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Upper Key Stage 2 Geographical Skills - Mini topic
Building Skills in Geography

Do you have what it takes to become a legendary geography guru? Take on this set of exciting and sometimes mysterious challenges to see if you can become a world-wide geography whizz and Olympic map champion. You may even save your school from being flattened for an intergalactic supermarket along the way!

block outcomes

Session 1 Map Olympics: Keys, Compasses and Grid References

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and key (including the use of OS maps) to build their knowledge of the UK and the wider world.
  • Identify human and physical characteristics, key topographical features and land-use patterns.

Enrichment Activities

  • History: Study a site dating from a period beyond 1066 that is significant in the locality; Select and organise relevant historical information.
  • English: Use simple organisational devices [headings and sub-headings]; Write for a range of real purposes and audiences; Write a detailed description.
  • Computing: Use search technologies effectively; Use software to create content that includes collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information.
  • Art & Design: Improve mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing and painting, with a range of materials.

Lesson Planning

Take part in a series of activities to improve your knowledge and understanding of map symbols, keys, compass direction and grid references. Will you win a gold medal at the map Olympics?

Teaching Outcomes

  • To explore, learn and use map symbols and keys.
  • To explore, learn and use four and six-figure grid references.
  • To explore, learn and use compass directions.

Children will

  • Complete a symbol and key map quiz.
  • Play ‘Battleships’ using four and six-figure grid references.
  • Use the eight points of a compass to direct people to a mystery location.

Enrichment Activities

  • Research and write a visitor’s guide for a local historical site.
  • Describe key features and places to visit in the style of a visitor guide.
  • Make a table format visitor guide with grid-references and hyperlinks.
  • Create a map symbol art poster.
  • Write a clear description of features in a map grid square.

You Will Need

  • Coloured pens
  • Tablets (optional)
  • Internet access

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Session 2 Treasure Maps: Compasses and Contours

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use symbols and keys (including the use of OS maps) to build knowledge of the UK.
  • Identify human and physical characteristics, key topographical features and land-use patterns.

Enrichment Activities

  • English: Use simple organisational devices [headings and sub-headings]; Write for a range of real purposes and audiences; Discuss writing similar to that which will be written in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar.
  • Art & Design: Improve mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture, with a range of materials.
  • Computing: Select, use and combine a variety of software to create content that accomplishes given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information.
  • Music: Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the inter-related dimensions of music; Use and understand staff and other musical notations; Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians.

Lesson Planning

Learn how to use a compass and how to read the typography of the land. Can you then create a treasure map and use your understanding of compass directions and contours to set clues that unlock a password and the location of the treasure?

Teaching Outcomes

  • To use a compass.
  • To use grid references, compass directions and symbols to locate places on a map.
  • To describe human and physical features, including contours and relief.

Children will

  • Use a compass correctly.
  • Create a treasure map using compass directions, contours and symbols.
  • Describe direction, and human and physical features of a journey.

Enrichment Activities

  • Write a tourist guide using persuasive language.
  • Sculpt a landscape from clay using a hill drawn in contour lines for inspiration.
  • Complete a map-based scavenger hunt using an interactive map.
  • Create a sketch/painting.
  • Compose a short musical piece that reflects a landscape.

You Will Need

  • Chalk or masking tape
  • Coloured pens
  • Internet access

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Session 3 Save your School: Mapping Land Use

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use fieldwork to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods, including sketch maps, plans and graphs, and digital technologies.
  • Identify human and physical characteristics, key topographical features (including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers), and land-use patterns.
  • Understand how some human and physical characteristics have changed over time.

Enrichment Activities

  • History: Study a site dating from a period beyond 1066 that is significant in the locality; Select and organise relevant historical information; Carry out a study over time tracing how several aspects of national history are reflected in the locality.
  • Art & Design: Create sketch books to record their observations; Improve mastery of drawing; Improve mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing.
  • Computing: Select and use software to design and create content that presents data and information.
  • D&T: Select from and use construction materials.
  • Maths: Find area by counting squares; Construct pie charts and use them to solve problems; Identify fractions or percentages.

Lesson Planning

Aliens are planning to flatten your local area in order to build an intergalactic supermarket. It is your job to present the arguments for saving your school and its surroundings by highlighting the importance of its current land use.

Teaching Outcomes

  • To sketch maps and plans of the school and surroundings area.
  • To gather information about land use within their school and its surrounding area.

Children will

  • Research and record detail of their school and its surroundings to maps.
  • Identify and categorise land use within their school and its surroundings.

Enrichment Activities

  • Sketch in detail local historic buildings.
  • Create a printed local specialist audience guide.
  • Use construction kits to build a 3D version of the school and local area.
  • Sketch a street view of the local area showing perspective.
  • Create a pie chart showing green land use vs urban land use.

You Will Need

  • Copies of a basic plan map of the school and surroundings
  • Internet access.

