How the PGQM can support you to develop quality geography

How the PGQM Geography in your school can support you to enhance the quality of 2009 Wendy North, Primary Curriculum Development Leader Geographical Association Quality Geography Conference, Birmingham – 10 th March 2009

Promotes Enjoyment of Geography

Pupils are enthusiastic and enjoy their experience of geography

Getting ready to ‘fly’ to Mexico

Supports excellence in geography and across the curriculum Foundation Stage Austrey Primary School: Google Maps proved an excellent resource for showing the children a real river. We discussed what the map might be showing, Katie said: It’s here, England They knew from the story, ‘The Journey’ where and what the estuary was. Some noticed that the river got narrower. I used the words they had been using to sketch a map of a river.

Armed with trowels, in small groups we start to dig the stream.

‘ I didn’t know it was going to be this hard work!’ Stream Building

‘ We’ve found loads of worms!’ ‘ I’ve found a really tiny one.’

We sprinkled in sand and pebbles.

‘ It’s like adding chocolate chips!’

Then we collected water in watering- cans and buckets.

The water was poured in carefully.

‘ There’s a deep bit at this end.’

We tried to make it look like the story, about the little red boat.

Encourages Geographical Thinking

Spatial awareness

Making connections

First hand experience

Making sense of the world

Link learning across the curriculum

Thornton Dale CE Primary School What is an island? Discuss why this was a good setting for Swallows and Amazons. Why is this island in the lake? How could this stream move this tree? Why do the rocks near the water have no vegetation? Looking on the stream bed – what is it made up of? How and when does sediment move? This links to our work on rivers in year 6.

Humphry Head How did all these dead trees get here? The water is not strong enough to move them. Although there was lots of green above the stream nothing was growing on the rocks next to the water.

We followed a mountain stream. The best bit was getting wet and jumping in to see how strong the water was.

Although we tested out what the stream could move by dropping different sizes of material into the water. There was no way we could move the bigger branches and the stream was not moving them.

There was nothing growing on the sides of the stream and so we thought that the water could sometimes be a lot higher. When we got back we decided to look at the rainfall to see if there could be more water in the stream. We knew that when Pickering and Thornton Dale flooded and the school shut there was a lot of rain so decided to look at the rain in the Lake district.

When we looked at the monthly rainfall figures we could see that there was a lot of rain in summer as well as winter. That did not tell us why the trees were there as we were there in May and there was not a lot of water. We would need to see if a lot of rain fell in a short time which would then make the river rise.

We had trouble trying to find measurements which were not averages. The one we used was from Cumbria house which showed daily rainfall. We could then see if there were several days when it rained a lot and there would be more water in the river. News reports of flooding where cars were washed away mentioned flash floods when a lot of rain fell in a short time. So we think this is how the trees got here.