Lesson video

Hello, my name is Chloe and I'm a geography field studies tutor.

That means I teach children all about the outdoors.

This lesson is called Collecting Our Geographical Data.

It's part of a unit of work called, How can we investigate the sustainability of our school? This is the really exciting part of the geographical enquiry.

We are gonna be going outside and actually collecting data around our school grounds.

I hope you're gonna enjoy it.

By the end of this lesson, you will have collected data in your school grounds that will help you to answer your enquiry question.

Before we do that though, we need to have a look at some keywords.

First of all, data.

This is information that geographers collect to help them answer their fieldwork enquiry.

A variable is a geographical factor that has a big impact on the results of our enquiry.

Finally, biased data.

This is data that has been unfairly influenced by someone's personal opinion or by their actions.

There are two parts to our lesson today.

First of all, what variables can we measure at school? Then we're going to look at this question, how can we make sure our data is fair? But let's start with that first one now.

We are thinking about how we collect information and that will help us answer our enquiry question.

So here we are in the second stage of our enquiry cycle, collect our data.

Aisha says, "What variables can we measure in our enquiry?" The choice for the best place for some solar panels could be influenced by lots of variables.

Let's look at some of them here.

One variable, which is quite important is whether it is light or shady.

Of course, we want our solar panels to work really well, so we need to have them in a light place.

Another variables think about is the potential effect on wildlife.

If we put a lot of solar panels in place, does that mean wildlife is gonna be losing its habitats? Does it mean that it's going to be affected negatively? That's something we really need to think about too.

How dusty a place is.

This is an important variable as well.

If a place is really dusty, it means our solar panels are gonna get covered in dust and dirt and it means they're not gonna work as well.

So maybe we don't want to choose a place that's really dusty.

The size of the land available.

This is an important variable too.

We need to have a really large area to get as many solar panels in as possible.

And finally, what the land is used for.

It's important that the land doesn't have any particular land use.

Otherwise we're gonna be putting solar panels in a place where people are trying to do their jobs or trying to study.

Which of these though, could we actually collect data on? Which ones could we think about when we go outside and collect data? Andeep is thinking about these three variables.

He says, "I can measure the size of an area using a tape measure, and I can say what the land is used for by looking at it.

We can stand in an area and say whether we are standing in the light or the shade." So with these three variables, Andeep thinks that he could measure all of these out in the field.

Let's look what Jacob thinks about these as well.

Jacob says, "I don't think I can measure what impact solar panels might have on wildlife in different places.

This information would be a guess because I don't have enough knowledge about it." That's a really good and important point.

If we're trying to guess information, it's not going to be very accurate.

We can't imagine what it's like to be a mouse or a hedgehog or a seagull, so we don't know what impact solar panels might have on those things.

He also says, "I don't have any equipment to measure how dusty a place is.

So this might be a guess too." Yes.

How do you measure how dusty a place is? He's making an important point here.

This means that he's probably not going to be able to measure these variables when he's doing his fieldwork.

Let's check our understanding here.

What might stop us from measuring some data? A: it might be too sunny at a place? B: we might have too many people? C: we might not have the right knowledge or equipment? Pause the video and have a think about what our students have just been talking about and see if you can find the right answer.

So what answer did you go for? Well done if you got C.

Yes, something that would stop us from measuring some data might be that we don't have the right knowledge or understanding, or we don't actually have the right equipment to measure that particular piece of data.

Now, Jun and Izzy have got a map of their school grounds to look at.

This means they're starting to plan their data collection.

Jun says, "We have decided on our variables, now all we need are some places to collect our data." Izzy says, "We need a good variety of locations.

Where should we choose?" Jun says, "We could choose six locations in one place, such as the school field." You can see the pink dots are the places that Jun has chosen.

Izzy says, "We could choose six locations that are all different from each other." You can see her pink dots are all around the school grounds.

Which is the best option? Izzy says, "If we choose six different locations, we are exploring more places where we could potentially put on new solar panels." She's absolutely right.

Having a variety of locations is important because that's the key part of our question that we're trying to answer.

This is important as we need data from different locations to answer our fieldwork enquiry question.

Let's check our understanding now.

Fill in the gaps using the correct word from the box.

You can see that there are four different answers available, but there's only three gaps.

So this means that one word will not be used.

Pause the video so you can have a look through the paragraph and then decide which word goes in which gap.

How did you get on? Let's check together.

When geographers decide where to do their data collection, they choose locations that will best help them answer their enquiry question.

Well done if you've got those three answers in the right place.

Now we move on to the first task of this lesson.

Look at a map of your school grounds.

Choose six locations where you could collect data to help you answer our enquiry question.

Mark these places on your map using letter codes and include a key which gives the name of each location.

You will definitely want to pause the video here.

You might even want to have a class discussion, thinking about all the different areas within your school grounds that could be places where you could test to see if solar panels would work.

Remember, you only need six, so choose them carefully.

Pause the video here, and then when you come back, I'll show you some of my ideas.

So let's have a look at some of the locations that I've chosen with my map.

