Geography Teaching Today

Portway Junior School is a large suburban junior school situated on the outskirts of Derby. There are three classes in Y3, Y5 and Y6 and two in Y4. Kathryn works for two days a week in Y4.

'An Indian Journey' aims to combine ICT, Music, Geography, Literacy and Art. Following a reading of the story of 'Mushir and the Magic Rickshaw' pupils were asked to work in pairs to create a map that they felt showed the main features of Kalpanagar. View the story.

Find out how Kathryn developed the learning in the 'Learning Journal' PowerPoint presentation below. A selection of other resources from the unit are also available.

Resources

Download: Learning Journal (PowerPoint)
Download: Medium term plan of work for this unit (Word)
Download: 'Map Mushir's feelings' (Word) 
Download: 'Music composition plan' (Word)
Download: The finished composition (PDF)

Listen to the children performing - (Requires Windows Media Player) play this with the Adobe pdf sheet open.

Some maps drawn using the Local Studies software 

Pupils thought carefully about the main character's feelings throughout the story, adding emoticons to their Local Studies maps along with appropriate picture images.

Evaluation

Our school is currently involved with Creative Partnerships and we have actively tried to be more creative in our teaching. I was pleased, therefore, that this unit covered Geography, Literacy, Music and ICT. I felt that pupils responded well to the unit and were quick to understand the basics of the Local Studies software.
I had planned to use the Digital Blue cameras but decided to use Audacity instead as I realised that we would be pushed for time.

Further Development

I would try to allocate more time at the end of the unit for pupils to improve their Local Studies base maps and to incorporate the music composition sound files. This aspect was rather rushed as we did run out of time slightly!

Links

Website of Portway Junior School
Mushir and the Magic Rickshaw

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