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Session 4 Save your School: Digital Analysis and Presentation

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use fieldwork to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods, including sketch maps, plans and graphs, and digital technologies.
  • Identify human and physical characteristics, key topographical features (including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers), and land-use patterns.
  • Understand how some human and physical characteristics have changed over time.

Enrichment Activities

  • History: Study a site dating from a period beyond 1066 that is significant in the locality; Select and organise relevant historical information.
  • Maths: Construct bar charts; Construct pie charts and use them to solve problems; Identify fractions or percentages.
  • Computing: Select, use and combine a variety of software to create content that accomplishes given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information.
  • English: Speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English; Participate in presentations; Write a poem
  • Art & Design: Improve mastery of art and design techniques.

Lesson Planning

You need to prepare your presentation for the Department for Planning on planet Epra, in order to save your school and local area from over development. Annotate a satellite image of your area and find out more about current land use before creating a presentation that brings all of your arguments together.

Teaching Outcomes

  • To research data on local land use.
  • To create a presentation showing local land use and the potential impact of a substantial commercial development.

Children will

  • Use digital technologies to highlight the physical and human features of their school and its surroundings.
  • Create a presentation, video or podcast that show key features of their school and its surroundings and argues against a supermarket development.

Enrichment Activities

  • Write a newspaper article describing changes over time of human and physical features.
  • Create graphs based on surveys and data about the school.
  • Record a tour of the school grounds and interviews about them.
  • Take, edit and print digital photographs.
  • Take photographs that show texture, light and form.
  • Write a poem about the features of the local area.

You Will Need

  • Internet access

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Weblinks

Google Maps from google.co.uk
Google earth from google.co.uk

There are additional weblinks for the Enrichment Activities.

Session 5 Use Your Map: UK

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use maps, atlases and digital maps to locate countries and describe features studied.
  • Use symbols and keys (including the use of OS maps) to build knowledge of the UK.
  • Name and locate counties and cities of the UK, geographical regions and their identifying human and physical characteristics, key topographical features and land-use patterns.

Enrichment Activities

  • History: Note connections, contrasts and trends over time; Devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance; Understand how knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.
  • English: Discuss writing similar to that which they are planning in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar; Use simple organisational devices [for example, headings and sub-headings]; Write for a range of real purposes and audiences.
  • Computing: Select, use and combine a variety of software to create content that accomplishes given goals, including collecting, analysing, evaluating and presenting data and information.
  • Art & Design: Improve mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture, with a range of materials.

Lesson Planning

Expand and apply your mapping skills by taking part in a treasure hunt. To succeed you will need to use maps, atlases, and digital maps to describe the features you find to help locate four mystery UK counties.

Teaching Outcomes:

  • To use atlases and digital maps to find features and places in the UK.
  • To use symbols and keys to identify physical and human features on a map.
  • To identify UK counties through key physical and human features.

Children will:

  • Use maps, atlases and digital maps to locate counties in the UK.
  • Identify physical and human features of UK counties on maps.
  • Use maps and atlases to describe physical and human features.

Enrichment Activities

  • Explore historical maps to understand how maps and land use have changed over time.
  • Describe key features and characteristics of their locality.
  • Represent information in the form of an infographic.
  • Describe typographical contours and make lino prints of mountains
  • Complete quizzes to test their knowledge of the counties of the UK.

You Will Need

  • Atlases (primary)
  • Computers or tablets
  • Internet access

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

Session 6 Use Your Map: Wider World

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Objectives

Geography

  • Use maps, atlases and digital maps to locate countries and describe features studied.
  • Use the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and key to build their knowledge of the UK and the wider world.
  • Locate the world’s countries, using maps to focus on Europe and North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries, and major cities.

Enrichment Activities

  • Science: Recognise that living things can be grouped in a variety of ways; Identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways.
  • D&T: Design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users, based on design criteria.
  • Art & Design: Improve mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture, with a range of materials.
  • English: Use a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures; In narratives, create and describe settings, characters atmosphere and plot.

Lesson Planning

Expand and apply your mapping skills as you take on a mission from MI6 to identify and describe the locations of a series of operatives. Then find a suitable new location for an overseas base.

Teaching Outcomes

  • To use maps, atlases, and digital maps to find specific features and places.
  • To identify physical and human features on a map.
  • To describe physical and human features from a map.

Children will

  • Locate places around the world using maps, atlases, globes and digital mapping.
  • Identify and describe physical and human features on maps.
  • Use online mapping tools.

Enrichment Activities

  • Annotate a map with native animals.
  • Devise clues for a country reflecting geographical features.
  • Create an illustrated map page about a European country.
  • Make self-portraits reflecting where children are from or places they have visited.
  • Write an adventure story based in a South American country.

Provided Resources

  • MI6 Retraction team memo
  • Tables of missing operatives
  • Answer sheets
  • Map Skills guideline sheets
  • Map outlines

There are additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

You Will Need

  • Atlases (primary)
  • Computers or tablets
  • Internet access

You will need additional resources for the Enrichment Activities.

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