Well, we're proud to say that's true - for mapping and diagrammatical clarity they're certainly invaluable. However Year 8 this week found another use for them - for reading!
In their lessons this week, Year 8 tried reading news reports normally aimed at Year 9/iGCSE students about the problems and solutions of Wind Farms. By colour-coding certain bodies of texts, each student was able to sift through a large piece of text and they were more able to easily identify themes and topics within a detailed report of the benefits and negative impacts of Wind energy producing technologies in their Global Warming issues lessons.
Introducing students to higher level work can be intimidating - but our bold students are ambitious and took the task in hand with an enthusiastic diligence and attention to detail. Suddenly, a seemingly endless double page of words became more easily broken down - and more comprehensible, even for our EAL students. This technique is used by senior students to section their ideas and find themes - so Year 8 also saw the future of their education as well as understanding some of the rural and urban conflicts that exist with the growth of Wind Farms in our societies.
Mark Stimpson
Head of Geography / KS3 - IB Geography / 8MS Form Tutor