Teaching Place in Primary Geography

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Teaching Place in Primary Geography

• Planning creatively for effective learning

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Starter Activity

• Using the world map and coloured pens
• Where does your school take the children in a
  year?
• How do they get there? E.g. stories, geog, music,
  art, etc.
• What do they do while there? E.g. rivers, songs,
  grammar, environment, history, etc.
• Discussion What are we trying to achieve by
  taking children to different places?

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Studying places

• Provides opportunities to
• Use and develop an interest and natural curiosity
  about places
• Explore ideas and skills and extend language
• Develop existing knowledge and understanding of
  other places
• Examine and clarify existing experience and
  awareness of places
• Develop spatial awareness on a range of scales,
  up to the global
• Recognise our interdependence with the rest of
  the world
• Build positive attitudes towards other people
• Build from a local perspective to a global
  perspective
• Value diversity in places, environments and
  cultures
• Combat ignorance and bias to avoid stereotyping
  and prejudice

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Where does place fit in?

• NC KS1
• Identify and describe what places are like
• Identify and describe where places are
• Recognise how places have become the way they are
  and how they are changing
• Recognise how place compare with other places
• Recognise how places are linked to other places
  in the world

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• NC KS2
• To identify and describe what places are like
• The location of places and environments they
  study and other significant places and
  environments
• To describe where places are
• To explain why places are like they are
• To identify how and why places change and how
  they may change in the future
• To describe and explain how and why places are
  similar to and different from other places in the
  same country and elsewhere in the world
• To recognise how places fit within a wider
  geographical context and are interdependent

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(No Transcript)
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Locational Understanding from..
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To..

• A mental map of
• experienced places
• conceptual places
• through evidence/sources
• making links
• themes
• people
• landscape
• what it is like
• commonality
• differences

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By triangulating, we can develop a sense of
place

• The teachers role (Weigand)
• Develop an accurate framework of locational
  knowledge (I.e. where places are)
• Provide accurate mental images of the nature of
  other places
• Foster positive attitudes towards distinctive
  aspects of other places and ways of life

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The Cube model a unity of approach
Environment Pollution Damage Quality of
life/place Sustainability
Skills
Enquiry, fieldwork, using geog terms, map work,
photos, ICT, maths, transposition, reading,
writing, etc
Themes
Human Settlement Population Transport Services Wo
rk Leisure Agriculture Industry
Places
Physical Water Rivers, Seas Coasts Mountains Weat
her Erosion Climate, Seasons vegetation
Local Regional National World Near Distant Contras
ting Comparable
Describing Locating Connecting Changing Causation
Explanation
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Triangulating with the concept cube
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Themes through Localities
What can we learn about homes and the way we live
in the world?
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Localities Through Themes
Can we check our ideas by applying them to case
studies?
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How do we cover it?
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How do we cover it? 2
Interactions Processes, Issues, Places
Natural
Human
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Progression of Concepts of Place

• From self to other challenging abstraction
  and imagination
• Knowing/learning about their own place home,
  school concrete experience, embrace places
  visited/experience

Home/school
Granny
Zoo
London
Seaside
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• Applying ideas about places they know
• Maps, plans, atlases
• Directions
• Measurement
• Distance
• What it is like to live there
• Homes
• Buildings
• Water
• Food
• Etc.

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• Abstracting ideas applying them to other
  places
• Barnaby Bear the early vicarious approach
• Passport to the world often and regular
• What it is like Comparison of key ideas
• Weather
• Settlement and peoples needs
• Landscape rivers, mountains
• Adaptation to the physical clothing, buildings,
  lifestyle, etc.
• Environmental comparison quality of life/place
• Beliefs, values, attitudes and reactions case
  studies
• Learning by reference to self avoid learning as
  other
• Developing attitudes about places and people
• Developing an understanding of how places shape
  people and people shape places empathy and
  hypothesis

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• Use approaches that challenge pupils to develop
  views 2 approaches inductive/deductive
• 1. Set out to predispose children to think
  positively about places and people. (Weigand)
• Clear outcomes, carefully managed learning
• Mapped skills approach
• Themes building to overall set enquiry
• Positive sources, stimuli and information
• 2. Open up processes by which places become
  known and through which attitudes become
  developed and expressed
• Enquiry produces its own outcome
• What is the place like and why?
• How might it feel to be part of this place? How
  do I know? How could I find out?

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• Applying skills to understanding places
• Use of atlas, maps, etc.
• Factual information gathering from directed to
  autonomous
• Library skills
• Use of visual photographic, film, video, etc.
• Measuring fieldwork skills and peoples views
  and attitudes
• Understanding patterns and processes climate,
  weather, settlement growth, etc.
• Learning about culture

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Map Skills

• Look at the progression list for each Key Stage
  taken from Simon Catlings Placing Places
• Where do you do these things?
• He identifies 10 competencies to the skill of
  using and drawing maps

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Map Competence

1. Understand the title of a map
2. Appreciate its purpose
3. Use the key or legend
4. Understand that symbols stand for physical and
   human features
5. Appreciate the extent and limitations of
   information on a map
6. Locate places using grid references
7. Use compass directions on a map
8. Know how to use the scale bar to measure
   distances and understand these distances in
   reality
9. Use the contents page to find relevant maps and
   information in the atlas
10. Use a map index to locate places

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But what of the conceptual leaps?

• Transposition from 3 dimensions to 2
• Globes, atlases and maps
• The understanding of distance and scale
• Direction and orientation projections of the
  globe
• Symbols, colour and types of information
• Height, slope transposition again
• Constructing a map
• Interpretation what information do I need and
  in what order do I use it? How useful is it to
  me?
• Transposition from 2 dimensions to 3 again
  travelling with maps identifying features in
  sight

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• Geography
• Provokes and answers questions about the natural
  and human world
• Uses different scales of enquiry
• Views the world from different perspectives
• Develops knowledge of place and environments
• Develops investigative and problem-solving skills
• A focus for understanding and resolving issues
• Encounter different cultures and societies
• Understand interdependence and reliance
• Inspires pupils to think about their own place in
  the world, rights and responsibilities
• Think globally, about nature and people

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• Above all, Geography should
• Inspire children to look at the world more
  closely
• Stimulate their curiosity about other people
• Make them angry, sad, happy about what people do
  to their world
• Involve them in playing a part in improving the
  world they live in
• Promote a sense of stewardship that what we do
  must be for the future of the world
• Instil in them a sense of awe and wonder at the
  beauty of the world and all its possibilities