1st blog post in a while.💪⬇️ My school’s been focussing on methods and principles linked with checking for understanding. But why’s it so important? I’ll aim to put out some separate blog posts containing practical methods for the classroom in due course. sarahlarsen.school.blog/2025/09/22/d...

Posting these videos on here because they are too big to email them to myself and this is the only way to transfer them to a computer!! Feel free to pinch - river in its upper course in the Brecon Beacons! 🌎

Two days of preparation and I’m raring to go when the students return to school tomorrow. I always feel a little rusty after the six week break, and if that describes how you’re also feeling, just keep in mind the underlying principles of learning. 1/3

Spent the day in school today excitedly beginning to think about teaching some lower school geog for the first time in a few years. Whilst I’ve still taught KS4, I’m really looking forward to lighting some fires with the younger ones and convincing as many as possible to pick it as a GCSE option🔥🌎

Really looking forward to presenting at this event about misconceptions in the geography classroom and how to address them. What’s more, it’s FREE!! ⬇️🔥⬇️🔥

As someone who had to fight for alternative provision for my autistic teen, I couldn’t agree more…

If you missed my @The_GA session this year about tackling geographical misconceptions that our students hold, there’s another chance to catch me talking about them in September. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Link to book tickets to this free event is in the thread below. 🌎🌎🌎

As a human geographer, teaching weathering and mass movement is one of the subjects I find most tricky. However, I thoroughly enjoyed prepping and executing weathering yesterday. Kept it simple - 4 large, high quality photos on screen and… 1/2

Think this is the year of the Nordic countries 🇩🇰 🇸🇪 🇮🇸 🇮🇸 #eurovision

My entire teacher feed is literally just Eurovision posts!! Clearly this is what we all do of a mid May Saturday night! 🤣 And yes, there is a small chance that I might also be watching… 😬 #eurovision

I am excited to announce our new book, which pulls together all of different threads of what great schools do & celebrating them. We've explored curriculum, learning, behaviour, attendance, personal development, & leadership. I'm forever indebted to all schools I've visited & worked with.

Couldn’t have asked for better weather today at Eastbourne for our y10s to collect their physical fieldwork data. ☀️ Recent beach reprofiling meant some unexpected results. Prevailing wind from the SW yet shingle was higher on NE side of each groyne, not SW…

I may be a human geographer, but I have a real soft spot for learning about tectonic processes and their impact. The @discoverthewild.bsky.social session at #GAConf25 today focussed on a town I’ve been to many times - Grindavik, Iceland.

Lunch is available until 2pm. Come get some! #gaconf25

Really pertinent stuff in this piece by @katejonesteach.bsky.social Addressing the knowing-doing gap amongst staff takes time, as does unpicking reasons why some are reluctant to engage with evidence-informed strategies. Hence the need for a long term CPD curriculum which responds to these factors.

Looking forward to this time next week at the @geographicalassoc.bsky.social #GAConf25 where I’ll be speaking about and inviting delegates to share their students’ misconceptions. How can we find out what they are and what can we do to address them? Come and join me! 🌎

This is desperately sad news. As a non-specialist who has been teaching a fair bit of RE of late, her writing, posts and interactions have been and will continue to be incredibly valuable to me. My deepest condolences to her partner, family, friends and colleagues.

I’ve dispensed with the zip up wallets for my MWBs. Was too difficult to keep tabs on lids on pens and wallets were extraneous load. Now part of my exit routine is that nobody leaves their desk until boards are stacked with pens on top ready for next class to immediately begin their Do Now task.

Pin hole camera worked and the clouds stayed away!! With a bit of squinting, the ‘bite’ mark of the moon across the sun can be seen! #partialsolareclipse.

Make shift wave tank (glue box!) filled with mud and stones to demonstrate transportation, deposition and sorting today. Cloudy brown water cleared by the end of the lesson to demonstrate deposition of fine material to perfection!! Worked a treat under the visualiser! 🌎 #geographyteacher

Back to basics: no Power Point presentation, just pen, paper and a visualiser to teach the processes of erosion and transportation. Explaining and questioning as I go. 🌎 #geographyteacher

Really useful resource for the AQA Geography GCSE Pre release from my former colleague James Simmonds (I don’t think he is on here yet!) ⬇️💥⬇️💥 youtu.be/bPeWv8S9gFY?...

