This is my first entry onto my new Blog. Thanks to Seb Gasse for his help setting it up and for interupoting his lunch.

As my prfile shows I am an Advanced Skills teacher in Norolk for Geography. If you would like to contact me with any questions or information please don't hesitate. I work closely with Rob Lodge (Norolflk County Advisor) and can visit your department or school to assist with any topic from schemes of work to using ICT. You can get outreach request forms from the Norfolk esinet site under 'AST'.

I will be running an ICT and iNteractive Whiteboard session for NQT's in Norolfk and will post the agenda and resources on here for people to download.

Thanks Ben Utting

Today, the 23rd November 2006, Dereham Northgate High School hosted the Geography Network meeting for this term. It was run by Rob Lodge with 9 geography colleagues, as well as Dale Banham, Humanities advisor for Suffolk.

The first session was run by myself on strategies to help pupils with extended writing assessments and tasks. It was divided into ideas to provide pupils with the relevent information to talk about, along with ideas of how to help pupils actually write the piece. These built upon some of the ideas discussed at the previous Geography Conference by Liz Taylor.

Discussion followed concerning the use of Criteria for Success, Word Mats, Text types and BIG/LIttle points when writing.

After this Rob Lodge discussed the use of data with some examples and the new National Curriculum impliocations in Geography.

It was a useful afternoon with some interesting diascussion on extended writing in Geography.