Lesson video

Hello, my name is Ms. Gilyeat, and I'm going to be your geography teacher for today.

Today's lesson is called Geography at Secondary School, and it's the first lesson of the topic Becoming a Geographer.

It may be your first ever geography lesson at secondary school.

How exciting is that? We've got loads of cool stuff to cover.

We're gonna find out what geography is and what it's all about.

So let's get going.

So hopefully, by the end of the lesson, you'll be able to describe the knowledge and skills I will learn in geography at secondary school.

We have got five keywords for today.

So they're quite important keywords because you will use them throughout the whole of your geography education at secondary school.

So geography is the study of the Earth's landscapes, people, places, and environment.

Locational knowledge is the knowledge of where places are in the world.

Human geography is the branch of geography dealing with people, and where and how they live.

Physical geography is the branch of geography dealing with the natural features of the world.

And finally, environmental geography is the branch of geography dealing with relationships between people and the environment.

Throughout the lesson, the keywords are highlighted in bold, so you can go back to them at any time to remember what they are.

We have got two learning cycles for today's lesson.

First of all, we're gonna study what do geographers need to know, and then we're gonna look at what different types of geography there are.

Let's get going with the first learning cycle.

What do geographers need to know? So geography is the study of the Earth's landscapes, people, places, and environments.

As a topic, it is very, very broad.

You will study lots and lots of different things about the natural world, about the people that live there, the places, and the environments.

Now, on the slide here, I've got two pictures, one of some mountains in the Rocky National Park, and one of a tourist resort.

Now, all of these photographs go under the branch of geography because there's just so much different stuff which goes under it.

Now, we need to study geography to help us understand the world, and that's how I think geography is.

It's making us understand how things are the way they are, and what things may happen in the future.

Now, geographers need locational knowledge of where places are in the world, so they can describe these differences on Earth.

So locational knowledge is about location and where things are.

For example, on the slide here, we've got a picture of a globe.

Now, you may have learned this in primary school already about the seven continents and the five oceans.

That's locational knowledge.

You know where those places are.

Now, in geography, we go into lots and lots of detail of different kind of scales of places.

So sometimes we need a broader picture of where places are, and sometimes we want to know exactly where they are.

So for example, on the board here, I have got a picture of the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is pointed to in South America, and we've got the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

These are places that you might learn about in your secondary education at school.

Locational knowledge is about knowing where these places are in the world.

Can you describe the differences between the two places from looking at the slide? Have a look at what the weather looks like, the vegetation.

Okay, maybe have a quick chat with the person that you are sat next to.

Now, to help us build locational knowledge, geographers use globes and maps to help locate places.

On the slide here, we've got a globe.

So that's a 3D map.

Now, in your classroom or at home, you might have a globe.

They're really cool to look at 'cause it makes you kind of understand how places are, how far away places they are from each other, but we also use maps.

Now, maps could be ones that you get in atlases.

They could be OS Maps, or Ordnance Survey maps, or even just looking at maps on the internet.

Both globes and maps help us get a better picture of where places are in the world.

Let's check our understanding of what we've learned so far.

So which two of these following statements are true? A, locational knowledge is about where places are, B, knowledge of where places are tells us exactly what it is like, C, globes and maps can help us know where places are, or D, geographers only need to know about where they live.

You could do this by yourself, or you could have a quick chat with the person that you are sat next to.

So the two answers are A and C.

Locational knowledge is about where places are in the world, and C, globes and maps can help us understand and know where these places are.

So now, we know that geographers need knowledge of places.

They learn about the people in a place and the natural landscape of a place, and how they interact.

So it's not just about knowing what, where a place is on the world, but it's also thinking about what you've got there.

Now, it might be about the people that live there.

It might be more about the natural landscape.

Now, often in geography, it's studying and understanding the interaction that people have with the surrounding environment.

On the board here, I have got a picture of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on the coast, and it's got a population of 8 million people.

Now, if you are studying geography, you might want to know what the place is like.

You might want to know what the climate is like, what people live there.

Okay, so what else do you think you'd like to know about this place? Pause the video.

Either have a chat with the person you are sat next to or write down a few ideas.

Now, it is just important to remember that there is a variety within a place.

There are many different aspects to life in Dar es Salaam.

So let's have a think about the different things that you might think about about wanting to know about the place.

So it is a major port, so that means that boats come in and out to the city.

Some areas of the city have a lot of wealthy people, which means they have a lot of money, whereas some places of the city or some people in the city are very poor, so they don't quite have enough money to live.

There are a large number of universities.

Tourists visit Tanzania, usually to start a trip there, and it is hot all year-round, but it has wet and dry seasons.

These are all kind of ideas which you might study in geography.

Thinking about what the climate is like, how the town and city makes money, what the people do there for jobs, and why people might decide to visit there, and what impacts they have.

All of this is in the study of geography.

And if you think about it a bit more, a lot of these different ideas interact.

We can put our knowledge of places together with our locational knowledge to build a better understanding.

Okay, so if we know where a place is on the world, or where it is in a country, or what oceans it's located next to, and then we start to understand who lives there, what jobs they have, what the climate is like, we start to build a picture of what these places really are.

Okay, on the slide, I've got a picture of the continent of Africa, and then we've got a picture of Dar es Salaam and where it's located on the map.

Okay, so we know where it is, and we're starting to get an idea of what it's actually like there.

So the student here said, "Dar es Salaam has nearly 8 million people "and it is in Tanzania, "in East Africa.

"It is a major port and a centre for business." Okay, we have a better picture of what the area is like there.

Let's check our understanding.

It is important to investigate different people's lives when studying a place.

Is that true or is that false? It is true.

