The local area is the space immediately around where you are.

A village is a small group of houses where people live.

A town is a settlement that is usually larger than a village but smaller than a city and generally has local government.

A city is a settlement that is usually larger than a town and has local government.

An aerial photograph is a picture of an object or place that has been taken from above.

Our local area

Geography

Our homes

The street outside our school

Buildings and features near our school

A survey of how we get to school

Mapping our journey to school

This unit provides a foundation for 'Local area: Routes and maps', which focuses on investigating a specific land use - play areas. It lays the foundation for subsequent fieldwork investigations in the local area in 'Local area: how is (our place) special?', and a contrasting non-European locality.

This unit builds on 'Local area: Where do we go to school?', which focuses on the school site as a place, by extending the area of investigation into the local area. It develops basic geographical vocabulary and simple mapwork and fieldwork skills, focusing on human geographical features such as local buildings, land use and  journeys.

This unit investigates the area around school and home by identifying local features, exploring buildings, using simple maps, collecting data on how we travel to school, and describing familiar routes using basic geographical vocabulary.

Local area: where do we live?

Put these settlements in order of size, starting with the smallest.

Which of these would you be likely to find in a village?

Which features might you find in your local area?

How is information displayed on large scale plans?

You can switch from aerial photo to map of the same area easily.

You can zoom in and out of an area easily

Why might a geographer add labels to an image/map?

Geographers can use maps to __________ things. Order these letters to find the missing word.

Which locational language could you use to complete this sentence? My house is __________ the park.

What information does an aerial photograph show us about a house?

Our local area

Lesson outcome