About us
We are a group of A-level teachers who are interested to find out how we can make geographical investigations more engaging to our students, how to conduct bite-sized fieldwork and get students to take greater ownership of their learning.
Based on the syllabuses and examiners’ reports, we envisioned the kind of students we hope to nurture and examined how the purposeful learning from geographical investigations can help to derive at these desired student outcomes. We looked at a range of fieldwork methods including creative fieldwork methods to get students to sharpen their observation skills and emotionally connect them with the site. We decided to design a virtual fieldwork experience on the impacts of industries on local communities under the H2 Geography Theme 2.1 on 'Development and the Global Economy'. We decided on the learning outcomes for the investigation including big ideas. We then crafted the key and guiding questions to frame the learning experiences. We decided to revise a fieldwork package that one of our schools has done and did a site visit to collect data and take photographs and videos to create a virtual field experience through Google Earth. We then created a SLS lesson package and is shared in the community gallery.
Who are we?
Melanie Lum (MTT/Geog, AST)
N Gowri (LT/Geog, YIJC)
Poh Huay Woon (SH, YIJC)
Jonathan Ng (HOD/Humanities, NYJC)
Gunaselvi d/o Munisamy Naidu, Rebecca Wu (Teacher, TMJC)
Photo:
Geographers working at the field at Bt Batok Industrial Park A
What have we learned?
We learnt about the need to sparkle students’ curiosity (heart) about the issue so that they can come up with meaningful GI tasks. There needs to be purposeful use of secondary and primary data for an engaging field investigation.
We also learnt the importance of ensuring that the tasks should enhance students' understanding of the issue on hand, and the importance for adaptive thinking during the field investigation and we should incorporate reflection activities at every stage of the investigation.
Our Aspiration
Our NLC members will pilot test the lesson in their schools. We will share our SLS lesson in the Community Gallery.
Contact Person:
Our NLC is at the pilot testing stage. We are currently not accepting new members. However, please contact Melanie at melanie_lum@moe.gov.sg should you have any queries.