Creative responses to a localitySharon Witt

17th January 2011

Aims

• To develop a range of creative geographical teaching and learning strategies

• To know the National Curriculum map work requirements for Key Stages 1 and 2

• To know and understand how to develop the children’s graphicacy skills

Geographical Detection- includes:

• Enquiry• Investigation• Problem-solving• decision making• analysing / synthesising

• SENSORY EXPERIENCES

Enquiry Skills are: • observing

analysing• Questioning • Generating • Judging • Selecting • Planning • Using prior knowledge • Reflecting

• Investigating• selecting• Recording• Interpreting• Drawing conclusions • Synthesising • Communicating• Presenting• Organising • Evaluating

“Children are actively engaged in the creation of personal and shared meanings about the world rather than being passive recipients of knowledge that has been created or selected by the teacher”

Fran Martin

What is the enquiry approach

“ Geographical enquiry is a process, similar to scientific investigation and historical research, which defines the way in which geography should be taught in the primary years.“

Pickford, T.(2002), ICT: An enquiry approach, Geographical Association, Sheffield p.8.

Enquiry questionEnquiry question Collect information

Interpret and analyse information

Draw conclusions, offer explanations and propose

actions

Present findings and conclusions

Evaluate the enquiry and identify further

questions

The Enquiry ProcessThe Enquiry Process

Framed Enquiry

A. Pickford(2006)

Enquiry question Collect information

Interpret and analyse information

Draw conclusions, offer explanations and propose

actions

Present findings and conclusions

Evaluate the enquiry and identify further

questions

Where is a litter bin needed in our locality?

Survey the local area looking for litter

‘hotspots’.

Make maps & charts

Decide where a bin is most needed.Letter to Environmental

Services at local council.

Consult others in the locality?

The Enquiry ProcessThe Enquiry Process

A. Pickford(2006)

Issues suitable for geographical enquiry

• Parking • House building • Traffic calming • Quality of the environment- man-

made or natural • Local shops • Special local events e.g. ice rink at

Christmas by the Cathedral.

I love to go a wanderin’My Walks

http://nuweb.northumbria.ac.uk/mywalks/intro.php

• What do we love? • What do we hate?• What tickles us?• What makes us see? • What makes us touch? • What makes us listen?• What irritates us?• What disgusts us ? • What makes us smile?• What stops us in our

tracks?

My walks!

Owens

Messy maps!

Messy Maps are a useful technique to record responses back in class. Pupils use their given map of the route to draw their own version of the route and add their data.

http://www.geography.org.uk/cpdevents/onlinecpd/myplaceyourplaceourplace/mywalksandmessymaps/#top

Young Geographers project- St Peter’s Smithills Dean CE Primary School,

Lancashire

• Title: What do we feel about the environment around our school?

Age Group: Key Stage 2 / Year 5Approach: A series of small group, teacher-led walks with a class followed by group write-up sessions; with parallel, linked Literacy and ICT units of work. The ultimate aims were to produce a 'journey stick' style map and a short video

Concepts: Fieldwork, place and space, ESD

• Keywords: Local area, changing environments, opinions, change, the future and past, environment, community, feelings, improvements, good, bad, interesting things, Photostory, journey stick

Everyday Geography

• Recent call for “Everyday Geography” to be taught by Fran Martin

“Ethno-geography”

• Using Children’s everyday experiences or “personal geographies” as a basis for curriculum development

Flat Stanley – supports exploration of children’s

personal geographies in the classroom

www.flatstanley.com

This is Ben Cruachan and there is a lovely

view of Ben Cruachan from my

Gran’s house and she only lives a few miles

away from the mountain .I like to watch the clouds

move over the top of the mountain – it is

very calming.

Scrapbooking happy spots

What the teachers say?Giving

children a free rein to

express themselves

often leads to surprising, impressive

and ultimately

very creative outcomes.

This was ‘therapeutic’, and the idea that there

was no ‘right or wrong’ outcome began to

really appeal.

With thanks to Jo Sudbury

This provided an opportunity

to view children’s

unique way of seeing the

world and to formally

recognise children’s immediate

sensory encounters

with places.

Why did you choose this happy spot to scrap book ?

A sense of documenting for the future – a personal legacy

It was private and it was mine . It wasn’t anyone else’s to have and it was different. It would always be there on paper that I had been there with my cousins. I had been there and it was so nice there and it really was just great !”

