Geogra3: geographical awareness days in June

In this week’s Geogra3,  I’m sharing three geographically-themed awareness days that are coming up in JUNE that you might find useful for topical lessons, extra-curricular activities or for assemblies.

1. World Environment Day 5th June #GenerationRestoration

As the hashtag suggests, for this year’s World Environment Day the focus is on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience.  The UN Environment Programme is being hosted in Saudi Arabia this year.  The UN has created a practical guide explaining how everyone can get involved in ecosystem restoration and you can find the PDF here.

There is an absolute abundance of resources via the website and this public Trello board is a useful place to find all relevant links, stories and social media images. But if you’re looking to highlight this day, a useful starting point is this short video (below) and a quick quiz available here:

2. World Oceans Day 8th June #WorldOceanDay #OceanClimateAction

For 2024, The Ocean Project is launching a new multi-year action theme: Catalysing Action for Our Ocean & Climate. By growing the movement through transformative collaboration, they aim to create not only a healthy blue planet, but also a more just, equitable and sustainable society.   To complement this, there is a website hosting 12 months of action, with a different theme focused on each month of 2024.  For example, in January the focus was on ocean and climate and February was on environmental justice and March was on demand for a global plastics treaty.  They are updating with new resources and further reading opportunities every month so it will be a useful resource to keep coming back to.

If you are a member of the Geography Teacher Box vault there is a relevant video on ocean governance and who owns the ocean floor.  You can find the question and answer sheets here once logged in.

3. Global Wind Day 15th June 

Global Wind Day is a worldwide event that occurs annually on 15 June. It is a day for discovering wind energy, its power and the possibilities it holds to reshape our energy systems, decarbonise our economies and boost jobs and growth.  You can highlight this day with the use of their short 60 second lectures linked to turbines covering things like why are wind turbines white? Or, you could even get students to make their own wind turbine!

Again, if you’re a member of the GTB vault there are question and answer sheets linked to Richard Hammond’s programme on wind that you can find here.

Bonus Idea: National Festival of Fieldwork with the Geographical Association 

This event now covers the full month of June, rather than just a fortnight as in previous years, and is designed to provide a focal point to encourage you to take your classes outside, whether in the school grounds, the local area or further afield.

A simple, common theme of ‘Fieldwork is for everyone’ has been chosen as this allows flexibility in deciding what to investigate to best advantage.

There are a host of useful resources on the GA website but to get you started, you might like to reference the presentation found here by scrolling down the page to the button link.  You’ll find ideas on activities to do as well as how to organise the fieldwork, ideas of where to go and even sample risk assessments.

I hope that has given you lots of inspiration, especially for those of you running Geography extra-curricular groups and I’d love to know what you get up to, so please share in the Facebook group. 

Also, if you don’t already have it, the 2024 Geography Awareness Days calendar can be found here.

PS - I love nothing more than supporting Geography teachers as we are a pretty awesome bunch.  So if you’re looking to keep teaching in a sustainable manner, explore my website and you’ll find…..

• The GTB Vault - Classroom-ready Q and A worksheets so you never need to feel guilty about showing a video in class again! New pick up and go lesson resources linked to relevant documentaries are added every month. PLUS brand new KS3 full units of work including population, rivers, economy and China are all provided as a a bonus when you join as a member.