1. Creative responses to a locality
Sharon Witt
17th January 2011

2. 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

3. Geographical Detection- includes:
Enquiry
Investigation
Problem-solving
decision making
analysing / synthesising
SENSORY EXPERIENCES

4. Enquiry Skills are: Investigating selecting Recording Interpreting
Drawing conclusions
Synthesising
Communicating
Presenting
Organising
Evaluating
observing analysing
Questioning
Generating
Judging
Selecting
Planning
Using prior knowledge
Reflecting
“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

5. 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.

6. The Enquiry Process Enquiry question Collect information
Evaluate the enquiry and identify further
questions
Framed Enquiry
Interpret and analyse information
Draw conclusions, offer explanations and propose actions
Present findings and conclusions
A. Pickford(2006)

7. The Enquiry Process Where is a litter bin needed in our locality?
Survey the local area looking for litter ‘hotspots’.
Enquiry question
Collect information
Evaluate the enquiry and identify further
questions
Consult others in the locality?
Interpret and analyse information
Make maps & charts
Draw conclusions, offer explanations and propose actions
Present findings and conclusions
Decide where a bin is most needed.
Letter to Environmental Services at local council.
A. Pickford(2006)

8. 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.

9. I love to go a wanderin’ My Walks http://nuweb. northumbria. ac
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?

10. My walks!
Owens

11. 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.

12. 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 5 Approach: 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

13. 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

14. Flat Stanley – supports exploration of children’s personal geographies in the classroom

15. Scrapbooking happy spots
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

16. What the teachers say?
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.
This was ‘therapeutic’, and the idea that there was no ‘right or wrong’ outcome began to really appeal.
Giving children a free rein to express themselves often leads to surprising, impressive and ultimately very creative outcomes.
With thanks to Jo Sudbury

17. Why did you choose this happy spot to scrap book ?
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 !”
A sense of documenting for the future – a personal legacy

18. Scrapbooking as a tool to record children’s personal geographies can be:
Creative Active Independent Fun
Captivating Thought Provoking
Challenging Stimulating Child-Centred
Relevant Varied Interesting Enjoyable Purposeful Meaningful Personal
Flexible Empowering Involving
Question Raising Inspiring Equipping
Child-Led Collaborative Exploratory

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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 ?

22. 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.
Using visual resources either through first hand experience or fieldwork can help a child really see Geography

23. 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
Photos are highly influential in our lives – every single day we are exposed to hundreds of images , from the cereal packet to adverts , newspaper photos, shop window displays .Images like these play an important role in shaping our ideas about ourselves and other people

24. 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
Research shows that when children look at photos they are probably not seeing what adults assume they see this means it is important to use activities that help children to look carefully and critically at different parts of photo as well as looking at the photo as a whole
eve
They may see things they associate with what they feel about the photo based on their existing knowledge and preconceptions
Young children find detail very important – they may not notice the middle ground of the picture and will look more in the foreground and background older children concentrate on the overall themes of the picture

25. 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

26. Use tried and tested methods and develop your own!
Photo activities
Field sketching
Labelling
Writing titles
Describing
Sequencing
“good and /or bad adjectives
Speech bubbles
Questioning
Freeze frame
Hot seating
Matching sets
Drawing photographs
Field sketch
Comparisons
Cropping/ masking
Questioning
What can you see what is she/he doing
What are the bricks for?
Why is she working outside?
Would you like to live there
How else could he or she …
Be creative!
Use tried and tested methods and develop your own!

27. 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

28. National Curriculum Map work Requirements for KS 1 and 2
KS 1/2 Geographical skills: use plans and maps at a variety of scales use atlases and globes at a range of scales make plans and maps at various scales

29. 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

30. Geographical and map studies should:
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.

31. “Geography is the word that runs through the rock of learning”
Kelly, A.(2006) Hidden Geography?
Primary Geographer , Autumn 2008,p.8.