Using a range of investigative techniques
A number of teaching and learning activities may be used to help children to pose questions about environments, carry out worthwhile investigations and use a number of geographical concepts and skills. A range of those which are particularly suited to the investigation of human environments is discussed in the pages which follow. The teacher should select from these and other possible activities to ensure that children investigate their environments in a number of ways. When implementing these techniques, teachers should also be aware of the advice on safety and other issues contained in the section Organising fieldwork (pp. 74-80 above).
Some of these techniques are sufficiently time-demanding to be used as a single activity during one visit to the environment while others could be combined to form a number of tasks in a trail booklet. For example, the completion of a land use survey by children in their local town centre might be the sole focus of one of their visits to the area or the sole task allotted to one group of pupils during a visit. A further visit might involve the completion of a trail which would include map-reading, tasks requiring observation and deduction from visual evidence, sketching activities and the evaluation of the attractiveness (or otherwise) of various aspects of the areas.
The techniques are suitable for use in both urban and rural areas. While the section which follows explores how these approaches could be applied in the study of human environments, it should be remembered that many of the techniques are also applicable in the examination of natural environmental features. Similarly, many of the techniques discussed under Investigating natural environments (pp. 97-115) may also be applicable in built environments.
Observing and sketching features in the environment
Encouraging the child to look closely and critically at the elements of the landscape around him/her is an essential requirement in developing a familiarity with the environment. Two elements should be present in this type of activity: firstly, children should be engaged in tasks which prompt them to look closely and observe features in the environment, and secondly, children should be encouraged to analyse and make deductions from the visual evidence which they encounter. These elements reflect two of the key questions of geography: 'What is this place like?' and 'Why is this place as it is?'
A great deal of the significance of geographical information is concerned with the shape, size and relative location of features and so making sketches, drawings and maps will provide an important way of recording and analysing facts about a place. The artistic quality of the sketches is not of great importance in these activities: the emphasis should be placed on careful observation and the recording of useful information. Some ways in which children's attention may be drawn to environmental evidence are described below.
Finding and recognising details and features
Sketches or photographs of features can be drawn on a worksheet or trail leaflet and children should record where these details are to be found. Architectural features such as roof shapes, bargeboards on gables, evidence of trading such as advertisements and large shop windows, metal covers used on water or gas mains and telephone cables in the pavement and many other features can be included, depending on the environment and the particular aspect that is under scrutiny. Finding and recognising these features can provide the first crucial steps in developing the children's observation skills.
Annotating drawings
Sketches of groups of buildings or features could be supplied on a worksheet and the child asked to annotate the features marked. For example, in a rural area older children might be presented with a drawing of the fields, river and hills visible from a particular vantage point on a farm and they could be asked to note the different plants and crops growing in different areas, the relative size offields near the river and on the hilltop, the types of buildings visible (perhaps a number of farmhouses and other buildings or a village in the distance) and transport and communication links (roads, electricity poles, pylons for mobile telecommunications).
Completing sketches
Both younger and older children may be asked to complete the missing elements of unfinished sketches of individual buildings (house, shop, farm building, railway station) or other features in the environment (bridge, wall, road, railway embankment, harbour wall). As well as enhancing pupils' observation this type of activity may be used to encourage children to look at the relative size and location of different elements in the landscape or streetscape. For example, the position and relationship of elements of a building can become apparent: the projection of the roof beyond the wall on an older building to create wide eaves, the larger windows on the ground floor of a shop with smaller fenestration in upper floors, the relationship of porch, garage and main rooms in a house.
Older children's attention can be directed towards a number of features in groups of buildings (such as those in a terrace or street, in a farmyard, in an industrial estate, in a view of a natural and/or human landscape). They could be asked to recognise common characteristics, the relationship of elements to each other and how these contribute to the character of a place. For example, in completing a drawing of the ground floors and upper storeys of a row of shops and houses along the street of a rural village the relationship of height to usage would become apparent (tall three-storey buildings used as shops and public houses while purely residential properties may be two-storey). The exercise should also foster an appreciation of those buildings (both old and new) that are in keeping with the built environment and an ability to recognise those that disrupt the visual pattern of the streetscape.