A rudimentary wave tank this morning (container, water, visualiser and a bit of puff 💨 !) to demonstrate the effect of wind in wave creation. Simple, but visually effective! 🌊 🌎

This graphic has just made me finally realise what an ‘equinox’ is!! (I’m a human geographer, if that’s a good enough excuse not to have known this before today!! 😬🌎)

The ‘quick, positive reminder about expectations’ at the threshold with a student whilst they enter the classroom really is an incredibly powerful way to reset slipping behaviours. Followed by non verbal signals across the lesson to show you are noticing the desired changes. 1/2

Which of these strategies are you using with your pupils? You can find further information about them on our website www.impact.wales or from the @EducEndowFoundn teaching & learning toolkit.

My teenagers know their nerdy mum too well! A superb birthday gift from them - so many fantastic examples of brutalist architecture to browse through! 🌎

If you're starting training to become a #geographyteacher this September - but didn't study #geography you've still time to book place on GA's Subject Knowledge Scholarship Programme. course details & fees below. Bookings close at end March 💚🌍 geography.org.uk/events-cpd/g...

As a lover of both Lego and data I approve of this:

I made a comment to my GCSE geog class today (in leafy Surrey) about the considerations that need to be made when teaching sensitive topics like deindustrialisation in areas affected by these issues. Not something I had to take into account, but wondering how it impacts teachers in these areas? 🌎

Really interesting read, particularly if you teach Geography AQA GCSE and do the Water option in the Resource Management unit. Although, @bbcbreakingnews.bsky.social, a map to show its location and size would have been a great addition to this article!! 🤦‍♀️ www.bbc.com/news/article...

This looks fab! Have really rated @impactwales.bsky.social ‘s resources and sketch notes for a few years now! ⬇️

Teaching deindustrialisation to my GCSE class, I decided to share some of my own holiday snaps (Hafod Morfa copper works in Swansea - ever the geographer!) from the summer. Student asked at the end of the lesson if they could get their phone out to show me some they’d taken whilst on holiday. 1/2

Conversations at parents evenings with child present too, have been absolute game changers across my time teaching. Those few sentences uttered by myself, parents and student can make a child feel seen and can be the turning point in their attitude to the subject. A tool not to be under estimated! 💪

Simple but extremely important advice here regarding needless distractions in the classroom. ⬇️

Lovely to overhear a year 11 student leaving sch after hours tonight declaring how they never would have thought they’d be staying late for revision sessions when they were in year 7. Going the extra mile to foster good relationships with harder-to-reach students really pays off.

NPQLTD passed!! ✅ 🎉

Rivers of hail and rain earlier this afternoon in Reigate… 😬

What are your go-to questioning strategies? Even if you use Pose Pause Pounce Bounce and have done so for many years, what conditions are required to make it an effective technique to deploy? https://bit.ly/4gdxbu7 #PPPB

*** NEW POST *** When talking about education, do we just jump to the end? @greeborunner.bsky.social asks that we give the full picture... wp.me/p7mhqT-OC

Loved contributing to this! Cannot believe it was four years ago! Arguably still the best book out there for the beginning and the expert geography teacher. Something for all! 🌎

Thoroughly enjoyed mentoring an ITT for their second placement across the last three weeks. Current EduResearch and the ITTCCF allows for a really tight link between my observations/feedback and pedagogy being taught by the provider. All singing from the same hymn sheet!

Really heartening to see student voice videos in staff CPD today. Students fully aware of the benefits of retrieval-based Do Nows - why they need to be effortful and their advantages for schema-building. 1/2

Mentoring a trainee currently and finding it so useful to provide scripts to model how this can be used, to explicitly demonstrate a technique. Eg, when settling a class before dismissal: ‘just waiting for 30% of the class to stop talking… and now just 10%… Thank you yr8. Back row off you go.’ 1/2

Snow in West Sussex is so rare that we come out of our houses to just stand and experience it when it happens! First snow for years!! ⛄️ #weatherwatch

A really useful summary and reminder that a curriculum is not just a collection of facts, and that strong curriculum design, delivered through wider synoptic links, whilst sharing HOW this knowledge is known is vital, along with regular retrieval and opps to revisit prior knowledge in diff contexts.

If anyone wants to discover more about feedback, visualiser use and how becoming research-informed can move their practice forward, do check out my blog posts… sarahlarsen.school.blog

One of my favourite things to do is to poke around disused industrial or railway-related sites. Finally managed to spend some time doing just that at a spot near me on the Downs Link today (former Guildford to Shoreham line that fell victim to Dr Beeching in 1966). 🚂

The votes are in and we have a winner! 🥧🎄 Success criteria seemed to change every week but the local small business beat the big chains hands down! @paulclinepsy.bsky.social I’m wondering if you’ve found similar?!