Lesson video

Hello, geographers.

It's Mr. Robertson here again, and I'm really excited about today's lesson.

Today, we are going to have the last lesson about the big question we've been learning this time.

Europe, what is it like to live in Northern Italy?

It's been an incredible journey, hasn't it?

We've learned about what Northern Italy is like.

We've planned a route there from the UK.

We've focused on its villages.

Then we've had a look at a town.

We moved on last time to look at the beautiful city of Venice with its canals and its stunning history, and also reflected on how tourism can be a positive and negative impact for that amazing city.

We're gonna close our unit by comparing Northern Italy with your UK region.

So, by the end of this lesson, you will reflect on what you've learned about Northern Italy and compare this area with the region of the UK where you live.

So, we're drawing all our learning together and we're kind of reflecting and doing some comparing.

As always, we have some keywords.

Today, we have four keywords.

I'll say the keyword first, and then I'm gonna ask you to repeat it back to me.

So, our first keyword is climate.

Awesome.

Our second keyword is settlement.

Excellent.

Our next keyword is misconception.

Brilliant, and finally, stereotype.

That is amazing.

So, let's find out what these words mean.

So, climate is the average weather conditions over a long period of time.

A settlement is a place where people live and often work.

Misconceptions are incorrect ideas or opinions that people have.

And a stereotype is a set idea that people might have about a person, place or thing, but which is often not true in reality.

So, we're going to be using all these keywords as we progress through our lesson today.

So, in today's lesson about comparing Northern Italy with my UK region, we've got two parts.

The first part of the lesson, we're going to be reviewing our learning about Northern Italy.

And in the second part of the lesson, we're going to be reflecting on some similarities and some differences.

I'm ready to go.

Let's go.

So, over the course of this unit, we have been doing a lot of learning about Northern Italy.

Before we get into this lesson, I just want us to do a bit of reflection.

So, I'd like you to think about what you've learned so far and what you now know about Northern Italy.

I'd like you to share these ideas with your taught partner or your geography buddy.

On the screen, I've put an image, a digital map of Northern Italy to help you and maybe give you some hints for some of the names of places and physical features.

And I'll put some prompt questions for you here.

So, you might want to think about where is Northern Italy?

What types of settlement are there?

What's the climate like?

How you would get there from the UK, and what geographical features are there?

So, I'm gonna ask you to pause the video, use those questions on the map of some prompts, talk to the person next to you.

What have you learned about Northern Italy in this unit?

Off you go, geographers.

Oh, this is amazing.

You have really learned so much.

I can hear people talking to me about the names of villages.

I can hear people talking about the climate.

I can hear people talking about the route they plotted to get there, and some of the amazing places they want to visit.

Fantastic geographers.

You've learned so much.

You should be really proud of yourselves.

So, as well as learning lots of knowledge, we've also had some skills as well.

And you might want to think about what you've learned about.

Laura and Andeep have done some thinking as well.

And Laura says, "Well, I've learned a lot about asking questions.

" She's also learned about interpreting photographs.

Do you remember we looked at photographs of places like Brescia and Venice and tried to work out what was going on in them?

She's also learned a lot about communicating her ideas because she wrote a postcard back from Venice.

She started to think about the positive and negative impacts of tourism, using a consequence wheel.

Andeep's also started thinking about some of his skills.

He's thinking about the fact he's learned how to use some digital mapping tools when he was using Google Earth to zoom in on the city of Brescia and find out a little bit more about it.

And he's also learned about working with others as he's worked doing some photographic interpretation and thinking through the benefits of Italy.

So, we've learned a lot of knowledge and we've developed our geographical skills, and that's really why geography is so amazing, because we get to do a blend of all of these together, don't we?

So, you've reflected on your learning.

Now, I've got four photographs there for you.

I want you to think how you would describe Northern Italy to someone, and probably someone in your family or someone who doesn't know Northern Italy really at all.

I'm gonna set you a challenge.

Imagine you could only use one word and one picture.

What would it be?

Which word and which picture would you choose?

So, I'm gonna ask you to pause the video, and I'd like you to think, "What one picture would I choose there?

And what one word would I use?

" Pause the video geographers, off you go.

Okay, so what did you come up with?

Which picture did you choose?

Which word did you choose?

It's really hard, isn't it?

It's really, really hard to sum up all that learning and all that information and knowledge that you've got just into one photograph and one picture.

Does that one photograph, one word, really get across to somebody else who doesn't know Northern Italy the breadth of what Northern Italy is really like?

It doesn't, does it?

It can't.

Or to describe a place in one word or a single picture, and it certainly doesn't give a full understanding of what this place is like.

And this is a problem because it can lead to people having misconceptions and ideas that are stereotypes.

