Geographical Association

This section of the course is a practical activity with an accompanying resource that you can adapt to use with your own pupils. The activity is intended to support pupils in developing a greater sense of involvement and responsibility by involving them in risk assessment for field trips.

'We believe that every young person should experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of learning and personal development, whatever their age, ability or circumstances.'

- DFES 2006

The comments above were some of many gathered after a fieldtrip in the local area and reveal how much pupils valued learning about the real world on their doorstep.

Activity

Look at the pupils' comments – what does this tell us about their fieldwork experiences? Why might we want to keep this kind of evidence and where might we use it? Jot down some ideas.

Fieldwork is a statutory component of geography. At Key Stage 1, pupils should have opportunities to undertake fieldwork in their school grounds or in the immediate school vicinity that can be reached by foot, while in Key Stage 2 they should have the opportunity to do this in the wider locality in which the majority of pupils live.

The Outdoor Learning Manifesto was launched in November 2006 to ensure that pupils have access to regular and quality outdoor learning experiences - of which fieldwork is a vital part. A good deal of research has confirmed the benefits to pupils and young children gained through regular positive first hand experiences in the outdoors. See the Learning outside the Classroom website to find out  more about the initiative.

Do you feel worried about taking pupils outside of school? Do risk assessments seem daunting? One approach to thinking and learning sustainably is involving pupils in their learning and encouraging them to take responsibility and to be creative and critical thinkers. So why not involve pupils in risk assessment - making it part of valid curriculum work and giving real purpose to learning?

This part of the course will look at using risk assessment as the central focus for a combined literacy and geography lesson in preparation for engaging with the real world outside their classroom.

'... in order to understand the intricacy of... [geography], it is important that pupils learn about the world they live in and on which they depend. It is important that the citizens of tomorrow understand the management of risk, appreciate diversity, are aware of environmental issues, promote sustainability and respect human rights and social inclusion. If the aspiration of schools is to create pupils who are active and well rounded citizens, there is no more relevant subject than geography.'

- Bell (2005)

Activity

How does involving pupils in risk assessments link with sustainable thinking? Give three reasons.

Before we go through the lesson, take a look at the following PowerPoint. This presentation is a prepared lesson and IWB resource but will need to be adapted to suit your particular school and year group. Whilst the learning intentions and approach may remain the same you will need to insert images and maps of your own locations. 

Download: Are we there yet? Getting ready for local fieldwork (PPT)

Lesson Objectives

This lesson focuses on both literacy and geography and is intended to consolidate and improve geographical vocabulary and awareness of geographical features, instruct pupils about personal safety and give a real purposeful context for note taking skills with a Year 3 class.

Learning Outcomes

I asked my pupils to use the learning intentions to create and agree their own success criteria. If your class are used to doing this it can be done fairly quickly. If not you will have to either allow extra time or give additional support at this stage.

Resources

• Classroom activity risk assessment
• Internet with access to online mapping software
• Selected images of places to be visited
• Your own prior risk assessment*

Organisation
Ability groups as per a literacy session and talking partners for paired note taking.

Note: It's obviously important that you have carried out your own prior risk assessment of the area to be visited and taken images that you can use in class of places that you feel present the most risk.

After explaining the task with the aid of the PowerPoint we discussed what a 'risk' or hazard was. I then explained that we would talk through some examples first then they would be shown a few images of places they were going to actually visit and they would have to work out the risks and solutions for themselves.

(You will see that the presentation contains notes both to pupils and to teachers - so you will also need to edit these out from your personalised version.)

The first image I showed was an aerial photo from Google Earth and with just a little prompting pupils recognised where it was (a beach car park in Sheerness, Kent) although features such as 'sea' 'car park' and 'car' were quickly spotted.

I pointed out that this image was 'looking north' as shown by the arrow. This fact was important because the next image I showed was my own photograph of the same place, but looking in a different direction, which I asked the class to identify for me.  

The next image was another aerial view of a beach and a photograph of the same beach with pupils (taken on a field trip the previous year). Although I had visited this destination very recently for my own risk assessment, I chose to use an image from the previous year because it showed children in this place. I knew this would make for a more powerful image when thinking about dangers.

In the aerial view, you will see an arrow highlighting a terraced house and this same house is picked up in the ground view photograph. This is a useful tip to help pupils make a connection between aerial views and what they see on the ground. In this case, one of the pupils recognised the house as her neighbour's from my photograph and then wanted to go back to see it again from an aerial perspective.

Completing the lesson

Finally the pupils worked to complete their writing frames and used the plenary to share as a class with peer assessment used to refine work. 

The lesson ended by clarifying what had been learnt and I find that this is often very useful - especially with geography as pupils often aren't sure what is geography and what isn't.

Pupil feedback

The pupils enjoyed this session very much - though it's a good idea to do it shortly before the actual trip so that it is fresh in their minds. I usually do it a few days before and then have a recap the day before. Pupils always carry their own assessments with them as part of their fieldwork notebook when going out of school for a whole day's work and are very proud to be taking responsibility.

One of the biggest learning curves in this lesson for some pupils is finding out that they have at the very least joint responsibility if not total responsibility for their own safety through their actions and how they choose to behave.

Browse through some examples of active fieldwork from other schools involved with the Young Geographers project.

Read the last Ofsted subject report on geography: Geography - changing practice: Making fieldwork a focus.

Activity

How will you use the risk assessment resource with your class? How will you share it with colleagues? Note down your ideas.

If you do not have a fieldwork trip outside of school planned, how could you adapt and use this for the school grounds?

Think about the activity and if you have trialled it with pupils, consider how they responded to being asked to write their own risk assessments for a trip (or an activity in the school grounds). Did it affect their behaviour and attitudes in any way on the trip/activity, and if so, why do you think this was?

Finally - has there been a recent audit of fieldwork across the school and does this need re-purposing? How well does your current approach enable pupils to be both creative and critical participants? How might you do more?

Bell, D. (2005) 'The value and importance of geography', Teaching Geography, Spring 2005. GA members can access this article for free

DFES (2006) Learning Outside the Classroom Manifesto. Nottingham: DfES Publications. Download

OFSTED (2008) Geography - Changing Practice: making fieldwork a focus. London: HMI. Download

Learning Outside the Classroom

Young Geographers

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