Sketching landscapes
In the early stages children's sketches of environmental features will be simple pictures, often combining elements of maps and drawings. Accuracy may be developed by encouraging the child to concentrate on a restricted part of the view or a small area of the environment in question. Children's homes and their immediate surroundings and the areas within and around the classroom and school provide many opportunities for this type of work. Gradually other areas and more extensive views may be attempted and, in order to practise the skills required, children might be encouraged to produce their own sketches of views in photographs and postcards.
As the drawing of more extensive views are attempted in the environment, the older child may be introduced to the use of a viewfinder. At its most basic level this involves using a rectangle to place limits on the view to be depicted. The frame of a window, for example, can be used as a viewfinder, the child attempting to reproduce the scene on his/her paper. The apparent intersection of the sides of the window with the landscape features provides reference points for the child's drawing. Later a card rectangle (perhaps subdivided in four) may be held up in the environment and used to aid sketching.
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| A range of stone wall constructions and building materials: left upper, dry-stone walling; right upper, rubble stone construction; left lower, snecked limestone wall; right lower, Liscannor slates on roof. The patterns and textures created by different forms of masonry help to define the character of a building and landscape and can be recognised by the child. |
Using photographs
The use of aerial photographs is discussed in more detail in the section on map work (see p. 98-100) but it is worth noting here that observation skills can be developed by asking the child to pick out particular features in a photograph and then identify them in the environment. In particular, children can be encouraged to find items shown in close-up photographs of small details such as door handles, bars or meshes on windows, gate locks, road signs, bollards, bicycle racks or wall textures (e.g. brick patterns, pebble-dash, patterns in stonework). This activity can encourage children to look closely at details in a familiar environment.
The advent of cheap, disposable cameras makes photography available as a recording technique in a way which would have been beyond the resources of many schools in the past. As children visit and explore an area they can use photographs to record the activities and features observed at certain points and later analyse these images in the classroom. The relative merits of photography and sketching may also be discussed, including the immediacy and unselective nature of the photograph in contrast with the selective and potentially biased nature of the sketch.
Drawing conclusions
All the suggestions above are primarily concerned with the collection and recording of information about the environment. However, simply recording the features of the environment is but the beginning of the geographical work in an area.
It is essential that children are encouraged to think about the features they see, to look for clues, to recognise patterns and to use the information they acquire to explain why a place or a particular feature is as it is. Annotating sketches and photographs (as described above) will assist in this but posing questions and completing a variety of tasks should stimulate children to look for explanations and causes, to suggest and test hypotheses and to use all the evidence available to them to make deductions.
For example, questions used on trail booklets or in subsequent classroom discussions might direct the child's attention to the similarities and differences between older and newer residential areas in a town. In both areas houses might be arranged in terraces but the older properties might have large gardens to the front while the newer areas may have smaller gardens and off-street parking spaces for cars. What does this tell us about how people moved about in the area in the past and how this has changed? Can any other features be seen which suggest that car traffic is a major concern or even a problem in these areas? Perhaps streets have been designated as one-way because of heavy traffic or some areas may have been designated as pedestrian zones. Can pupils suggest how traffic and the availability of transport could be analysed?
Land use survey
Children can come to appreciate some of the more important distinguishing characteristics of a place through land use surveys. As its name implies, a land use survey involves examining and recording how an area is used; for example whether it is covered in natural features such as vegetation, rock, sand or water or used for human constructions such as fields, roads or buildings. The information about the use of the area is plotted onto maps, usually using a colour-coded system.
The technique can be adapted to almost any size of area and the categories of usage into which it is divided will vary depending on the nature of the area and the level of detail required by the surveyors.
