Introduction

Take a sensory approach to fieldwork that encourages key stage 2 pupils to explore their local environment through the often overlooked sense of smell.

By tuning in to place with our noses we will develop place understanding through careful observation and use of descriptive language, while offering an engaging fieldwork learning experience.

Download this resource as a PDF

Smellscape example

Smellscape record sheet

Length of time

One lesson.

Suitable locations

School grounds, local and wider community, out of area locations.

Equipment needed

• Smell wheel
• Smellscape example
• Smellscape record sheet

Objectives and key skills

Ways pupils can record and showcase their responses/findings

• Class-wide data can be added to a single wheel for each location.
• Create a smell word cloud for each location.
• Show frequency of occurrence for each of the six categories by either tally, pictogram or bar chart.
• Average strength of each category (see yellow highlighter on example record sheet).
• Categorising by pleasant, neutral, unpleasant.

Descriptions of each place using the word mat.

Suggested delivery

• Explore how we use our senses to explore place (e.g. taking in pleasing views, searching out interesting patterns/textures, closing eyes to focus on the sounds that can be heard in a place, tasting seasonal or local foods).
• Discuss smells, perhaps having some classroom based examples.
• Discuss smells we associate with places (e.g. fish at the market, seaweed on the beach, chips at the seaside, hotdogs at the fair, cut grass in a park, smelly shoes in a changing room).
• Decide which fieldwork locations to visit (perhaps three) and use maps to locate them.
• Predict what smells you might detect in a place you will visit.
• Examine the smell wheel: can you spot any smells that are missing?
• Use Google Maps’ Street View to undertake a risk assessment: what might the dangers be? How can we keep ourselves safe?
• Conduct a smellscape walk to visit locations.
• Record the smellscape at each location using the record sheet.
• Identify the source of smells.
• Discuss patterns that emerged.
• Discuss how the smell affected our experience of place.

Ensuring all can access

• Simplified recording sheets with visual prompts, record symbols or drawings instead, adult scribing, fewer comparison sites, fewer categories.
• Increased challenge – children devise their own wheel, create linked enquiries, link to other sensory information about place.
• Those with reduced smell – pair work with ‘smeller’ and ‘recorder’ focused on descriptive language and capturing images to match described smells.
• Smell sensitivity – discussions beforehand about what might be acceptable/difficult, choose locations which are suitable/less strong and preparation of what to expect.

Potential risks to consider

• Busy roads and junctions.
• Hay Fever and reactions to strong smells.

Possible follow-up activities

• Discuss possible follow-up enquiries: ‘Do smellscapes change seasonally?’ or ‘What could be done to improve this smellscape?’
• Write about what the smellscape has revealed about the place or create a description of the smellscape.
• Communicating findings to different audiences.
• Repeating the survey in other, contrasting localities.
• Create a questionnaire for taking home to conduct a survey around the perception of the smellscape of the place.

Useful links

• Quercia, D., Schifanella, R., Aiello, L.M. and McLean, K. (2021). Smelly Maps: The Digital Life of Urban Smellscapes. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 9(1), pp.327–336.
• Urban Smellscape Aroma Wheel: https://goodcitylife.org/smellymaps/img/aromawheel/urban_smellwheel.pdf

This collection of Fieldwork activities were created by Paula Richardson and the Fieldwork and Outdoor Learning Special Interest Group (FOLSIG) for the National Festival of Fieldwork, the GA invites everyone to take part during the summer term.