Jumpstart! Geography

Engaging activities for ages 7-12

Mark Jones, Sarah Whitehouse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317916871
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection of simple to use and fun activities will jumpstart pupils' understanding of the geographical skills of enquiry, outdoor learning, graphicacy and communication. Pupils will develop their knowledge and understanding of people, places and issues through being encouraged to 'think geographically' about the world they live in.

Areas covered include: -

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• Places in my world (personal geography)

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• Continents and oceans of the world

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• Human geography (including population, migration, towns and cities, and recreation)

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• Physical geography( including rivers, forests, coasts and deserts

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• Environment, Sustainable schools and global citizenship

All sections include information on some useful knowledge and reference to important key concepts or big ideas in geography that are being developed through the fun activities.

Jumpstart! Geography is an indispensable classroom resource that will celebrate geography and give children the opportunity to experience the thrill of finding out about their world. It will be a lifeline to any classroom teacher looking to teach geography in a fun and exciting way.

CHAPTER 1

Places in my world

The activities in this chapter provide ways in which children can explore and begin to make sense of the world around them. Whether it is looking out of a window at home, walking to the local park or experiencing a location for the first time, we encourage both children and adults to look and think geographically about the location, issue or theme they experience. But remember that we all see things differently and expressing these different viewpoints makes for some interesting discussion.

Important geographical ideas that are being developed in this chapter, and in fact in most of this book, include:

Place: this is the study of the physical and human characteristics of a place, how a place became like it is; how it is changing; how people are connected to different places; how places can be represented in many different ways and through a variety of media. It is also about how our imagination can create particular images of places.

Space: this big idea looks at how places are connected, how they can influence each other and the patterns this creates. People, goods and information flow between places and this also creates patterns and processes that shape the world we live in.

Scale: this is another important geographical idea and encourages us to study the world around us at a variety of scales, from the personal, local, national, international to the global.

PERSONAL GEOGRAPHIES – A LITTLE BIT OF KNOWLEDGE

We are all connected in many different ways to the world we live in. Often this is through our personal experiences of physically being in a space and experiencing its sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures. In addition we come to know different places and spaces through a variety of media, from music to books, television to a world of images and information readily available online. But remember that children often see the world in a very different way to adults and children’s unique personal experiences are extremely valuable in understanding how they interpret the world we live in.

What’s in my bag?

This activity is easier than it sounds. It is not a guessing game, but it could be. Any school or sports bag will contain a variety of items from around the world, some of which will have been made closer to home and others manufactured in faraway places. Allow children time to empty their bags and then to think about how they could sort the contents in different ways. Children can look for clues about the country of origin of, for example, a sweatshirt (China), a banana (Colombia) or crayons (USA). Drawings or photographs of the items can be placed on a world map to show how far everyday items have travelled and how our use of personal items connects us to the wider world.

Figure 1.1 What’s in my bag?

Me and my world

Ask children to draw a map of where they live and some of the places they go. The places could be represented by symbols, words or pictures. This can be extended by getting the children to draw the routes they take to the different destinations, using a colour code to categorise:

• the purpose (e.g., visiting friends and family, going to school and clubs, shopping);

• method of transport (e.g., walking, scooter, bike, bus, car).

There will be similarities and differences between children’s maps that can be discussed and used as a starting point to find out about children’s experiences of, and their views about, their local area.

Digital story stick

On a walk around the local area or another locality, children are provided with a digital camera or mobile phone to take images or videos of things that interest them. Encourage the children to take images:

• of familiar and unfamiliar spaces and places;

• looking up, looking down, looking all around (360° panoramic view);

• on a small scale, e.g., a shop sign with the date it was established, road signs, recycling bins;

• on a large scale, e.g., buildings, street views, parks, views from a distance;

• of parts or the whole of different things of interest, e.g. a window display.

The images can then be used to create a digital story with voiceovers added later, or the images can be hyperlinked to a digital map for children to investigate each other’s stories.

Local to global concentric circles

Have a template of between 3 and 5 concentric circles. These can then be labelled in a number of different ways depending on what you want the children to explore from their immediate and personal space to the local and national scale. Ideally, start with the familiar and move outwards to the unfamiliar, but equally, if you want to encourage an enquiry approach, start with an unfamiliar image of a place or person and ask the children to pose the questions they want to ask.

Possible labels for the concentric circles:

Places	Scale	Questioning
Places in my local area	My space	Choose an image and place in the centre of the circle
Places I am connected to	Local	What can I see?
Places I have visited	National	What questions would I ask? E.g., What, Where, Who, When and Why?
Favourite places	International	What have I found out?
Places I would like to visit	Global	What further questions have I got? E.g., What if? What next? Who decides?

Figure 1.2 Local to global concentric circles

MY HOME AND LOCAL AREA – A LITTLE BIT OF KNOWLEDGE

It is important for children to have an understanding of their home environment and how their home forms part of the local area so that they can appreciate how places can be represented, connected and form part of a larger community. Children come to make sense of where they live through different representations of their local area. By experiencing and creating different versions of their own world they can start to appreciate the characteristics of the natural and human environments and how these are interconnected.

My home

Using an A4 piece of paper it is possible to make a small house (see Figure 1.3).

1 Hold the paper in portrait view and fold in half top to bottom.

2 Fold in half again left to right and then open out.

3 Fold the two outer quarters to the centre, then open out.

4 In the two outer quarters fold the tops inwards to make two small right angles.

5 Fold back triangles (see 2) and then push top corners inwards.

6 Bring the two outer f...