Let's just recap what these words mean.

So, misconceptions are incorrect ideas or opinions that people have.

They're often based on people having incorrect facts or a limited amount of knowledge about something.

And so, if you gave someone just one photograph, they might think that, oh, all Italy is like a sea because there's a picture of a coastline there, and they wouldn't realize that there were mountains up in the Alps as well.

Stereotypes are ideas or beliefs that many people have about a particular thing, person, group of people, or place.

And all of these are based on a lack of information.

So, Laura's been thinking about this, and she says, "A stereotype about Italy could be that people only eat pizza.

" And of course, we might ask, "Well, what problems might misconceptions and stereotypes cause?

" And, of course, we know that Italians don't only eat pizza.

There's an array of amazing food in Italy, isn't there?

There's pasta, there's beautiful vegetables, incredible fruit.

And so, if people think it's only pizza, that gives them a very limited idea, and means that they stereotype Italians as just people who eat pizza.

The way to overcome these, these misconceptions and stereotypes is to have lots of different information.

And if we use these different information and we bring it all together, we can avoid those misconceptions and stereotypes.

You might be thinking about what sort of information types we might got.

Those little pictures might help you.

Over the course of this unit, we've talked about the idea of using maps, photographs, information books, and the internet, and blending all that together so that we get a really rich understanding, rather than just relying on one source or an unreliable source.

Using different types and sources of information also helps to avoid misinformation.

When I say misinformation, I mean information that's incorrect or misleading.

We've talked about this in an earlier lesson, that information online isn't always true.

It's really important that when we use websites that we use them carefully.

We consider who made the websites or where the information has come from.

Your teacher or trusted adult will be able to guide you on which websites are really reliable.

They're usually websites which are made by people that we've heard of, such as the BBC.

And the advantage of those websites is they've been checked by lots of different experts, so we know that the information on them is reliable and accurate.

Information on random websites we might find at the top of a Google search can be unreliable because we don't know who's written them and we don't know who's checked the information.

It's also really important when we use the internet that we stay safe and we listen to what our teachers and trusted adults say about searching safely.

Okay, let's just bring some of this together and think about what we've just been saying.

I've got a true or false question for you here.

True or false?

It is best to use multiple sources of information when learning about what a place is like.

Multiple means more than one.

Is that true or false?

Pause the video, have a think.

Excellent geographers.

It's true, isn't it?

It's really important we use multiple sources of information.

But why is it true?

I've got two possible answers for you here, and I'd like you to tell me which of these you think is the most reasonable one based on what we've learned so far.

Is it A, using multiple sources of information can help us avoid misconceptions, stereotypes, and misinformation?

Or is it B, using multiple sources of information means we can find things out very quickly?

Pause the video, talk to the person next to you, have a think.

Well done geographers.

It's A, isn't it?

What we want to do is bring together different sources so that we can avoid those misconceptions and stereotypes, which do not give us accurate information.

It might take us a bit longer, but it means that our information is going to be reliable and not fall into stereotyping or creating misconceptions about people or places.

So, our task, I'll tell you what, this is a really wonderful task and I'm really, really hoping you enjoy this.

I want you to create a collage to show your understanding of Northern Italy in more detail.

And when I say collage, I mean that you can layer up some images and some information together.

Now, your collage can contain all sorts of things.

It might have some facts you've learned about Northern Italy.

You might want to draw some pictures of some of the places or scenery or information that you found out, and you might want to print out some photographs if you're able to do that as well.

Think really carefully about what we've been talking about, avoiding misconceptions and stereotypes.

Make sure you don't rely on a single source of information.

If you're using the internet, make sure you use a reputable website and let your trusted adult or teacher help you with that.

You might want to cross-reference information, looking more than one source to check it's the same, and that way you know it's accurate.

I want you to really think broadly about everything you've learned.

You might have learned some stuff about the climate of Italy.

You could put that in.

Maybe you want to show some photographs of some of the villages, towns, or cities.

You might want to mention how you get there from the UK.

You might want to put some facts in about food or things to do, or some of the reasons why someone might visit there as a tourist.

Try and make it really creative and use all the learning that you've brought together.

Well done geographers.

I really can't wait to see these collages.

Well, I'm blown away by the quality of what you've done there.

That's absolutely amazing.

I've got an example college here, and I tell you something, it's nothing like as good as yours, but I hope you get an idea.

I've tried here to put some different information together.

So I've put some maps on of Italy and I've got a map of the whole of Italy.

I've got a digital map where I've zoomed into Northern Italy and I've got a map of Europe as well.

And I've written Northern Italy is in Southeast Europe.

The shape of Italy is like a boot.

Do you remember, we talked about that in our first lesson, and that's a really memorable shape, isn't it, for this amazing country?

