Lesson video

Hi, Mr. Wnuk here, and another RAA lesson.

In today's lesson, we're going to be looking at how to find our direction.

Let's do it.

If you're unsure about doing any of the activities in this lesson, make sure you have a trusted adult nearby when you start them.

This lesson should take place indoors, such as in your living room.

You should ensure there's space for you to work safely, including overhead.

Use bare feet, not socks.

Make sure the floor is not slippery.

Wear comfortable clothing, put hair up if needed, and remove any jewellery.

Pause this video now if there's anything you need to do to get ready.

For today's lesson, you're going to need to be in your regular PE kit, such as your shorts and T-shirts.

If you're doing this session indoors, please make sure you're going barefoot.

If you're doing it outdoors or elements outdoors, please put some appropriate footwear on.

The equipment you will need today is writing equipment, something to time with, such as your mobile phone, something to use as markers or marking points, so pairs of socks work brilliantly with this or any household objects.

You need something that is standing quite high and upright.

So a vacuum cleaner would be amazing for this, but if you haven't got a vacuum cleaner, anything that you could put that's self-standing, so even a chair will be fine.

And then finally, a watch.

If you don't have a watch, that's not a problem.

We can work around it.

The area you're going to need around you is around about two metres.

If you need to pause the video to get ahold of this, do it now.

So we're ready.

Let's get into our starter activity.

For today's starter, what I'd like you to do is draw out a compass.

So you need to grab a piece of paper and draw a large circle on it.

If you need to help draw in large circle, go grab a bowl or something that's not going to break and draw a big circle around the outside edge of it.

Then I'd like you to label North, South, East, and West, and Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest.

And you can pause the video at any time to get this done.

Excellent stuff.

We're going to be using this compass a little bit later on, so don't lose this.

So the lesson's going to look like this.

We've already done a starter, where you've drawn a beautiful compass, and we're going to start off by finding North.

We're going to then work out and do some physical direction challenges.

And then we're going to finish off with the exit quiz.

So the first key word is a compass.

Now this is an instrument that contains a magnetic pointer, which will show the direction of magnetic North, and it is used to give directions.

So there's a little dial in the middle, it spins around, and it will point to North, and it is a magnetised bit of metal in there, and the earth has its magnetic fields, and it sort of uses those to find the line of North.

So we're going to find North.

And not many of you have a compass at home, and some of you may have it on your apps or on your phones and stuff, but we're going to do it without using that.

We're going to do it old fashioned way, if you're outside, for example, trying to find your direction Right, I've come outside to show you a way of figuring out how to find North using the sun when we don't have a compass.

So you need an analogue watch.

If you haven't got an analogue watch, whoops, just get it to alarm setting, you can use, draw a circle, and work out the time, and draw it on the surface.

I've drawn a rough 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00.

And that's my hour hand here.

The smaller hand here is my hour hand.

There's my minute hand.

And what you need to do is I know the sun is over there.

I can see it poking out.

So I'm going to point my hour hand flat.

I'm going to hold it flat like this.

I'm going to point my hour hand to the sun.

Okay.

Now the next thing we need to do, it's a bit windy out here, sorry, is I'm going to draw a line at 12:00.

So I've got now my hour hand pointing to the sun, and get it in angle, over here.

And I've got the 12:00 line drawn out here on my clock.

Now, if I imagine drawing that line, carrying that line on, the mid point between these two lines shows me the North and South line, okay? Now the way the sun is is South, and the way the sun isn't, and the way it's not shining, is to the North.

So from here, I know that South is that direction, whereas North is carrying on that line pointing down away from me over there.

So that's how we work out where North is when we haven't got a compass.

Go ahead and pause the video, and go and find the sun, and try it yourself.

And remember, if you haven't got your own watch, draw your clock out, see if you can make it.

Good luck.

Well done, hopefully you copied my video, but if you haven't done so, now's the time to pause it and have a go at that.

So you need to get a watch.

And if you haven't got a watch, you can just look at the time right now and draw that out on the analogue watch.

You draw a bit of paper, a big circle, on a circle, and just quickly do the one to 12 on the numbers and then just line up the hour line and the minute line to where it is right now.

So once you've done that, you've got to hold that flat and point to the hour, point hour hand to the sun.

Once you've done that, you need to then work out where the 12:00 line is.

So you've now got two lines, imaginary lines, but they're two lines.

And then in between those two lines is the dissecting line that points to North and South.

So the sun will be towards the South, and the North will be in the opposite direction.

Now this technique is if you're in the Northern hemisphere, and if you're in the Southern hemisphere, you point the, instead of pointing the hour hand to the sun, you'll actually point 12:00 to the sun, and you repeat exactly the same thing, except for you'll be going from the midpoint between the the 12:00 line and the hour hand.

Okay, so what I've done is I've sat my vacuum cleaner up in front of my window, and you can see just here, the top of the collection box of the vacuum cleaner.

And I'm going to put a marker now down to show that point there.

