Geography Teaching Today

This unit of work focuses on how pupils can learn to describe and compare their own and a distant locality.

Course Leader: The children had previously been introduced to creating maps and plans in the school grounds. An introductory lesson encouraged the children to locate and identify the physical and human features on the Island of Struay. They applied their knowledge from the introductory unit (School Playground) to devise symbols for a key, and to then locate features on their map of Struay. Cross-curricular learning is evident, particularly linked to ICT and literacy.

We chose to share this activity because the QCA unit is a popular choice in Year 2 classrooms. Through her PowerPoint presentation: An Island Home, Jackie shows how she developed a range of teaching and learning activities.

This unit builds on earlier work carried out in the immediate locality of the school and seeks to develop an understanding of the diversity of place and people's individual experience of place.

Jackie has adapted the unit imaginatively and creatively and referenced a number of pertinent cross cross-curricular links. We hope that viewing this PowerPoint will inspire you to make greater use of images of place in your teaching.

Download: Planning Document (What do I want the children to know and do?)
Download: An Island Home PowerPoint (How the teaching and learning activities were developed)
Download: Coll Photos PowerPoint (Teaching resource)

The Coll photos were sourced from www.geograph.org.uk - they were taken by Angela Strelluk and made available under the Creative Commons licence.

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