Earth-shattering!

Today, most of the geography department left for (a very wet, windy and probably snowy) Wales on a five-day field trip with the A level students. You have to be made of stern stuff to be a geographer - I'm not so I was very grateful to be indoors all day!

The lesson I taught today was about earthquake prediction, preparedness and protection, using the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 as a case study. I am very lucky as lessons I'm teaching have already been prepared by someone else and so all I have to do is tweak them a bit for each particular group.

One of my 'tweaks' today was to include an earthquake simulation and drill in the lesson. I had no idea if it would work but, thanks to the enthusiasm and imaginations of the kids, it was terrific! I started with a video of a Japanese classroom earthquake drill, with siren and warning message playing, then I quickly went to another video which was actual footage of the earthquake taken in a school. As soon as the siren went off I shouted 'DROP AND COVER!' and down under the desks they all went! Because I'm not a qualified teacher, I had a cover supervisor in the room and he was brilliant, going around shaking the desks. The students did a lot of 'proper' work in the lesson but it's amazing how they pay attention when you tell them at the start of the lesson that we're going to have our very own earthquake at some point! For added effect I did a surprise earthquake near the end as well. I wish their parents could see how quickly they moved - bet they don't at home, ha, ha! The idea was really to try and get them to understand what it must have been like to be in the earthquake. Of course, no way is that really possible but they hopefully with have gained some idea. It was such a reflief as although this was a different group, I feel a bit more confident now in dealing with my more 'behaviourally-challenging' class come Monday morning.

Always trying to keep things up-to-date and relevant, I told them about the Fukushima nuclear plant being back in the news a couple of days ago but if any of them say I showed them a picture of a frazzled rat I shall deny it...

;-)))