Just my sock, okay? I'm going to leave it 15 minutes, and I'm going to see if the shadow moves, and if it does, when it moves, I'm going to put my sock down, another sock down, and see if I can track the pathway of it.

So I'm going to leave that there for 15 minutes, come back, let's see what happens.

Okay, so it's been about 15 minutes now.

You can see the shadow has moved.

So that's the original point I had it on.

Okay, just up here.

And then you can see the shadow's moved here in those 15 minutes.

So I'm going to get my other sock.

I'm just going to put a marker down there.

Now, what we need to do is we draw a line across these two points here.

So you could visually just do a line from these two points, or you can get something like, and I've just got a phone cable here, that I'm going to lay down on the floor.

The reason why I'm laying down on the floor is that I can get a straighter line along the line.

So I've now put my phone cable down to show me a line.

And what we do is we take the first point here, which is number one, the second point here, which number two.

Now number one is always going to be at West, and number two is always going to be East.

So we got one for West.

And if W for winning, West, okay, number one.

I'm going to take these out of the way, because we can see now my line between West and East.

So if I come around here, I can now put another line in the middle and make a cross.

So I've got now my West and East, and then that line here could be my North and South line.

So this line here is my North and the South line, and it goes to North, East, South, and West.

And therefore, I know North is that direction, and South is this direction using shadows.

So pause the video, and go and copy my experiment.

It'll take about 15 minutes.

If you want to make it even more accurate, you can leave it longer and longer and longer to try and get that perfect line.

Enjoy.

Okay, so now we've established earlier how to work out where North is using our watch, an analogue watch.

Now we're going to look, we've looked at the shadow technique, and hopefully you've done the same thing.

And it does take a little bit more time to try this technique.

This is a great way if you don't have an analogue watch, and you're outside, and you can see a shadow.

So you'd put something like a stick out, but if you didn't have a stick, you could use a tree or the side of a building, as long as you've got the end of a shadow.

And you put something down on the end of that shadow, which is marker number one.

As the sun moves around, the shadow will move and change in length.

And you put that in shadow number two.

And you'd probably wait about 15 minutes between these periods.

And you could keep doing that, if you were having lunch, for example, on your break, and see where that line would take you.

But once you get at least two points, you can make a straight line.

Now that line will point not North and South, it will point West and East.

And the way, a good way of remembering it is West, W for West is winning, and winning is number one.

So number one point is the West side of it.

And East is the second side of it.

And once you've got that East-West line, you know that the line that dissects it is North and South.

And if you can remember the, the way of remembering it, never eat shredded wheat, or naughty elephants squirt water, the way of remembering it is North, East, South, West.

So hopefully you've managed to do both these activities and can now tell me where North is in the location, in relation to the location you're in now, and make a mental note of which way North is right now.

Okay, so you've done the practical activities where you've found where North is.

And what we've been doing is another life skill, which RAA's fantastic for, but all sports and PE lessons are fantastic as well, which is problem solving.

And this is the process of finding solutions to problems and difficulties.

So we've found our solution to which way North is, found out a directional problem without having a compass.

And you can also find North at night, and this is more of a tip.

So this is a homework task if you'd like, and I want you to have a go at this tonight or any other clear nights.

You now know where North is in the room you're in or the house you're in, 'cause you've been practising these techniques.

You should be able to look roughly where this is.

So if you look at nighttime North, and you're looking for the star constellation of the Big Dipper, or the plough, and that is the picture that I've drawn on the screen right there.

Now, if you take a line from the end of the Big Dipper or the end of like the base and part of that Big Dipper, that line, the next star that those two point to is the North Star, and that is located in the Northern direction.

So if you're facing that star, you are facing North.

And it's a great way of finding your direction at night, because you won't have the sun's views, or you won't be able to get any shadows.

So it's just another tip you can do.

I'd like you to practise this one tonight.

Go out and have a look, 'cause now you know where North is.

Does this match up with your North right now? Okay, so true or false.

When using stars to find your direction, you need to find the Big Dipper constellation.

True or false? Yes, that's true.

The Big Dipper can show you where the North Star, which is also called Polaris, is located in the sky.

And once you're facing that, you know where North is.

I hope you have a go at that tonight.

Okay, we're going to activity two, which is direction challenges.

So the first thing that we need to remember, when we have a map is that the top of a map always points to the North.

So if any of you've got a drawn map, or if you're drawing a map, or you're given a map, the top part is North, particularly paper maps.

And usually, your default setting if you're using a satellite navigation type map will be pointing North, but sometimes you change it so that you, it will always be upwards in the direction you're travelling.

But in true sense, you will have a map that will always point North.

So this is a quick map reading skill that I'd like you to have a look at.

And could you tell me, compared to Manchester, which is right in the middle of that map, where is Stockport? Where is it in relation to Manchester? Where is Salford in relation to Manchester, and where is Ashton-under-Lyne in relation to Manchester? Now, if you're in Manchester, I know you've got the upper hand, 'cause you should know where these places are, but there some people in the country or in the world who may have never heard of these, which I'm sure they have, because they're amazing places.

