Valuing Places - Further Activities
These suggestions for further activities are presented in no particular order, but could you re-order them into a series of activities that help develop pupils' knowledge and understanding of interconnections? How might you adapt them with this in mind?
Local newspaper
Take a local newspaper and analyse the images it present of the place. Whose identity is presented in the paper? Which groups are represented? Which groups are not represented? Why might this be?
Clothes and fashion
A person's identity is related to the clothes he or she wears. Where do these clothes come from? With which places in the world is the person's identity linked? Where are the strongest links and why?
Food
A person's identity is related to the kinds of foods they like to eat. What do pupils like to eat most? Where do these foods come from? To what extent is the food we eat English and to what extent does it come from other countries and cultures? Does this give us a hybrid identity?
Belonging
Mapping places where they feel they belong (streets, shopping centres, leisure areas, areas in school/school grounds, etc) and areas where they don’t belong. Discussing and explaining own maps
A fair view of England - see pages 184-7 of Learning Through Enquiry (Roberts, 2003).
Local representations of place
On postcards or promotional brochures - how are local places represented? To what extent do I relate to these representations? How would I represent the area differently? Taking photographs to represent the identity of area with digital camera.
Personal biographies
Of people who have lived in different places: migrants, refugees – and mapping their experience of place.
Representations of Britain
In tourist brochures, in advertisements, in photographs in geography textbooks - How is the country I live in represented in texts/photographs etc? Do I identify with this country? Do I identify with these images? What images would I select of local/regional/national to include my sense of identity?
Ten Practical Tips
- Think about the concept of place that you want to develop with key Stage 3 pupils
- Use their prior learning - both formal and informal.
- Consider how you will be enhancing the Foundation Strand and National Curriculum.
- Think about how and when to use case studies.
- Think about how many places you use.
- Think about how you use the perspective of scale.
- Consider appropriate teaching and learning strategies.
- How do you use your locality?
- Do you review your resources to see if they present a contemporary or historical place perspective?
- Share with your pupils how place and space help them to make sense of their place in their world.
