As geographers, this is what year 4 have been doing this week. Geography is about the interaction of humans with their physical environment, local and global. Year 4 has considered the global perspective through exploring “Plastic vs Planet” and the local one by doing field-survey on litter – plastic and non-plastic – round the school. The children found out that the amount of plastic litter really affects the environmental quality of an area. We discussed how the quantity of plastic we use on a daily basis can be reduced. There was some shock at the quantity and type of litter left in the area, particularly as some of it came from a very popular local fast food outlet! This led to an interesting discussion about how necessary fast food is. Due to the children’s loathing of cigarette butt litter, the conversations took in the piece of news that this generation of children will not be able to purchase cigarettes legally. Such is the range of discussion in human geography when cross-curricular discussion is encouraged and we step outside the school gates. The children’s behaviour was excellent on our journey round the school and they loved seeing the school from different perspectives, piecing together their various memories of different walks over time.
The children chose images of the local area to represent what they saw. The photos are realistic rather than clasically pretty!
Back at school, the children worked well together to present the data using Google Charts. They wrote reports on what they had done, what they found out, their conclusions and recommendations.
