Our Local Area:

What's it like where we live?

In this unit, children focus on the immediate locality of the school. The children will develop locational knowledge based on the view from the school and local walks. They will build place vocabulary to define where they live, which is deepened through fieldwork experiences and using maps, which they will use and make. The children will come to know the differences between a map, plan and aerial photograph. They will have the opportunity to use locational and directional language to describe the location of features and routes on a map. Children will see themselves as mapmakers - making their view of the world - as an important role. 

Fieldwork

The children had the opportunity to use simple fieldwork and observational skills in the school, its grounds and the surroundings. Together we planned a walk to our local high street in Newton Heath. The children enjoyed finding items and places in their local area on their walk. We used locational and directional language. We looked at street names and landmarks. We were 'GEOGRAPHERS.'

How can I support learning at home?

 You can reinforce and support pupils' learning in lots of ways:

• Name and visit key landmarks, such as the nearest local green space.
• Talk about a nearby natural environment, using some key vocabulary, such as hills, rivers, woods.
• Locate places on a map or use Google maps of the local area using both locational (inside, above, below) and directional (left, right, up, down) language.

You could even use everyday objects and equipment to build 3D map worlds. 3D map worlds can be very motivating, and will help develop children’s geographical imagination.

Celebrating Learning

Year one pupils enjoyed looking at the features of the area surrounding school. We also learnt about plans of our school ground and maps of our local area. The children are very proud of where they live and learnt a  song they would like to share with you.

We invited our parents to come to our exit point, where we taught them all about Newton Heath. We showed them our large Map we made with some of the features we saw on our walk. We found our house using Digimap for Schools. We particularly enjoyed using our classroom plan to find treasure. We all love Mighty Might Newton Heath.