Geographical Association

Suggested course duration: 5 - 9 hours

You and your pupils may already have realised that places can hold a variety of meanings for us. Have you ever noticed how many different types of activity go on in a town centre by different user groups and at different times of the day? Have you noticed how some user groups prefer to spend an afternoon browsing the shops, others preferring to be at the gym or football stadium, yet others seeking out the skateboard park?

In this course we will see how even a familiar location on your doorstep, one that pupils see every day on their way to school, can be a rich source of learning when a geographical lens is used to re-focus previous perceptions. Completion of this course is intended to be a CPD activity, rather than a 'resource grab'. You are encouraged to adapt the ideas presented here to develop your own resources or unit of work. The intention is that completion of the unit will result in the development of new skills and pedagogical techniques, and offer opportunities for reflection.

If you are working through this course as part of a TLA learning journey at Stage One or Two it will be assumed that you have already completed Getting Started, where you will have decided upon a learning and change focus for your journey. Completing this course should enable you to refine this focus. As you work through this course keep referring to section two of the learning journal,
in which you create an action plan for your
learning journey.

View TLA Stage One Writing Frame
View TLA Stage Two Writing Frame

Suggested completion time: 1 - 2 hours

How do we come to 'know' a place? It could be through first hand experience or it could be through mediation, i.e. second hand information from a variety of sources. Often, it's through a combination of both. All places have reputations through stories that are told and information that is gathered. If we do not have direct experience of a place we tend to rely on a mix of everyday anecdotes and other media information to help us imagine what that place is like. We use our geographical imaginations to interpret personal and public geographies.

Finding out what we think we know about a place can be very interesting.

Consider these ideas:

• Choose a well known local place and discuss the differing users and activities that might be done there.
• Ask pupils to brainstorm what they know about a particular place
• Ask pupils to describe a particular place in one, two or three words, or identify one key issue
• Use questionnaires to ask local people what their place means to them and why.
• Suggest how a particular place is linked to the wider world?
• Choose a place that no one has visited.

How might you use these ideas in your teaching and planning?

• How could this activity promote social cohesion at local and global scales?
• Why is it useful to garner so many viewpoints about the same place?

• How would you deal with any controversial issues that arise?

Photo Credit: Nell Seal

Suggested completion time: 2 - 3 hours

Sometimes, we are so conditioned to walking the same route and visiting the same place that we don't really open our eyes and look around us. Instead, everyday places become too familiar and we risk 'switching off'.

Mywalks is a project intended to reawaken the senses and to get us looking for the unexpected in the everyday. It is a simple premise: a familiar route is re – walked or maybe a new route is walked for the first time. But rather than focusing on getting from A to B, we use all our senses, look up, down and all around and make sure that we're 'switched on'!

Hone in on the minutiae and the mundane and question what is seen. Record your responses, perhaps as an audio digital recording, as a digital video, as a collection of words and phrases, or maybe even just photographic images that record points and sights along the way. Then share what grabbed your attention with others and see the same places through many eyes. Such shared personal geographies can be very powerful.

Mywalks can be done anywhere, from the school grounds to a walk around the block or the city centre. Read this article (Owens, 2008) about a Mywalk undertaken by some very young children, from which the sequence of images below is taken. If you are a GA member with a subscription to Primary Geographer you can download this article for free.

Doing a Mywalk

Preparation is key.

• Have you done a risk assessment? (see the Taking Risks course for some innovative ways to approach this)
• Are you collecting individual or group responses?
• Is everyone clear about the route chosen and do they have a laminated map showing the route?
• Or, if you are openly exploring the school ground is everyone clear about the limits of their walk?
• How are you recording data? Is everyone using the same techniques or have you mixed these?
• How will the information be presented? And to whom?
• Could you ask some adults from the local community to record their responses to the same route and compare?

What preparation did you do? How did engaging with the knowledge base influence your teaching? For example, you may have included pupils in risk assessment activities for the first time as part of the preparation.

Photo credit: Nell Seal

Collecting data

How will you record responses?  

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.

