My School: Beyond the gates

Topics Reception/Year 1
This unit is part of Geographical Skills - Mini topic Building Skills in Geography

Objectives

Geography

  • Use aerial photographs and plan perspectives to recognise landmarks and basic human and physical features
  • Use basic symbols in a key
  • Use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment.

Enrichment Activities

  • History: Significant historical events, people and places in their own locality; Identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods; Understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past and identify different ways in which it is represented.
  • English: Write for a range of purposes.
  • Art and Design: Use painting to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination; Develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space.
  • Maths: Interpret and construct simple pictograms, tally charts, block diagrams and simple tables; Ask and answer simple questions by counting the number of objects in each category and sorting the categories by quantity; Ask and answer questions about totalling and comparing categorical data.

Lesson Planning

Alien Alice is back but this time she wants to know about the area surrounding your school. Head off on a local area walk with your trusty camera to collect information for Alice on your local facilities and features. Report back to her using aerial images, an annotated local map and some fabulous photographs of significant features.

Teaching Outcomes:

  • To take part in a local walk to gather information about local land and building use.
  • To use a key, aerial photos and a local map to identify local human and physical features.

Children will:

  • Take photographs and identify key human and physical features of the local environment surrounding the school.
  • Annotate a local area map of the school, highlighting key features.
  • Describe simple features from aerial images.

Enrichment Activities

  • Order information on a timeline and write an email referring to it.
  • Draw a building or a section of a building.
  • Construct a key.
  • Create a block chart based on local data.
  • Create a cityscape of the area.

Provided Resources

You don't need any provided resources for this session; however there are provided resources for the Enrichment Activities.

You Will Need

  • Local area aerial photos
  • Local area map
  • Digital cameras

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Weblinks

Resources from Ordnance Survey including PDFs of Map Legends

There are additional weblinks for the Enrichment Activities.