Geography is an important part of a child’s education and can be a really rewarding subject to teach, as you introduce children to the incredible world around them. From counties to countries and rivers to oceans, you should see teaching geography as an incredible way to expand the minds of the children you’re teaching, whatever age they are.
Helping your pupils to understand the impact the lives they live can have on the environment could also lead to more consciously environmentally friendly choices as they grow older, such could be the impact of your teaching. Below we’ve listed our top teaching hacks to help engage your pupils in geography.
1. Stay current
Some of the curriculum you will need to teach your pupils will be about events that happened many years ago, such as Mount St Helens erupting. If you can bring the information you’re teaching your pupils up to date by linking it to more recent event they may have heard of or even lived through, you’re more likely to engage them in the subject you’re trying to teach.
2. Don’t limit them to the classroom
You need to capture their interest and curiosity and then you need to give them the information they’re required to learn by the government. You could ask your children to pretend their reporting on the scene of an oil leak, mudslide, or volcano eruption – by appealing to their imaginations, you’re more likely to help the information you’re teaching register with them.
3. Embrace first-hand learning
As always when it comes to teaching, try to make it as fun as possible. When teaching your students about the globe, other countries, or even places throughout the UK, set them a project to find out as much as possible about that place to present back to their classmates.
They’ll feel empowered to go out and source information by speaking to family members or friends who may have traveled to the locations, or by searching the internet. You could bring in new foods to your lessons from around the world, or highlight special traditions or holidays celebrated across the globe to make the lessons you teach feel fun and interactive for your pupils.
4. Tailor your teaching to encourage curiosity
Find out what your pupils are interested in and try to connect their interests with the topics you’re trying to teach. Let’s say you’re teaching your class about Spain; you might have pupils who love sport, so you can talk about the famous football clubs in the country. You could discuss holiday destinations in Spain, traditional foods, and outfits – try as much as possible to direct these different pieces of information to the pupils you know it will inspire so that they love learning geography as much as you love teaching it!
For more teaching hacks to help you have your most successful year of teaching, read the rest of our blog.
