Geography
Subject Essence
Essence of Geography
At Ash Green Primary Academy we want to inspire our children to have a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. We want to equip pupils with an interaction between physical and human processes.
What should we see children doing?
• Know the location of globally significant places
• Understand processes, give rise to physical and human geographical features and how these are interdependent
• Become competent in geographical skills – collecting and analysing data, interpret sources of geographical information and communicate geographical information
Curriculum Content and Progression
Policies and Supporting Documents
Helpful Links and Ideas
Fun and Games in Geography
Activities and games are an excellent way of tapping into children’s sense of fun and linking together both everyday and academic geography. These can be presented as a warm-up exercises, provide the main focus for lessons linked to specific learning objectives or as a series of entry points either within or outside the framework of a normal lesson.
The following activities are ways t engage children in their learning.
Word Games
Word games work with a range of ages of children and help to build on and consolidate geographical vocabulary, thus assisting with general literacy skills. These activities are easily set up and after a little practice, can be child-generated, which adds to motivation.
Word association
Word-association games or word chains can get children thinking about geographical vocabulary, e.g. using the topic of weather as a stimulus, try talking to children on a journey across the world to places with different weather conditions. Each child has to think of a word that links with one previous used, such as: hot-desert-Sahara-Africa-tropical-rain-Amazon-humid-monsoon-India-flooding-wet.
Activities can be developed in many different ways, allowing for different geographical features to be explored and perhaps explained along the way, and can be challenging. Participation should be encouraged, with children working in small groups or as a whole class. At home, children can engage with parents, carers, siblings and other family members. Another option, still using the idea of connections or chains, is to ask children to think of the next word that begins with the last letter of the previous one, e.g. street-traffic-cars-shop-parking-garage. Using pictures with younger children can provide clues to possible links.
Anagram
Mixing up the letters of a geographical term to make a puzzle allows children to investigate phonics and spelling skills as well as the vocabulary itself. These can be used as an early morning starter, before, during or after teaching a specific topic.
Hidden countries
Look at this sentence: ‘Using a webcam, Erica can adapt nice landscape pictures.’ Which three countries are buried in the letters. The answer is ‘America’, ‘Canada’ and ‘Iceland’. Once children have got the idea, they can make up their own puzzles.
Odd one out
Provide a set of words on any geographical topic and see if the children can guess the off one out, e.g. London, Paris, Northampton, Berlin, Washington. The answer is Northampton as it is not a capital city. Children may have other ideas, e.g. all the cities are in Europe apart from Washington; Paris has the shortest name; Berlin is the only city with the letter b.
Jokes – Geographical jokes are one example of word games
Knock knock jokes
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Alaska.
Alaska who?
Alaska later when I see her.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Francis.
Francis who?
France is a country in Europe
What is the fastest country in the world?
Russia.
What do Penguins wear on their heads?
Ice caps.
What did the sea say to the shore?
Nothing, it just waved.