I've also tried to put some photographs in.

So I've put some photographs of Ortisei, the Alpine village we talked about, and we've took some photographs of Venice and some photographs of some of the amazing lakes as well, and other beautiful things we find there.

I've written it is lots of different settlements, including big cities, as well as towns and villages.

It has lots of coastal areas and lots of mountains.

The climate is warm in summer and cooler in the winter, and there is snow at high altitudes in the mountains.

So I've tried to use some of my geography keywords there as well, like settlements, climate, and altitude.

Then I've reflected as well about why people might go.

I've written, "Northern Italy has a lot of tourists visit every year.

Tourism is both positive and negative.

Sustainable tourism is trying to protect Venice.

" So I've tried to bring in some of those elements we talked about in the last lesson as well about the positive and negative impacts of Venice.

So that's my collage.

I really hope that you enjoyed making your collage and I hope that you've shown a breadth of what we've learned and all that amazing information you've acquired.

Well done geographers.

So for the second part of this lesson, we're going to think about similarities and differences between two regions.

Let's go.

So firstly, I've got a map of the United Kingdom there, and you can see that it's got some colors, and I wonder if you know what those colors represent.

Of course, you know, don't you?

The green represents the country of England within the UK.

Pink is the country of Wales.

Orange is Scotland, and yellow is Northern Ireland.

I want you to think about what you know about the region of the UK where you live.

And a bit like we did earlier, I'd like you to talk to someone else about this.

So I've given you some prompt questions to help you.

So where in the UK is it that you live?

What's the climate like there?

So remember, that's the average weather over about 30 years.

So what's it like in summer?

What's it generally like in winter?

What types of settlement are there?

Have you got villages, towns, or cities in your area?

And what geographical features are there?

Do you have any rivers or mountains or anything else in your region?

Pause the video, talk to the person next to you.

How many of those questions can you answer?

Oh, wow.

You really all come from such a lot of really interesting places in the UK, and it's absolutely fascinating to find out about what the climate's like where you are and some of the features where you are and the different settlements.

Thank you very much.

I'm really enjoying learning about this along with you.

So Italy and the UK are both in Europe.

You can see on the map, I've highlighted the UK is in orange, it's in northern Europe, and Italy in green, remember that boot shape is in southeastern Europe.

Despite the fact they're in different parts of Europe, they have some similarities and some differences.

So for example, as we've said in early lessons, Northern Italy has a Mediterranean climate.

This means it has hot, dry summers, and you can see an image of the village of Ossana that we looked at together there with its beautiful buildings and enjoying its Mediterranean climate.

But the climate in the mountains is affected by their altitude, and because they're very high, it's very cold and snowy in the winter, and that's a village of Ortisei that we looked at in an earlier lesson.

What's the climate like in your region of the UK?

Are you in part of the UK where it's generally mild?

We might have some snow and winter, but not often?

Or are you at a higher altitude in a part of the UK where you get very cold winters and frequently get snow?

You probably have some other variations as well.

Northern Italy has many physical features, including mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers.

And on this digital map, I've labeled some of them for you.

So we have the mountain ranges of the Dolomites, Alps, and the Apennines.

There's a very famous lake called Lake Garda in Northern Italy, but there are some other beautiful lakes as well.

And we have the River Po, which traverses across all the way from rising in the Alps to coming out in the Adriatic Sea, but of course there are other smaller rivers in Northern Italy as well.

I wonder what physical features your region has.

Do you live in a part of the UK that has mountains?

Do you have any hills or is yours quite a flat region?

Do you have any rivers?

Are they large rivers like the Thames or the Severn, or are they smaller rivers?

Really interesting to think about what your region looks like and how it compares to Northern Italy.

Now, as well as those physical features, there are lots of human features as well, and Northern Italy has many villages, towns, and cities, and these can be found in the mountains, near the lakes, and on the coast.

One thing that they have in common is that they're really, really beautiful places, and if you remember, and you can see in those photographs, they are really stunning, aren't they?

And because they're so beautiful, they're very popular with tourists who want to come and see these amazing buildings and do some fantastic activities like hiking, or skiing, or just exploring some of the beautiful streets and piazzas, looking at the churches, or eating in the restaurants and cafes.

What are the settlements like in your region?

Do you have any large cities, or are you a more rural area with some smaller towns or villages?

Do you have a mixture of both?

Do you live on the edge of a big city, or are you in a small town, or are you actually right out in a little village?

Okay, let's bring some of this learning together with this true or false question.

True or false?

My life is completely different to the life of a child living in Northern Italy.

Is that true or is that false?

I'd like you to pause the video and have a think about that.

Well, geographers, you're right, it's false, isn't it?

