The thinking behind the unit

Bolton is a Lancashire ‘cotton mill town’ that has been through a process of industrial rise and decline and more recently gentrification.

Although we are skilled and well resourced in teaching global geography, we could see a need to develop resources to teach ‘what we can see from our window’ as we felt that our local story was not very well known.

By Year 5 students at St Peter’s have studied:

• Global: St Lucia, Africa’s Child (12 countries in Africa), Mamole, Kenya (link school) during KS1 and 2
• Local: ‘What I can see from my window’ and the geography of the British Isles
• Issues in Geography: Manchester Airport, air travel

This unit was created to develop a greater knowledge and understanding of the local area, Barrow Bridge, and to encourage the children to become ‘everyday geographers’.

We aimed to teach the geographical concepts of interdependence, connectedness and place within a wider, cross-curricular context covering objectives from geography, history, PSHEC and ICT. There was also an emphasis on using ICT to communicate our ideas.

Key objectives of the unit

• To know how the local area has changed over time, ask questions about how it is today and how it could be in the future
• To go on a fact-gathering fieldtrip to collect primary data and use secondary information sources to supplement this information
• To present the information in a stimulating way using ICT and share this work with children in a different year group

The curriculum making >>>