Geographical Association

Primary Geography Champions - this GA-led scheme has seen the appointment of more than 50 'Champions' across the nine regions of England to help pool local expertise and promote quality geography in primary schools. Between 2008-11 the Champions have been challenged to engage with at least 1500 primary teachers to ensure that geography retains its place amongst those curriculum areas that are characterised by excellence and enjoyment. Visit the Geography Champions Ning to find out about what's going on in your local area.

DfES site including primary geography - this is the home page for key stage 1 and 2 geography schemes of work, with links through to each unit. All government documents available through this site.

BECTa information - information and published documents such as research in the use of ICT and geography.

Geographical Association - news, events, resources and information relating to the GA and all its activities.

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) - resources include Unlocking the archives and In the News

BBC Weather - excellent site for up-to-date forecasts for the UK and overseas.

BBC Schools Barnaby Bear - activities, games and stories about the travels of Barnaby bear. This child-friendly site is particularly suitable for key stage 1 pupils.

BBC Schools - includes teacher’s notes and suggested lesson plans on rivers and coasts.

CBBC Newsround (World news) - World current events from the BBC Newsround team, so very accessible by pupils. Good links to Literacy and Citizenship issues. Teacher’s pages provide ideas for lesson plans using News items.

CBBC Newsround (UK news) - UK current events from the BBC Newsround team, so very accessible by pupils. Good links to Literacy and Citizenship issues. Teacher’s pages provide ideas for lesson plans using News items.

Channel 4 Geography - appropriate material for key stage 2 pupils including The Big Idea overview, quizzes, FAQs, home activities and a glossary) and for teachers (worksheets, an image bank, web links and a search function) on 13 QCA units

Staffordshire Learning Net - inspirational geography teaching and themes in Staffordshire.

Cambridgeshire Advisory Service - geography section with up-to-date information, activities and news.

Kent NGfL - information and ideas for topics and much more.

Kent NGfL - a list of fiction books suitable for location studies at key stages 1 and 2, giving location, title, author, publisher and publication date.

NatureGrid - a list of short story books and poetry books suitable for key stages 1 and 2 on environmental and sustainability themes such as responsibility for the environment, endangered animals and environments, restoring environments, respecting environments and interdependence in the environment.

Coll information - originally created in 1996 by the Coll Business Centre, this site is now maintained by Peter Mackay and contains an extensive selection of high quality images of the island. As well as the expected landscape images, there are pictures showing other aspects of island life, including employment, leisure activities and wildlife.

Eco-Schools - helps schools work towards an award (bronze, silver or green flag) includes information on the process involved in gaining an award and ideas and information on 7 environmental themes: litter, waste minimisation, energy, water, transport, healthy living and school grounds.

Environment Agency - the children’s section has many useful facts, activities and animations and includes sections on: air, energy, land, climate change, people and lifestyles, resources and waste, water and wildlife.

Ordnance Survey - includes information on GIS and map-building. Although much is aimed at key stage 3 pupils, some is appropriate to younger pupils.

Ordnance Survey MapZone - an introduction for key stage 2 on how maps work and how to interpret them. It includes these 8 sections: starting mapping, symbols, compasses and directions, grid references, understanding scale, measuring distance, relief and contour lines and compass bearings.

Up My Street - local street maps including a ‘find my nearest’ function, which can be used to locate features e.g. schools, list them and link them to a map.

Street Map - search for local street maps by postcode, OS grid reference, place name or street name. Maps are extendable in eight compass directions.

Multimap - locate places in the UK and abroad by name or postcode. Zoom in or out to different scales. Some maps have accompanying aerial photographs which you can overlay.

Google Maps - another online mapping site which includes eye level 'Streetview' for certain cities.

South West Grid for Learning - excellent site about the Jurassic coast in southern Britain which includes case studies, very good pictures and two Powerpoint presentations ready to download.

Global Eye - very child-friendly site for helping pupils understand development issues. The magazine format engages the reader. and there is a good image bank.

Cool Planet - excellent site for global citizenship issues. Children’s pages include details of the history, geography and environment, people and society and a fact file for 14 countries), ‘children’ (exploring the lives of children in less developed countries) and ‘food’ (issues such as farming and fair trade).

ActionAid - includes the full range of resources for sale and information on school visits to give talks supporting distant locality studies.

Travel Images - photographic images of countries which can be selected by continent, then by country.

Free Foto - a large collection of free digital photographs for private/non-commercial use. The images are grouped under clear headings and there are large collections for regions of the UK, Europe and the USA.

Panoramas.dk - this site aims to be a definitive collection of links to QuickTime VR panoramic images on the Web. The worldwide VR directory section can be searched or browsed by geographical regions. Although there is a bias towards images showing North American and European locations, there is a growing collection of images from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Mark Dean Photographic - although images are for sale, it is possible to look at a number of good pictures of a variety of places as a reference source.