Celebrating 5 years of the Primary Geography Quality Mark

Nine primary schools from across thse country came to Sheffield on Wednesday 16th February to help us to celebrate the PGQM fifth birthday.  This is the first time that we've held an event that involved children from different primary schools and the day was hugely successful.  The children behaved in such a mature way in our out of school environment and many of them said how good it had been to meet and work with children from different schools.  I think it will be a day they remember for a long time.  The youngest children were Year 2's (6 years old) while the oldest were eleven.  Teachers and children worked together in different workshops which included: `Philosophy for Children (P4C), investigating chocolate and the Cote d'Ivoire and creating route maps on the back of T-Shirts.  Our workshops were led by Anthony from St Peter's Smithills Dean Primary, Bolton; Arthur, Matthew and Laura from Liverpool Hope University and Ann, a freelance writer in education and P4C facilitator in Sheffield.

To find out more about the Primary Geography Quality Mark please go to http://www.geography.org.uk/eyprimary/primaryqualitymark/

The Young Geographers Project has been launched on the GA website

The first of our our Young Geographers project resources, written by Jane Mulligan of Austrey Primary School, Warwickshire has been added to the Geographical Association website. Click on the page image to be taken to the website.

This new project for primary schools focuses on four key areas: engaging in practical curriculum making, 'living geography', Learning Outside the Classroom and Education for Sustainable Development.

An earlier reference to the Sheffield Project can be found in a post I made on this site in January.

Further information about the work of the Canterbury Project can be found on the blog of my colleague Paula Owens.

Young Geographers - access to Word documents

The Word documents that were shared on the first day of the Young Geographers Project in Sheffield can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted link.

See below for access to PowerPoint presentations from the day.

Primary Young Geographers Project

Via funding from the TDA we have been able to offer a new pilot project called `Young Geographers'. Two project groups are currently running, one in Canterbury (course leader Paula Owens) and one in Sheffield where I am course leader. I'm using this blog page to share ideas from my project group.

Additional information will be shared via the main GA project page website:

We had a very succesful first day yesterday which helped to get the project off to a very positive start. Through the project we are empasising four main elements:

· Engaging in practical 'curriculum making'

· Capturing the sense of motivating 'living geography'

· Learning Outside the Classroom

· Education for Sustainable Development

My introductory presentation was designed to promote reflection on what we might mean when we talk about `Living Geography' and what kinds of activities teachers are using to develop this approach in the primary classroom.

View `Living Geography' presentation.

| View | Upload your own

The notes that follow may help you to make sense of some of the thinking that went into the presentation:

• Who am I? Why focusing on `identity’ is a valuable place to start when thinking geographically.

· The link between place and identity, i.e where we grow up is a key factor in shaping our identity

· The importance of engaging young people with their own place and supporting them to explore their feelings about the place – Quikmaps example, Wakefield. Internet mapping that directly allows an exploration of place and space.

· Involving young people in `changing places’ – the importance of feeling that you can make a difference to your community, learning how change happens, what’s involved, making change happen (making learning real - not just another `school' activity)

· The importance of geographical imagination to the way we think about `place’ – location, first hand-experience, the way the world is represented to us and our emotional response to places are all important factors in shaping our geographical imaginations. Actual journey’s (fieldwork) and virtual journeys (role-play, drama, imaginative engagement with photographs) are valuable classroom activities that both inform and extend our geographical imagination.

· Discussions with others can help us to re-think the way that the world has been represented to us - `What image comes into your head when you are asked to think about Iran?’ [P4C can be a very supportive classroom strategy.]

• Our concluding slides ask you to think about `school geography’ and experience of geography in our everyday lives – which kind of experience do we want for the children we teach?