Geography Teaching Today

This is a small rural school with a mixed intake. Some children have a good knowledge of the world and others not. Some children have also travelled widely. There are two classes in school one for Key Stage 1 and another for Key Stage 2. This has implications for planning the curriculum.

This Chembakolli unit of work is part of our four year rolling program for foundation subjects and was part of this year's work. The Local Studies software allowed the children to produce maps of Chembakolli easily. Through studying this locality I also wanted the children to consider how countries are stereotyped.

Selection of content - Lesson 3: The village

The children listened to a description of Chembakolli and looked at photographs of the surrounding area and the village. This information was then used to:

• make a collage of the village (lower juniors)
• map the village using the Local Studies CD. (upper juniors) This group produced some very interesting maps and they found the program very easy to use.
  
          

Resources

Download: Teaching the unit (PowerPoint)
Download: Medium term plan of work (Word)

The children enjoyed using the software and they used it very creatively. They found it easy to use and they created some detailed maps of Chembakolli. They are also aware of the problem of studying a small locality to find out what a country is like. I think they now have a better idea about what India is like.

Further Development

I would like to develop the use of this software with a different aspect of primary geography as I feel this unit of work did not use the programme to its full potential. Next time we look at the local area I will definitely use it. Other members of staff are keen to use it as well.

Links

Chembakoli (from ActionAid)

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