Geography Teaching Today

This unit of work focuses on how pupils can develop spatial awareness in the local environment and the use of symbols to record relative locations of features on a plan.

Author: My aim is to ... bring Geography alive in the classroom through the use of real images, and thereby enable children to put themselves into previously unknown locations and gain a sense of place.

Course Leader: This unit of work was the introductory unit prepared by the KS1 curriculum coordinator for geography who is a Y2 class teacher in a community school on the outskirts of King's Lynn, Cambridgeshire.

We chose to share this activity because it engages pupils in real and active experience within the school grounds, i.e. the most accessible environment to use when 'Learning Outside the Classroom'.

The unit develops geographical skills and understanding in the context of a place that is very familiar to the children, i.e. the school playground.

The imaginative teaching and learning activities and the opportunities to develop creative thinking are very clearly described in the PowerPoint 'Using Symbols and Making Plans'. We believe that these ideas will provide less experienced practitioners with valuable ideas for developing quality geography in their own school. They also provide excellent examples of the way ICT can benefit pupil learning in geography.

Download: Using Symbols and Making Plans Medium Term Plan (What do I want the children to know and do?)
Download: Using Symbols and Making Plans Presentation (How the teaching and learning activities were developed)
Download: Hide and Reveal Presentation (PowerPoint Resource)

A follow up to this unit of work, 'An Island Home' is available here.

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