So your map might look a little bit like this.

You can see the pink dots are the six places that I've chosen, and I've given them some letter codes: A, B, C, D, E, and F.

I've then got a key which gives a description or a name, or a title of each of those locations.

So you can see A is the school field, B is the main roof, C is my school carpark, D is the junior playground, E is the infant playground, and F is our school garden.

Of course, your school is going to look different to mine, but do check that you've got six different locations and that you've used a key to identify where those different locations are.

We now move on to the second part of our lesson.

How can we make sure our data is fair? Alex is thinking about the different variables being investigated and the type of data that can be recorded.

So our first variable that we identified is that we want to know whether somewhere is light or shady.

So what data can we actually go outside and collect? Alex recognizes that he can naturally just write a description of how shady or how well-lit a location is.

Another variable is the size of the land available.

What could we actually go out and record? Well, we could actually go out and measure the size of the area in meters squared.

Our third variable is what the land is used for.

What could be the data that we would actually write down in association with that? Again, we could work on descriptions.

We can describe how the land is used by the school community.

Let's listen into this conversation between Sofia and Lucas.

Sofia says, "These are great ways of finding the data, but how do we compare one place with another?" "You're right," Lucas says, "One area might be described as really sunny, while another place might be really big in size.

How would we choose which one was better?" How can you compare one variable with another? It's quite tricky.

What could Sofia and Lucas do to solve this problem? Sofia and Lucas could use a score survey.

You can see an example of one on the clipboard here.

They record a score out of three for each variable in each location.

So you can see on our data collection sheet here, we've got all of our locations listed down the left hand side, and then across the top, you can see our three variables: how much sunlight there is, the size of the area and the land use.

The location with the highest score is the most suitable for solar panels.

So we would score each location out of three, then total up the score, and then we would be able to compare one location with another.

Sofia, Izzy and Alex test out the scoring system by looking at the school roof.

They say the roof is really sunny, so it's gonna get three out of three.

So they put a three in their data collection table.

You can see there, main roof, under sunlight, they've put a score of three.

The area is quite large, so it gets a two out of three.

So it's not the biggest it could be, but it's still quite large.

They've given it a score of two.

It has no land use as it is empty space.

So it gets three out of three.

So it's the best score it could get.

It's not being used for anything, it gets three out of three.

What do they need to do next? That's it.

They need to total them up.

So three plus two plus three gives a total score of 8.

Let's check our understanding with our data collection table here.

What are the minimum and maximum scores a location can get using this scoring survey? Each variable is scored out of three, remember.

So what's the maximum, the top score that any place could get and what's the lowest possible score that any place could get? Have a think about this.

It might not be as obvious as it seems. Come back to me and I'll tell you the right answer.

So what do you think? If each location can be scored out of three for each variable, we're gonna have three plus three plus three, and that's a total of nine.

So our maximum score that we can get is a score of nine.

But what about our minimum, our lowest possible score? That means that each place would be scored one out of three.

So one plus one plus one is three.

So our minimum score is three.

Hopefully you've got those right.

All data, whether it is numbers or words, is valuable to geographers, providing it is fair and not biased.

Sam says, "Some of our scores are going to be based on our own opinion.

How can we try to reduce the chance of the data being biased?" For example, some people might think somewhere's really sunny, but someone else might look at it and think, "Actually it could be a bit more shady." So it's gonna be really based on people's opinions.

What could Sam and Laura do? Sam and Laura could work in a team.

During the data collection, everyone could listen to everyone else's opinion about which score they could choose.

They could then make a group decision on the score that they record in their table.

So they listen to everyone's opinion before they decide on the number that they're going to write down.

Let's check our understanding of that.

True or false: Number data is more valuable to geographers than word data.

Is that true or false? Have a think and pause the video.

Well done.

It's not true, is it? But why is that not true? Yes, all data, whether it's numbers or words, is valuable to geographers, providing it is fair and it's not biased.

We appreciate all data as geographers.

Our second task now.

Using the data collection table, collect scores at each of your chosen locations in your school grounds.

Work in small teams to make sure the data you record is not biased.

Then calculate the total score for each location.

This is going to mean you're gonna be working as a team, so you really need to be making sure you are listening carefully to everyone's opinion.

Definitely you're going to be pausing the video now because you need to get outside and collect some data.

So how did you get on? Hopefully you now have a data collection table full of numbers.

So your table might look like this.

Now of course, you are gonna have different locations, perhaps, down the left hand side of your table, and I imagine you've got a whole variety of different scores.

But do check that you have completed the totals column as well.

So you should be able to see very clearly which location has the highest score and which one has the lowest.

Let's summarize our learning now.

Understanding our variables helps us to understand the data that we need to collect as part of our fieldwork enquiry.

Geographers choose data collection locations that will help them answer their enquiry question.

A scoring survey allows us to compare one place with another.

Well done, I hope you managed to get outside and collect some really valuable geographical data.

But the fieldwork enquiry isn't over yet.

Now we need to look at it more closely, analyze it so we can start to answer our big enquiry question.