A simple land use survey that children might undertake could involve plotting the different types of surface to be found in a very limited area of the school garden. A square metre or even smaller area might be marked out using string, and children could record the sections covered by grass, paths and flowerbeds. For younger children it helps if the basic outlines of the different areas are drawn in by the teacher on the blank map and discussion can then concentrate on how the different uses might be recorded using what is essentially a colour key.
Land use surveys can also be completed within a building. Children could explore the interior of the school building and record the usage of various areas on a blank map. Categories of usage might include classroom teaching areas, storage, administration, heating and services, assembly areas, library, catering and circulation space. This type of exercise can provide a focus for the exploration of the school building and its map. It can also help children to appreciate how the spaces of the building are related to each other. A similar exercise could be conducted in a large supermarket or shopping centre: the location and circulation patterns that emerge can provide the basis for much discussion and follow-up work.
Land use surveys are an ideal tool in exploring environments such as towns, villages and farms. A map of a street in a village or town (perhaps based on a map of scale 1:1,000 or a map drawn by the teacher) can be used by pupils to record the use of buildings and spaces along the side of a street. Initially, recording might be done using words such as 'newsagent', 'supermarket', 'post office', 'house', 'chemist', 'empty', 'school', 'church' and 'park', but as in other surveys the need for categorisation and shorter labels or the use of symbols and/or colours will soon become obvious. These can then be appended to the diagram in the form of a key. The various uses of different areas of a farm could be recorded in a similar way: the different types of crops grown in fields, woodland, hedgerows or uncultivated land, and areas used for transport, the housing of animals or storage.
The real strength of this technique lies in the range of skills and concepts which it helps to develop. Map-reading skills are essential to the process, as is the ability to orientate a map when moving around in an environment. Skills of observation are also developed as the child is required to examine often familiar areas in a more focused way. As well as providing raw data for the compilation of graphs and charts, these surveys can lead to the development of skills of analysis. The need for classification will arise as the categories of shops and other buildings in a street or on a farm are determined. Older children may also beintroduced to the formal categories of land usage that are used in professional geographical surveys.
Surveys become even more useful when a number of them can be compared. This enables the child to come to a deeper appreciation of the distinctive features of particular areas. For example, completed surveys of a number of streets in a town may reveal quite different usage patterns, such as the predominance of commercial activity in some while others are largely residential. Similarly, a survey of a farm on which most of the land is used for grazing will show a marked contrast with one completed on a largely arable holding. Identifying such patterns can lead children to speculate on their causes and perhaps to suggest where facilities might be lacking or land use improved, for example the lack of a supermarket in an estate or the possibility of creating a wildlife area on a farm.
Land use surveys are particularly valuable in that they encourage children to ask and answer a number of key geographical questions, including 'What is this place like?', 'Why is this place as it is?', 'How is this place different from or similar to other areas?' and, if survey data is collected over a period, 'How is this place changing?
Interviewing people who live or work in the area
Learning about the lives, concerns and attitudes of the people who live and work in a place is a further important aspect of exploring and getting to know the area.
Two approaches may be used in this type of activity. At times the teacher may identify individuals who would be willing to talk to a class or group about their work, perhaps in the classroom or, alternatively, in their work-place. These visits and interviews can be very rewarding experiences for both the child and the interviewee but they require much careful preparation. The use of this approach is discussed in detail in the Teacher Guidelines for History and need not be repeated here: it is sufficient to note the absolute importance of the careful selection and briefing of the interviewee and the need for adequate preparation with the children in advance of the visit.
These interviews, particularly if they include visits to the work-place, can significantly enhance the child's understanding of the activities and conditions involved in particular occupations. The activities and operations in a manufacturing industry, for example, may be used to encourage children to appreciate how the work of individuals is very much dependent upon that of others in the same factory and in supply and service industriesboth locally and further afield. If the study is based on a farm or factory that exports or imports goods or raw materials to or from another part of the world this can lead on to the examination of transport routes and schedules, the development of language awareness and a consideration of lifestyles in a distant environment.