Your life is not completely different to the life of a child living in Northern Italy because we both live in Europe, don't we?

So let's think of a good reason for this.

Is it A, although there would be differences, there will also be similarities, or B, people's lives are the same wherever they live in the world.

Which of those is a more reasonable answer, do you think?

Pause a video and have a think.

Precisely geographers, it, A, isn't it?

There will be similarities and differences.

People's lives are not the same wherever they live in the world, are they?

Because people live in a range of different conditions with different climates.

They live in a range of different sizes of settlements.

They live in a range of different places, from very rich places to quite poor places, and so people's lives are not exactly the same, but certainly in Britain and in Northern Italy, there are going to be differences and similarities.

So this is the final practice task of this unit.

We're going to be doing some comparing, and what I want you to do is this.

Here, you can see a table, and this table gives you a chance to list some similarities and differences between the region of the UK where you live and Northern Italy, which we've been studying.

So first of all, we've got the location.

I want you to think about where you live and Northern Italy.

What's similar about the area where you live and what's different about it?

Secondly, I want you to think about climate.

Can you remember what the climate was like in Northern Italy?

I'll just give you a hint.

Can you remember that keyword Mediterranean?

And what's the climate like where you live?

What's some similarities and differences?

What about the physical or human features?

Remember, physical features are those that aren't natural features such as mountains and lakes, whereas human features are things like villages or towns or buildings.

What's similar and what's different about the area, the region where you live, and what we've studied in Northern Italy?

See if you can populate that table, and by the end of it, that will hopefully give you some ideas in the ways in which our lives might be similar to Northern Italy and different.

And then when you've completed that, I'd like you to reflect on this question.

I'd like you to think about whether you'd like to visit Northern Italy and why.

So what I'd like you to do is write a few sentences for me explaining your decision.

So if you would like to visit Northern Italy, what is it about it?

Is it that you'd really like to experience the different climate?

Is it that some of the settlements that you found out about you think, "Oh, I really wanna go and look at those.

They look absolutely amazing.

" Try and be specific maybe and give a really clear example of something you've learned about that you would like to see.

What about any physical features?

Is there anything there you've thought, "Yeah, wow, that would be so amazing to go and do that.

" Again, try and be specific and give examples of either the learning we've done in this unit or some of the research that you've done on your own.

I can't wait to see what you found out.

Good luck, geographers.

Wow, what a lot of incredibly hard work.

I've started to fill in this table, and I've got some answers for you here.

Your answers might be similar, and they might have some variations as well, and that's fine.

So in terms of location, we said that both are located in the continent of Europe.

Difference here is, of course, that the UK is in northwestern Europe, whilst Italy is in southeastern Europe.

In terms of climate, both regions have four seasons.

We have spring, summer, autumn, and winter in Northern Italy and in the UK.

But in some parts of Northern Italy, there are hotter summers and milder winters than where I live.

I wonder if that's the case for you or if you wrote something slightly different there.

We've got some physical features as well.

So we've said that both regions have coastlines, but Northern Italy is bordered by the Ligurian Sea and the Adriatic Sea, and my region in the UK is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, so we have different bodies of water.

And in terms of settlement, we said both regions have many different types of settlement.

Whereas we've said in villages in Italy they can be found in the mountains and on the coast, whereas in my region, there are villages in the countryside and the coast, because in my region, there aren't any mountains, so there's some differences.

So we really started to show some similarities and differences between Northern Italy and the region and the UK where I live, and that is a really important geographical skill to be able to make these comparisons.

Final thing I've had to think about is whether I would like to visit Northern Italy, and of course I would.

I'd like to visit Northern Italy because it has a diverse range of physical features.

I could go walking in the mountains and go swimming in the sea.

Oh, that would be an amazing time, wouldn't it?

What did you put?

Did you put that you'd really love to have a go at propelling a gondola through the canals of Venice, or perhaps exploring the beautiful town of Brescia?

Maybe you wanted to go swimming near some of those amazing coastal villages.

Thank you very much for all your hard work, and I hope you've really enjoyed learning this unit, and you know a lot more about Northern Italy now than you did before, and also you've really got a sense of comparing a different region of Europe with the region in which you live as well.

So let's summarize our learning today.

We've learned that a range of different sources of information is needed to develop a full picture of what a place is like.

We've learned that using different sources and types of information can help avoid misconceptions, stereotypes, and misinformation.

Finally, we've learned there are similarities and differences between Northern Italy and my UK region.

For example, the climate, physical features, and settlements will have different characteristics.

I've absolutely loved this unit of work, and I've loved the fact that you've come along with me and learnt with me.

Thank you, geographers, for your hard work, and remember, keep learning and keep enjoying geography.

Thank you very much.