Scrapbooking as a tool to record children’s personal geographies can

be: Creative Active Independent Fun Captivating Thought ProvokingChallenging Stimulating Child-Centred Relevant Varied Interesting

Enjoyable Purposeful Meaningful Personal

Flexible Empowering Involving Question Raising Inspiring EquippingChild-Led Collaborative

Exploratory

Geographical learning objectives for scrapbooking • To identify and describe what places are

like?• To ask geographical questions • To collect and record evidence (if part of

an enquiry approach) • To communicate in appropriate ways • To use appropriate geographical

vocabulary • To use secondary sources of information

Geodoodling! Geo-doodle prompts included:

• Photos from the local area• GoogleWorld views• World music• Landscape art• Webcam streaming• Sound clips from the local

area • Newspaper articles relating to

global issues• Artefacts• Scents• Visits to the locality -

observing / smelling / listening• Reflecting on stories/picture

books with a geographical theme.

With thanks to Jo Sudbury and the children of Bishops Waltham Junior School

You can be in more than one place at a time !

Nested hierarchies • Zoom• Yellow button • Drawing of children’s version

Stories are very powerful!

What do the children already know about places? What places are important to

them ?

What is graphicacy?

• Children are increasingly making sense of their world through visual images which for young children provide more information than text

• The skill of interpreting pictorial forms of spatial information is known as graphicacy

• Baldwin and Coleman( 1965) described graphicacy as “the fourth ace in the pack” along with literacy, numeracy and oracy.

Why use photographs?• Images play an important role in shaping

our ideas about ourselves and other people • Good open- ended resource with lots of

potential in the classroom • Important for children to question

photographs and develop their visual literacy, enquiry and critical thinking skills

• Can provide stimulating, challenging and creative learning opportunities and hep them gain knowledge and critical understanding of the wider world

How do children respond to and “read” photos?

Do they see what adults see?

• Children will “home in” on clues in the picture that seem familiar and use these to interpret the photograph (even if their understanding of the clue doesn’t fit the context of the rest of the picture)

• Children may add details that aren’t there!

• Children respond differently to photographs according to their age

• Children will tend to ignore the unfamiliar.Margaret Mackintosh

Checklist for using photos in the classroom

• Work with photos should be integrated with other classroom work

• Start with photos of people and places that children are familiar with before moving on to less familiar subjects

• Use photos of good technical quality • Put photos in some sort of context why was the photo

taken? Who by? What for? • Give children as much accurate information as

possible about the people and places in the photos you use

• Encourage children to explore the links between their own lives and experiences and those of the people in the photos

• Questioning • Freeze frame• Hot seating• Matching sets • Drawing photographs • Field sketch • Comparisons• Cropping/ masking

Photo activities

• Field sketching • Labelling• Writing titles • Describing• Sequencing• “good and /or bad adjectives • Speech bubbles

Be creative!Use tried and tested methods and develop your own!

Opportunities for Map work

• Learning about symbols and the map key• Learning about grids• Learning to use a compass• Learning about relative size and scale• Learning about map purposes and selectivity• Making maps of the table and room• Making maps in the school grounds• Making maps of a street and an area• Using picture maps to find out about places• Using aerial photos to find out about places• Using Ordnance Survey maps to find out about places• Using maps in locality packs to find out about places• Using atlas maps to find information• Using ‘all sorts of maps’ at a variety of scales• Learning about maps and places through picture/story

books

National Curriculum Map work Requirements for KS

1 and 2 • KS 1/2Geographical skills:use plans and maps at a variety of scalesuse atlases and globes at a range of scalesmake plans and maps at various scales

Through Geographical Skills in KS1/2 PoS:

• children are introduced to maps• children use and make maps• children develop their map skills and competencies• children use maps in various contexts

Map work should be integrated with place and thematic studies:

• use maps in locality/place studies• use maps in thematic studies• use maps looking at topical matters

Elements of map work should include:• locating features, places and issues• showing distributions and patterns• appreciating size and scale• identifying changes and development• specifying the role of the map

The Purpose of Understanding and Using Maps

Source: Catling, S. (2005) ‘Developing children’s understanding and use of maps’ in Lee, C. and Hung, C.C. (eds) Primary Social Studies: Exploring Pedagogy and Content.

Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Education.

Geographical and map studies should:• provide practical activities which involve children finding

information from maps and finding out about how the map works through focusing discretely on key map skills;

• cover the range of map scales from plans of individual objects to small scale atlas maps, use a variety of types of maps including plans of objects and areas, picture maps and conventional maps;

• encourage children to use maps effectively, both in the real environment and for study, with the purpose of enabling them to learn to obtain information about places readily from maps of many types;

• encourage the use of children's own experience of their environment and the use of additional resources to extend their awareness and understanding of their own environmental map skills and map reading capabilities.

“Geography is the word that runs through the rock of

learning” Kelly, A.(2006) Hidden Geography?

Primary Geographer , Autumn 2008,p.8.