Although interviews will often take the form of a talk and/or demonstration followed by a question-and-answer session they can also be used for the purpose of conducting a survey. In this case children ask a large number of people certain predetermined questions about a particular aspect of their lives or the place in which they live or work. The activity can be applied to a wide variety of topics and issues.
Like longer interviews, surveys require careful preparation but they provide an excellent opportunity to learn and apply geographical investigation skills. Children should be encouraged to think about the issues that might arise, to suggest hypotheses, to draft and test questions and to analyse the data collected so as to discern patterns and draw conclusions. This need not belimited to older pupils: simple surveys can be conducted among the pupils in the school and through questioning parents and other adults at home. Older children will, however, become more aware of the need for balance in the people interviewed (for example both older and younger people) and the effect that the time of day or the location of the interview may have on the results.
As in the case of all fieldwork, children should conduct these survey interviews under the direct supervision of an adult and the opportunity should be used to reinforce the importance of good social behaviour and respect for all those encountered. Teachers should also ensure that the location at which surveys are conducted does not obstruct the work or activities of others.
Conducting an environmental appraisal
Children's attitudes towards their environment are an important aspect of their sense of place. Conducting an environmental appraisal can help them to look critically at their environment, to evaluate and express their opinions concerning it and to become involved in the discussion of environmental issues relevant to their lives. In this way children may be encouraged and empowered to become active in the conservation and enhancement of the environment and in the prevention of environmental damage.
Activities involving environmental appraisal may be used at all levels in the school. At its most basic level the appraisal will involve simply identifying aspects of the environment which children find attractive and unattractive. On a walk or trail in the school grounds, for example, children might be asked to label sites as 'nice' or 'nasty' and record their judgements in the form of a 'happy' or 'sad' symbol next to a sketch or drawing. Older children can be given a number of descriptive words or pairs of contrasting words for each site from which they choose the most appropriate. They can also assess the site under a number of criteria, scoring each one as 'poor', 'fair' or 'good'. In all cases children should be encouraged to discuss and justify the reasons for their evaluations, to suggest how places might be improved and, if possible, to become involved in practical schemes for environmental enhancement.
Plotting routes and investigating connections
Understanding where and how various features within an environment are linked to each other is closely related to the child's locational awareness and his/her sense of place. Exploring the links that exist within an area and the connections that the place has with other areas should form a part of a local study as children seek answers to key questions such as 'What is this place like?', 'How is this place linked to other places?' and 'Where is this place?'
A very practical way in which to tackle this work is to look at the routes which pupils and others use to move around in the environment. While not strictly a fieldwork technique (much of the work will be closely related to or achieved through map work) the examination and plotting of routes will involve some work in the environment and will significantly enhance children's familiarity with the shape and spatial qualities of the locality.
With very young children the routes to different areas within the classroom may provide the starting point and this can then be extended to discussing how one could get to the school office, the store room, the hall or the entrance. Infants will also enjoy following string routes. These are short journeys around the school (or a section of it) marked with coloured string (or, alternatively, a series of coloured paper footprints). Ribbons or other markers can be attached at a number of points. At each of these a task has to be completed: for example, a picture might have to be copied or a rubbing taken of an area on the floor or wall which is marked with masking tape. The pictures and rubbings collected by the pupils can then be mounted in sequence in the classroom so that the features and the order in which they were encountered may be discussed.
Discussing routes to places within the school building and yard with first and second classes can help children to appreciate how the area is used by themselves and others. Common routes can be plotted on a simple map (partly iconic maps might be used) and alternative routes might be considered. Examining the most commonly used routes within the building and to the exterior can show the sections of corridors where routes are concentrated and where overcrowding occurs. This may also explain several other features: why people want to place notices along this section of corridor and not in other areas, why the floor is always dirtier there and why coats or equipment left untidily in this area cause so much disruption!
A similar exercise may be undertaken with third and fourth classes using a map of the locality. Routes used by the children and their parents might be plotted on the map and interesting comparisons made between the routes followed when travelling by car, by bus, on a bicycle or on foot. Plotting unofficial routes and short-cuts can reveal interesting patterns. Completing trails involves following predetermined routes in the environment and children might be encouraged to draw up their own trails for younger children or for visitors to the area.