You could use digital recorders such as Flip to record snippets of images and / or sounds along the route that could be edited into a short film once back in class. Flip recorders are easy to use and have their own software that allows for easy stitching of film clips to produce 'movies', plus they provide a range of sound tracks if needed. Or you could download free software such as Audacity for sound editing. View this short Mywalk taken in Camden as an example.

Older pupils might enjoy using Twitter to Tweet responses along the route which can then be reviewed back in class – use a hash tag to catalogue responses.

A digital camera is essential for conveying views as seen through the eye of the beholder. You could then use images and speech bubbles in a presentation such as the one below.

Why not let pupils choose how they will record their walks? Or arrange each group so that they use two or more different techniques between them?

Look at the presentation below all about Mapping Everyday Geographies. These teachers undertook their own Mywalks and made their own Messy Maps in preparation for doing the activities with their pupils.

Download this presentation as a PowerPoint

How will you display responses?

• An arts trail?
• A movie?
• A messy map?
• A dialogue?
• An exhibition?
• A presentation using PowerPoint or similar?

In this article from Primary Teachers, Geography Co-ordinator and Primary Geography Champion Anthony Barlow talks about how and why he made a large 3-D locality map with his pupils.

Reflection

Undertaking and sharing views through a technique such as Mywalks engages the cognitive and emotional aspects of learning. Consider how sharing first-hand experiences such as these, using a multi-sensory approach might support the development of empathy – with other people, places and views.

Suggested completion time: 1 - 2 hours

If the ideas explored in this course have inspired you, why not take a look at some of the work by Christian Nold, an artist and educator with an interest in emotional mapping who has undertaken several large scale community projects. View his website.

The Stockport Emotion Map (right) is one example of his work. This collaborative art project presents a vision of Stockport that represents the emotions, opinions and desires of local people.

Now tak a look at some of the following resources: 

Journal Article

Owens, P. (2008) 'Mywalks: Take a Walk on the Child Side', Primary Geographer, Issue 67

Books

There are several books by Jeannie Baker that are powerful for supporting place investigations and identity, here are a few suggestions:

Where the Forest Meets the Sea (1987) Walker Books, 9780744513059
Window (2002) Walker Books, 9780744594867
Belonging (2004) Walker Books, 9780744592276

www.jeanniebaker.com

On the GA website

Maps and Stories - This is an extension to the Primary Geography Handbook with separate resources and ideas sections for the 4 – 7, 6 – 9 and 8 – 11 age groups.

Also, look out for an online CPD unit coming soon called Young Geographers go Local. It will feature support in choosing online mapping software and lots of great ideas on how to use them, with examples of what pupils have achieved.

Suggested completion time: 1 - 2 hours

Having completed the course, reflect and evaluate how you have engaged with the knowledge base to engage pupils and develop your own practice. Below are some prompts for you if you are still refining the preparations for your learning journey and some for you to consider if you are on your learning journey.

Preparing for your learning journey

Discuss with your year group partner(s) and / or mentor what ideas you might develop and how you will do this.

• How have these examples and ideas help you to plan coherent and relevant learning for your pupils?
• How did you adapt them?
• What curriculum links did you focus on to link with the geography? Why did you choose them?
• How have you enabled pupils to make connections between the local and the global?
• How did you place value pupils' contributions and personal geographies? How did this impact on their self esteem and the value they place on themselves as individuals and as a group?
• How do you think these activities contribute to sustainable thinking and social cohesion?

On your learning journey

• What changes, if any did you make to your original plan? How did professional learning conversations with your coach or learning mentor influence this and the outcomes of your learning?
• How did you evaluate your own learning?
• What feedback did you receive from pupils or colleagues?
• How did you share this learning with others? What feedback have you had?

You may now wish to move on to another course in this family in order to widen and deepen your knowledge base. It is important that you end by completing the Plenary section, as this allows you to reflect on your learning and fill in part three of the TLA writing frame (and part four if you are working towards Stage Two verification).

The photos by Nell Seal on this page show children from Hillside Avenue Primary School, Thorpe, Norwich undertaking fieldwork at Wells-next-Sea, Norfolk.