Teach Primary Issue 19.6

Forget flying off to faraway lands in geography; take a look at what’s around you, and you’ll be surprised at howmuch more engaged your pupils are, says Rebecca Leek I am writing this article broadly from a geographical perspective. However, the ways we can build meaning into what we do every day at school are generally applicable across the board. After all, our pupils do not segment their knowledge into subject-sized boxes; they are making connections all the time. So, if I refer to areas of the geography national curriculummore than others, then it is simply that geography has been especially on my mind. And you will find that geography overlaps with pretty much everything anyway. ‘I’ve heard of Ipswich’ Back when I was a headteacher at a primary school in Ipswich, I brought in an enormous map of the town. I think it was about three metres wide, and two-and-a-half metres high, and it met every visitor full on as they came through the main entrance; you couldn’t miss it. One particular six-year-old, arriving mid-morning from a dentist appointment, gazed up at it with me and decoded the word in the middle. I-p-s-w-i-ch. Ipswich. “I’ve heard of Ipswich!” he said. This was a child who had been born in Ipswich, had probably rarely left Ipswich, and who attended a school that was Ipswich Town mad. It was a timely moment; one of those professional flashpoints that admonished me gently but deeply. There we are, I thought, preparing schemes of work for young brains, that punch out facts about countries and continents, when these children still have a very green understanding of where they even live. Is it a town? What actually is a town? Do they understand that their street links with another street? Incredibly basic, seemingly very small, trivial stuff. However, throwing at them abstract facts about oceans faraway, that are beyond what they have yet to make sense of, is lost time in the classroom, really, unless handled in the right way. This does not mean we can’t be ambitious. Of course a child in KS1 can conceptualise a town in comparison to a village, or what it is like to live at the seaside versus an old port town like Ipswich. But if we do not find their hooks, and their points of reference, then will the learning stick? Probably not. Local links First of all, what are the most familiar points of reference for your children in the locality? Recently, I have had the pleasure of working at a school in Kelsale, near Saxmundham, that has a very remarkable lych gate. This is a landmark in the pupils’ lives there. They walk through it for church services, which, as theirs is a church school, happen relatively regularly. And it is a very astonishing thing in itself. In fact, it is listed. Look it up! You are HERE “If we do not find hooks, and children's points of reference, will the learning stick? Probably not” www.teachwire.net | 63 HUMAN I T I E S S P E C I A L