Map ITPicture IT

Write ITGeography: an essential part of everyday living in the

world

Photograph: Sean Flannery, Children from Oyster Park Junior School, Castleford

Part 1 of the presentation: MapIT PictureIT WriteIT (Wendy North - TES Conference 2.10.09)

We navigate our way to the shop or the post box

Photographs: Wendy North

... or work.

Photograph: Wendy North Sheffield

We get held up by traffic or have to drive for half an hour to the train station.

Photographs: Wendy North

View from Foxhill looking towards Parsons Cross & Tenter street, Sheffield

We visit places that we like Photograph: Wendy North Whitby Harbour

...and avoid ones that we don’t

Photograph: chrisjohnbeckett/ 480298779/

Photograph: brighton/2248514764/

Photograph: nicohogg/390394712/

All photographs taken on the Euston Road are from the Flickr website (shared under a Creative Commons

License) www.flickr.com

We choose to buy a house in a particular location because of the way that we `feel’ about that location.

IdentityPlace

Photograph: Wendy North Crane Moor, South Yorkshire

So when our teaching is focused on geography how often do we start with

children’s everyday experience?

Map IT• Year 5 children at

Methodist J & I in Wakefield started with their `everyday experiences’ of their local area and explored how they `felt’ about places that they know well. Photograph: Wendy North

Methodist, J & I - WakefieldMethodist, J & I - Wakefield

http://www.quikmaps.com/full/47961

I feel great at my gran’s because she makes nice toast

Map source = Google + Quikmaps Methodist, J & I - Wakefield

Rebekah’s mum runs the hairdressers – lots of

children go here to get their hair cut.

This is Shelley First School – we are in

Year 1

See the `Young Geographers Project on the GA website:http://www.geography.org.uk/projects/younggeographers/

Map source = Google + Quikmaps

Mapping Everyday Geographies

Paula Owens

Hirwaun Primary School

http://geographical.ning.com/profiles/blogs/national-primary-conference

Words from ‘MYWALKS ‘ http://nuweb.northumbria.ac.uk/mywalks/info.php

• It’s about voicing our own opinions on our neighbourhoods… 

• It’s about exploring what you hear and/or notice yourself hearing as you walk through your local environment…

• It’s about running your fingers along a wall, picking leaves off a hedge, walking barefoot in the summer…

• It’s about the smells that take us back to very specific places and times in our past…

MYWALKSIt’s about…

What flicks our switches? What turns us on? What tickles us? What makes us look? What makes us listen? What makes us touch? What disgusts us? What makes us sigh? What frustrates or irritates? What intrigues us? What makes us ask 'how' or ‘why'?

http://nuweb.northumbria.ac.uk/mywalks/info.php

If we are asking these questions about PLACES

then it is geography.

How does this help our children to make sense of their own locality?

• What they know about their local area is essential geographical knowledge

• Their everyday experience is valued• What they feel about particular places matters• They begin to learn the layout of their place which helps

them to navigate their own locality • They begin to see that maps are a valuable means of

representing the relationships between people and places, e.g. who lives where, where the swimming baths are located etc.

We have the best maps in the world (OS). The development of internet mapping and satellite imagery means that we can now share places with children where maps are non-existent.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=113344337477774229301.00046503c2de872341844&ll=13.121141,77.500176&spn=0.005036,0.011222&t=h&z=17