Geographical Association

This picture shows one of several stained glass murals on perspex completed after an integrated topic on locality fieldwork which involved the entire school and which focused on environmental quality.

What lasting reminders do you have around your school to show places in the locality that are valued by pupils?

This is a practical activity that you can adopt and adapt to suit your pupils. It is one way of starting with pupils' own knowledge about their locale and finding out what they understand by 'environmental quality'.

Lesson objectives

• To be able to describe (and explain) what we know about our own locality
• To be able to make up good questions that will help us enquire about the quality of our local environment

Learning outcomes

• I can say what I know about where I live using geographical vocabulary
• I can think of some useful questions that will help me find out more about our local environment

Organisation

• Whole class for initial input
• Working in mixed ability pairs for part 1
• Mixed ability groupings for part 2 and TA support for less confident writers

I explained to my Year 3/4 class that we were going to be learning about our local environment and enquiring about 'environmental quality' and asked them what they thought this meant. Someone said that quality meant good, another said it meant that it was expensive and someone else said that it had taken a long time to make it that way.

I explained that quality can be good or bad - it's how well a place meets our needs and those of others. This led us to discuss how we might measure this and what things we might be looking for. When we reached this point, I stopped everyone and suggested that we thought about what we already knew about the places we intended to visit.

Note - our school had a large majority of pupils who travelled in each day from a settlement three miles distant. This meant that their homes were not within walking distance and tended to be ignored when doing wider locality fieldwork.

Activity

Why do you think it is important to do fieldwork in the locality in which pupils live - even when that is a different locality to the school? Jot down some thoughts about why and how this is connected to sustainable thinking.

We used Google Maps to look at the area we were going to visit and on the pupils' (mixed ability) tables there were some maps and printed images of the surrounding area, the latter printed out greyscale. There were also large coloured felt pens.

I asked pupils to work with a partner, using whatever resources they wanted, to list good and bad things they noticed or knew about this area. This helped me gauge what pupils already knew and what misconceptions they held.

Using this starting point, we developed questions that would help us find out more about the locality. To make this task more demanding, I had identified and approached people who lived and worked in the locality and who agreed to be interviewed during the fieldwork: a parent, a caravan park owner, a publican and a farmer. Pupils were challenged to think of good questions that were pertinent to these community members.

Pupils worked in mixed ability groups to construct questions for a given person. Our plenary focused on how questions might be improved.

Activity

Think about some fieldwork that you might do in your immediate or wider locality.

Who might you ask to be interviewed?

Why is it important to ask and collect different views about the environment? And how does this link to sustainability?

This lesson was one of several spent in fieldwork preparation as the planned outing called for many skills and contexts that pupils needed to be prepared for such as risk assessment, mapping, understanding location, using digital cameras and annotated sketching.

Activity

What skills would you need to practice with your pupils before undertaking active fieldwork?

What opportunities are there to link fieldwork preparation, pupil participation and curricular work? E.g. one example was involving pupils in the risk assessment. What other ideas might you have now?

Having done your fieldwork, how can you make it purposeful?

• Enhance habitat provision e.g. make owl boxes
• Write to the local press
• Write to the local tourist or heritage office
• Write a tourist guide
• Make a presentation for assembly
• Make stained glass windows to celebrate the local landscape / townscape
• Create web reports and publish on the school website
• Identify further questions for investigation and / or appropriate actions to take with the local community.

Have a look at this summary of activities and outcomes of an example of purposeful fieldwork. These pupils carried out an investigation into declining habitats for owls, culminating in the design and siting of owl boxes in their locality. It is referenced to Programmes of Study from the National Curriculum.

Download: Owl Project (PDF, 59k)

How could you enhance habitat provision for wildlife in your school grounds?

Why and how do you think carrying out locality fieldwork can be powerful for pupils?

• How might it help them feel connected to places, and why does this matter?

• Why might it have an impact on the way pupils behave in a locality?

• Why is it important to meet and discuss views with community members?

• How does this feed into sustainable thinking and action?

Primary Handbook Extension Project: Maps and stories - free resources from teachers including ideas, resource lists, links and planning examples.

Mywalks and messy maps - using mapping and graphicacy techniques to understand shared space (part of the My Place, Your Place, Our Place CPD course).

Mywalks - about (re-)engaging with our environments and geographies through the medium of photography and audiography.

Learning through Landscapes - Learning through Landscapes helps schools and early years settings make the most of their outdoor spaces for play and learning.

Learning Outside the Classroom - this DCSF funded website contains a range of useful materials.

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