As a year 7 teacher this year I get to juggle multiple curriculum hats. I love it,  except for the fact that I suck at geography. Let’s rephrase that, it’s an area with ample opportunities for development… (que my growth mindset!)

One thing I am good at is throwing myself into new challenges, especially when it’s student driven. So a few months ago my  year 7’s started telling me about their hobby – Geocaching. Even to my outsider eyes it reeked of geo skills. The evil villain living in the back of my mind started plotting instantly.

I started grasping around to build my oh so basic understanding of this field, and then realised that was the wrong direction. Why fake it when I have the real thing? Student experts! My four experts were dubbed as such and took on the role of fielding all questions and leading our class excursion to find three real geocaches in the local area (this was our entry event).

So my master explores marched us on out of the school with the efficiency and speed you would expect of those intent on discovery. Equipped with our iPhone compass’ we unearthed three geocaches, feeling like real live explorers.

The next step was to create our own!

Side note: Ok, just go with me for a second… what if we could merge Year 7 Geo skills with Year 12 ‘Discovery’ AOS? Worth a try? This is my goal next year. Our geocache presentations could the entry for Year 12 Discovery…