Older children should also become aware of the locality as a point on a route to other places. Children in fifth and sixth class will be able to distinguish between those transport links that are through routes (i.e. those that neither originate nor terminate within the area) and those that are for local use only. For example, the main road outside an estate may carry traffic through and from the area while the estate roads (or by-roads and lanes in a rural area) will be used exclusively for journeys which begin or end in the area. These roads could be identified through map work initially but they could then be examined and compared on field trips or in trail exercises. Many contrasts may be identified: the roads will vary in width, bends and sharp corners will be less prevalent on the major road, traffic lights and direction signs will be present on some and not on others. These contrasts will be particularly evident in expanding urban and suburban areas and in rural areas where road improvement schemes have been completed in recent years.
The direction of through routes and the places to which they lead should also be established, either from maps or from road signs encountered in the environment. Bus, train and other route maps should also be examined to determine the links that the locality has with other areas, and the distances to these places should be established. Distances need not be measured solely in units of length: the time taken to reach another place is just as relevant a measure of the remoteness or proximity of a place and may carry more meaning for the child. A signpost bearing correctly aligned direction arrows to a number of places outside the area could be erected in the classroom or in the school to record the children's findings.
Traffic surveys
Counting and analysing the numbers and types of vehicles that people use to travel within and through an area can be readily undertaken by children. Like other surveys, traffic counts draw upon a number of skills, including those connected with the collection and presentation of data. Children can be taught to use tally marks during the observation period. They should agree upon a categorisation of vehicle types and the raw data can then be presented using tables, graphs, pictograms and pie charts drawn by hand or using a database and graphics program on a computer.
Work on data collection and presentation may involve the proposing and testing of hypotheses and the analysis of the information amassed. Surveys collected at different times of the day and at different locations in the area could be prepared and reasons sought for the differences noticed. The effect which the varying frequency of traffic has on other aspects of the environment might also be noted: the places and hours in which clearway systems or bus lanes have to be implemented, the installation of traffic lights at some junctions and not at others, the effect the density of traffic can have on the speed of vehicles, the noise experienced in the area and the times at which newspaper or other vendors concentrate their business. Schools in both urban and rural areas can carry out these surveys. In rural areas the traffic flow may be influenced by work patterns, by deliveries to a local milk-processing cooperative, factory or market or by the journeys people make out of the area to go to work in a nearby town.
The results of traffic surveys may lead to further investigations designed to clarify the reasons behind some of the patterns noticed or to suggest solutions to problems. For example, a follow-up survey at a peak congestion time might seek to establish the numbers of vehicles used by one, two, three or more passengers and the results might demonstrate the relative lack of efficiency of cars versus buses.
Traffic surveys need not be confined to vehicular traffic but may also include pedestrians, and older children might record the results on time and distance charts. These might be used to establish the extent of the area from which people come to a particular service centre. For example, children might interview the people coming to the local post office or shop to find out where they have come from and the length of time their journey has taken. These journeys may then be plotted as scaled lines radiating out from a central point and the extremities of these lines would mark the boundary of the area served by the shop or post office in question. The usage of parks, libraries, swimming pools and other facilities could be examined in a similar way.
Experiments in the environment
The investigation of human environments can provide opportunities for scientific investigations. For example:
samples of the building materials used in the environment can be tested and sorted using criteria such as hardness, texture, colour, etc.- noise levels can be examined. One child can play music on a tape recorder while his/her partner walks away until the sound can no longer be heard. The distance walked is measured and recorded. When repeated at a number of locations the distances recorded can give some indication of noise pollution and environmental quality
- air pollution may be examined. Pieces of kitchen roll or coffee filter papers smeared lightly with petroleum jelly can be attached to jam pots and placed in a number of locations for a few days. Particles will be trapped on the filters and comparisons can be made between filters sited near busy roads, construction sites, open areas and residential estates.