Result

Congratulations! The results are in and geo slades' level 1 class are official awesome.

So today I handed back your results from your Level 1 Geography practice exams. If you missed the feedback power point or wanted to have another little looksie to find out where you went wrong, click HERE.

As I said today, overall I feel that you guys did a great job of these exams. Those of you that studied (which was the majority rather than the minority) wrote some fantastic answers and I was really proud of what you achieved. You should be proud too! Even if these results weren't quite what you were aiming for, they give you a good check point of where you are currently at and what you now need to do to improve to get to that next level.

I have read through your feedback sheets you completed today and you have all picked up on things you need to work on going forward. I have also assigned some kitty cat stickers as promised earlier so look forward to that tomorrow!

Although these results were largely positive there is still work to be done! There is definitely still room for improvement for most of you but it is great to identify those areas that you have excelled in and those that need more work. My pearls of wisdom for the day are to celebrate your successes and learn from your mistakes.

The rest of the week will consist of going through the 1.1 and 1.2 papers in more depth and then a fun Friday to finish the term.

Well done on your results!

Bloggidy, blog, blog

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all busy at work revising hard for your exams as they are now literally just around the corner! Just in case you missed it, HERE is the link to the TGS Level 1 Geography school exam information.

We have our final Geography lesson before these start tomorrow so get thinking about any questions that you need to ask now! In saying that, don't forget that once you go on exam leave it does not mean that I wash my hands of you, I welcome any queries, comments and essays you want marked after this point, just email me at b.sladen@takapuna.school.nz, send a message on facebook, post in our facebook group page or pop in and visit during a break from your other exams.

Today was spent revising skills with everyone present attempting the 2012 Skills paper in pairs to practice the types of questions you could get asked. Tomorrow's plan is to finish this off and have some last minute advice on your exam.

I hope you all took my advice and got your exam stationery all organised over the weekend, if not, you best get on to that ASAP.

See you tomorrow for our last lesson and do yourself a favour and get amongst some study tonight. DO NOT DO THIS....

Doomsday Prep

Hi everyone,

Today our focus was on what to study for the upcoming September exams, examination technique and then a recap of skills with a quick amazing race.

HERE is the powerpoint we went through in class today which sets out what parts of each standard will be covered. Remember, because we are giving you this information the expectation is that you attempt these exams to your very best abilities!

Your task for tonight was to practice drawing your map of India FIVE times. Repetition is key to learning map outlines so follow these 4 simple steps.

STEP ONE: Take a minute to really look at the shape and the location of areas/cities
STEP TWO: Turn your book over and draw as much as you can remember
STEP THREE: Compare your drawing with your book to see what you have missed
STEP FOUR: Repeat steps 1-3 until you are at one with the map.

Your task for this weekend is to get your plastic bag of stationary items all sorted and arranged.
Key items include:

• 3 blue or black pens
• 4 colouring pencils (red, yellow, blue, green - brown is optional)
• Calculator
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Eraser
• String
• Pencil sharpener 
• Highlighter

Time to start getting organised, stationery cat is. Only one revision session left next week which is on Tuesday lunchtime and is a Q and A session on skills. 

Happy map drawing!

We're getting low, low, low, low, low, low, low

Today was all about weather and we learnt 2 new skills for you to utilise in your upcoming 1.4 skills exam.

Firstly, we looked at how to construct a climate graph. Climate graphs have a double axis and show both rainfall and temperature of a region over the course of a year. The average amount of rainfall (mm) per month is shown as blue, shaded in bars and the average temperature (C) is drawn as a red line graph with the points plotted in the middle of each column. When drawn, they should look like this...



We completed the climate graph for Mumbai on page 54 of your 1.4 Skills exercise book and then also wrote a couple of sentences to interpret what this climate graph shows. Things to include here would have been the average temperature range for the area (calculate this by taking the highest temperature and subtracting the lowest temperature from it) and looking at the season when it receives the most rainfall. Remember when writing about seasons that there are 4 seasons, each season lasts for 3 months, in NZ (the Southern hemisphere) summer starts at the beginning of December. Also, think about whether the area of your climate graph is in the Northern or Southern hemisphere as in the Northern hemisphere their seasons will be the opposite of ours.

Next up we looked at how to interpret weather maps by reading through page 46 and then completing the exercises on page 47 and 48. Important things to remember here were....




Low pressure systems: These are areas of low pressure and usually bring bad weather with high winds. Wind flows in a clockwise direction in a low pressure system, sometimes known as a cyclone or depression when the air pressure gets very low.

High pressure systems: These are areas of high pressure and usually bring stable weather with low winds. Wind flows in a anti-clockwise direction and these are sometimes known as an anti-cyclone.

Due to the difference in the way wind circulates in high and low pressure systems, this means you can figure out what the wind direction will be for a given place. Remember, wind direction is always written as the direction it is coming from. e.g. Southerly winds are cold because they have come from the South pole.

If you were one of the many that forgot their skills book today, please ensure it is packed into your bag and is brought to school on Thursday ready for our next lesson.

Things to look forward to on Thursday include: exam preparation (what is going to be in your September exams), what to bring to exams and some more mapping and graphing. See you then!

Population Round Up and scare mongering tactics

Hi everyone,

This will probably be our last population related blog post for awhile as after today we will be moving on to doing some skills work for your 1.4 paper and some brief revision of 1.1 Extreme Natural Events in preparation for your school exams which are fast approaching! Just in case you were wondering how close, here is a little reminder...

FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER LEVEL 1 GEOGRAPHY EXAM

Today's lesson consisted of completing your 1.2 Population Revision sheet (see Friday's blog for a copy of this if you have misplaced it) and then we had a look at a past NCEA question about the composition of the population. Everyone then attempted to write an answer to this question which Mr Whipp is going to mark and get back to you as soon as possible. 

Don't forget this week's revision sessions will be on responses of different groups of people to an extreme natural event. It would be a really great idea to attend one of these sessions as typically this question when asked in exams can be hard to interpret and you could benefit from a little more preparation.