Independent research blog

I've set up another blog for my class:
http://class5k.edublogs.org/

This one will be used to set tasks for them as part of their independent research. They've each chosen a country to research and are going to do a short presentation at the end of term. I'm hoping that the blog will encourage them to continue with their research at home.

I've also set up a wikispace from there:
http://class5k.wikispaces.com/

I'm going to try having each of them write a page about the country they are researching, in a similar way to this one which Doug Belshaw set up for GCSE history. In his blog, he describes how he went about it. With much younger students I'll need to provide a lot more guidance, and I don't envisage them editing each other's work, but I'll try it and see how it goes!!

Geography - our trip round the world

To link with our topic on weather this term, I've given each child a passport / travel journal booklet to collect information about different countries. Initially, I'm going to model how I want these to be filled in and I will choose the countries we visit on our virtual tour of the world. Later on, the children will be choosing their own countries and independently researching those.

I've started a class blog to record our comments and links to useful websites. I've written the first posts, but future posts will hopefully be written by the children (and approved by me before being published!).

I've also been using images of the current country as the background for my desktop on the IWB. The easiest way I've found is to search Google images and select medium or large pictures. When you find the picture you want, right-click and choose 'Set as Background'. You could also use your own digital photos. This has started a few interesting discussions and enabled the class to see photos of a wide range of locations.