So pause the video now and work out which direction are they compared to Manchester.

So hopefully right now, you have figured out that Stockport is South of Manchester.

And if you want it to be technical, you could actually say it is Southeast of Manchester.

Salford or Salford, apologies if I'm saying that wrong, but Salford is West of Manchester.

And then finally, you should now knowing that Salford is West of Manchester, shout out to the screen, where is Ashton-under-Lyne in comparison to Manchester? And hopefully you are saying it is East.

Some people may have said Northeast, but it's mainly East.

Well done if you've got those ones right.

So just the top of a map, the top of the map is always South.

True or false? And hopefully you haven't suffered a short-term memory lapse, and the answer is false.

Top of the map is always North.

Well done if you've got that one right, and I'm sure you all did, well done.

So now's time to pause the video and have a go at this directional, physical time challenge.

So you need to lay your hand-drawn compass in the middle of your room pointing to the correct direction, to wherever North is, point it towards North.

Now we're going to mark out the points of the compass, about 1.

5 metres from the middle.

So this is where you might want to pairs of socks, and you're going to mark out North, East, South, and West.

But then I want you to also mark out where Northeast is, Northwest is, Southeast, and Southwest are, so put those out on the floor.

Now your challenge is to touch each marker whilst passing through the centre as quick as possible.

And you can choose any path you wish to get around the compass.

So your challenge is to just figure out the quickest route around touching every single marker that you've laid out now.

I want you to have three go's at this, and I want you to change your tactic every time and see how quick you can do it in.

And if you want, you can make the directions, the distance bigger to challenge yourself and make yourself work harder, but no less than 1.

5 metres out from you.

So once you've had a go at that, you can resume the video.

Good luck.

Excellent stuff.

Well done on that one.

How fast did you do it? Did you manage to figure out a combination, a way of doing it to get quicker? I hope you did.

And I hope you found it a little bit challenging and thinking challenge as well.

There's a bit of problem solving that we said was that life skill we're working on.

So what strategy did you use to complete this task? How did you make sure it was quick? How would being able to find your direction be useful? So what situations might you think that finding your direction is useful? Now hopefully you're thinking, right, when you go hiking, or we're going out for a walk, but sometimes it may even just be asking directions for or giving directions.

Knowing where North is is a very useful option.

Also, there are plenty of times when you need to be able to put something facing, say for example, solar panels, you want them facing South, or sometimes where you need to put a satellite dish, or a TV antenna, and you need to point it in a certain direction.

And knowing North is a great starting point for pointing it in the right direction.

And finally, how confident are you being able to look at landmarks and identify the directions of these on a map? Could you do that right now? I hope you could.

Next physical challenge is to draw a map of where you are, for example, your house, your garden or school, wherever you are.

And it may include some key features such as rooms, tables, doors, et cetera.

And make sure this map is oriented so North is at the top.

And your challenge is to move to the most Northerly part of the map or part, location on your map, and then to Southerly, the most Easterly, and the most Westerly point on your map as quick as possible, and at each point, complete a physical challenge, such as 10 press-ups.

Once you've done this, you need to get to the furthest Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest points and complete physical challenge.

And it's a time limit, and you're going to see how quickly you can do that.

You can do this more than once if you want, but it's trying to make sure you can figure out where everything is located directionally in the area you're in.

So pause the video, complete the task, and when you finished, join me back.

Well done in that physical challenge.

I hope you enjoyed that.

And some of you may have had to travel quite a distance to go to the most Northerly, Southerly points in your immediate location.

So which of these is not a way of finding your direction? Option one, point your watch hour hand at the sun.

Option two, use a river to find North.

Option three, use star constellations to find North.

And option four, track the path of a shadow to determine East and West.

Well, hopefully you're saying option two, 'cause it's the only activity we haven't done in today's lesson, and you can't really find North using a river.

So the other three areas are ways of finding North without a compass.

So today's lesson, we were looking at directions, and we were looking at finding our direction in particular finding North.

We learnt how to do this without the use of a compass, although we did find out what a compass is, and we talked about magnetic, magnetic lines in the earth, which help you to determine where North is, but we did it without that, and we used our watch to try and use the sun as the way of tracking North.

And we used shadows again with the sun to try to figure out where North is based on the direction of movement of the shadow from West to East.

We also looked at a star constellation that we can use to find North.

And hopefully you've tried them.

And hopefully right now, and for other lessons, you know where North is in the room that you're sitting in right now.

So if you don't, make sure right now that you can determine a point in your location that is your Northern point.

We also looked at problem solving, and RAA and sports are a fantastic way of helping you solve problems, and today's problem was locating North without a compass.

So well done.

I hope you've tried all of those activities.

There are other ways of finding North without a compass, such as making your own magnetic compass using a magnet, a needle, and some water, but we didn't get into that today, but there's something you might want to look up and try yourself.

Fantastic work.

I hope you enjoyed today's lesson, and I'll see you in the next RAA lesson.