even those of you who are not doing Geography at uni ;-) Keep in touch, come back and visit (the blog and the dept!) and don't forget to send me some good geographical photos from all your adventures!

Exams...

I'm pleased to say that from the conversations I've had with some of the Yr11s, the exams seem to have gone pretty well so far...

Good luck to Yr13 for tomorrow!! With the new posts and using the labels at the bottoms of posts to look through what I've written about before, there should be plenty of last-minute stuff to keep you going now Lauren!

Congratulations Year 11!!

The results from the coursework and DME units arrived today... And my group did fantastically well - I am very proud of you all!!

Congratulations - and get revising now so we can have lots of As and A*s in summer!!

Yr10 and 11 - Revision Podcasts??

I posted the other day about some new revision podcasts from the BBC...

Noel Jenkins is one of the people behind the new resources, and would like to know what you think...

If you are a Yr10 or 11 student, click on the link below and complete the short survey...

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=452083399864

Revision Podcasts

BBC Bitesize now have a range of Geography podcasts that you can download and listen to on the bus to help with your revision... Then when you've listened to those, how about making your own for some of the topics that aren't covered?

Click on the picture to go to the site and get downloading!

Leave a comment and let us know what you think... Are they useful? Could they be improved? Is this a good way to revise?

GCSE Revision

As I know my Yr10 group will be busily revising all weekend for the exam on Thursday, here are a few sites to help you out. Also useful for you conscientious Yr11s who've recently had your mock exam results back....

GCSE Bitesize and S-Cool both have revision notes and questions so you can test yourself...

Alan Parkinson's GeographyPages has a good revision section.

Rob Chambers' school website, GeoBytes, has loads of revision bits and pieces and Rob is also blogging for his GCSE students: GCSEGeoBytes.

And don't forget about SAM Learning.

Let me know if you find any other useful sites by leaving a comment or emailing geogtastic@yahoo.co.uk. Don't forget though, that - assuming you've been completing classwork and homework thoroughly - your exercise book is the best place to revise from...

Tips and things to remember:
- make sure you know your case studies, and make sure you know where they are! Check your maps that you should have been labelling as we've mentioned new places...

- maps... if your map skills are a bit shaky, get practising - be sure that you can read/give 6-figure grid references and that you know your east from west!

- them proper words that geography people use... otherwise known as geographical terminology! Get revising those geographical terms - and use them!

- I've just been reading Noel Jenkins' blog for his students, and amongst the many useful and interesting things on there, I noticed this post about Levels Marking at GCSE. This is something I've struggled to explain clearly to you in the past so if you're still confused, get over to Noel's blog and read about it!