Oddizzi Review

Having taken on the role of co-ordinating humanities I was asked to review the teaching of geography throughout the school.  I then proceeded to find out how much geography teaching had taken place.  The teachers at my school felt very unconfident when it came to teaching this subject and hence had outweighed their topic lessons with more of a history focus.

When asking teachers how they felt they commented ‘how do you make finding out about capital cities or names of continents and oceans exciting’. ‘I don’t know where to start’, ‘how do you plan for oceans and continents for 6 weeks’.

So with this in mind I researched and found ‘Oddizzi’.

I researched into what the site could offer our school.  Like most schools budgets, history and geography tend to receive very little for their subject (dependent upon school and area), like us.  I thought there would be no resources out there that would not only give our teachers the subject knowledge but also provide us with up and coming resources for the amount of money I could spend.  But Oddizzi did; providing us with a year’s subscription at a fantastic price.  Amazing!  In addition this price was for my whole school not based upon the amount of pupils which can also be very expensive.

Not only do teachers get a wealth of resources like up to date photographs and maps, extension activities for those pupils who need some stretch and challenge but also gives teachers schemes of work to plan with.

We might all have photo packs of a geographical features such as ‘rivers’ but landscapes change overtime.  With Oddizzi they provide photographs and content that are relevant to today’s world.  For pupils it offers quizzes fun activities to deepen their knowledge.

I think this site is an exciting and a valuable resource that is appreciated by both teachers and pupils.  The staff now feel relieved in having something that will enable them to feel confident within the classroom teaching geography.  I am so happy that we were able to find ‘Oddizzi’ as a resource that will bring geography alive and relevant to our children of today.

Mrs Newman, Geography Coordinator, Worcestershire