GIS at The High Arcal School Year 7 Improving the School Grounds

Context A fieldwork -based project running for many years Part of a planned series of lessons,assessed at the end Involves a cross-curricular element such as literacy (writing for a purpose, numeracy) By the end of a series of lessons pupils will: know why school grounds need improving understand how school grounds can be improved be able to plan, to scale, an area of the school grounds showing and justifying changes

aim in July was to replace use of paper maps so that pupils can use GIS to show show changes to part of the school grounds also to actively integrate other ICT aspects into the sequence of lessons: use of PAINT to show “before” and “after” images; use of EXCEL to work within a budget of £2,000; use of resources based on our departmental website

The area to be improved

Lesson 1 Class based Brainstorm why school grounds need improving Watch Learning through Landscapes video Revisit why school grounds need improving Homework: letter to Headmaster aiming to convince him that money should be spent on improvements

Lesson 2 Visit school grounds (fieldwork) What has been improved already, where and why? Homework: page for a magazine aimed at young people showing how High Arcal’s grounds have improved Lesson 3 Planning for the future: draft plan of improvements Homework: get price information for benches, fencing, bins etc

Lesson 5 GIS In ICT room, work in pairs, using detailed instructions to produce a digital map (using drag and drop symbols) Compare “before” and “after” images (spot the difference) Have a go at manipulating the aerial digital image to show their changes (no-one got this far!) Lesson 4 Fieldwork Using draft plans visit area to be improved and revise plans; cost up in draft form within £2,000 budget

How did it go? Far better than expected: usual hiccups with missing mice otherwise a valuable experience. Pupils navigated the system easily, most got on to the “before” and “after” image comparison. Tips: Only named work to be printed No printing off until told Stay in seats whilst work is printing off

Difficulties: Scale and resizing symbols Not leaving a gap between elements of the post code (easily rectified) Advantages of GIS over paper-based maps: Speed Neatness WOW factor Pupil motivation

Next……. Year 9 Sustainable Development project “How might the negative environmental impacts of the High Arcal estate best be reduced?”