And the reason why is because places have a variety of people with different ages, jobs, and background.

Now, geographers need knowledge of lots of different topics to understand the world.

Some of these topics focus more on the natural world, and others focus more on people.

Now, you might have studied geography at primary school.

It might not have always been under the topic or the lesson subject called geography.

Sometimes you might have studied geography within other topics, and that's absolutely fine.

But what I want you to do now is think about what topics do you expect to study in geography at secondary school.

So what do you think you might learn over the next three, or even five, or even seven years as you went to your secondary education? It's up to you.

You could write your ideas down by yourself, or you could have a quick chat with the person you are sat next to.

Laura here says, "I think we'll study about the natural world "through topics like volcanoes, earthquakes, rivers, coasts, "glaciers, ecosystems, and weather," and she's absolutely right.

All of those examples are physical geography topics.

So they're about our natural world.

Now, as a geography teacher, my favourite topic to teach is volcanoes because we get to watch loads of cool explosive volcanic eruptions.

Izzy says, "I think we'll also study topics like population, "development, and cities.

"We need to study climate change also." Population development and cities are all examples of human geography.

Okay, so it's thinking about where people are in the world, how they live, how they move, how a country can get richer.

Now, Izzy has correctly pointed out here that we need to study climate change.

Now, climate change is an issue that is going to face the whole globe, and in geography, it's really important that we study it.

We need to know why it happens, the impacts of it, and how we are going to manage it and try and reduce the effects of it.

Let's check our understanding.

What topics might you study in secondary geography? You could write these down, or you could just say it to the person you're sat next to.

These are some examples.

So you could have said volcanoes, earthquakes, rivers, coasts, glaciers, ecosystems, weather, development, population, and cities.

Now, there's actually loads more of different examples of topics that you could study in geography, but those are just some of them.

So if you've got some different ones, that is absolutely fine.

Now, geographers need to know how to use skills, so they can investigate places.

There are quite a few different skills that we study in geography.

One of the main ones is map skills.

So looking at maps.

Now, that might be OS Maps or Ordnance Surveys maps.

It might be an atlas.

It might even be maps that you use on the computer, such as Google Maps, or something called GIS, which stands for Geographical Information Systems. Now, these are when you can put lots of information on maps, but we'll go into that in more detail later.

Field work skills.

So that is when you go out into the field, outside, and you collect your own data, and your own knowledge to help prove or find something out, and both of these skills are very important in geography.

Now, also, we use quite a lot of math skills as well.

So we look at data.

We might create maps or charts or graphs.

All of these are very important skills in geography.

Let's check our understanding.

So which of these skills is needed to help us find out where places are? So is it A, looking at bar charts, is it B, collecting field work data, or is it C, which is map skills? So think about it.

They help us find out where places are.

The answer is C, map skills.

We use maps to find out where places are in the world, or in smaller detail.

Let's move on to our first task for this lesson.

So task A1, I want you to explain how Sam could improve his geography within the speech bubble.

So I'll read out what he's put, and then you are gonna think about how he could improve each of the three sentences.

So Sam says, "Dar es Salaam is a city somewhere in Africa.

"It is hot.

"People live in small houses, "and they don't have much money." Now, what you are going to do is you're going to look at Sam's first, second, and third sentence, and you are going to try improve it, thinking about what we've already learned this lesson.

Pause the video and have a go.

Task two is you are going to draw a spider diagram, or there is a worksheet to go with this lesson as well, and I would like you to annotate or label your spider diagram with all the different geography topics that you can think of, which will help us understand the world better.

I love doing tasks like this because it makes me think of all the exciting things that we get to learn in geography.

Pause the video.

Either do it on the worksheet or create the spider diagram yourself.

Let's do a little bit of feedback to check that you've got the correct answers.

Now, this is improving Sam's speech bubble.

So I've put my improvements there.

Yours might not be exactly the same, but hopefully, you've kind of, you've done something quite similar.

So I've improved Sam's speech bubble by saying Dar es Salaam is a city on the coast in Tanzania, in East Africa.

So I've said there it's not just in Africa.

It's located on the coast, and I've also used compass directions to say where exactly in Africa is.

It is hot all year-round, and has wet and dry seasons.

I've improved the answer there because I've given a timescale.

I've said it's hot all of the year.

Okay, but I've also included information about the amount of rainfall or precipitation.

It has periods where the country is quite wet, so it receives a lot of rainfall, but also there are periods of the year where it is very dry, so receives very little rainfall.

People have a variety of jobs in Dar es Salaam, including working in tourism, so that's people going on holiday, universities, and business.

Within Tanzania, there are areas where many people are wealthy and areas where many people are relatively poor.

Now, that is much better geography than Sam's previous answer because I've given examples of people's jobs that they do, but I've also given a broader picture.

Now, Sam said there are some very poor people there, which there absolutely is, but there is also quite a lot of people which earn a lot of money.

In geography, it's important that we don't just give one people's viewpoint.

We give a broader idea of the different people that live within an area, not just one person's perspective.

Here are some of the examples of the geography topics that we could have got.

So we've got coasts, population, development, cities, rivers, glaciers, climate change, weather, ecosystems, rocks, earthquakes, volcanoes.

Ah, so many exciting topics.

Now if you've got some different ones, that's absolutely fine.

Brilliant.

What you could do is pause the video and see if you could add any of the ones that I've got onto your list as well.

We are now going to move on to our second learning cycle, which is looking at what types of geography are there.

Now, we all know that there are many different topics in geography that help us understand about the world.

You've just completed your diagram to know that, and you've got down lots of different exciting topics.

Okay, now on the board here, I have got three pictures to try and represent three different topics that we study in geography.

Do you want to see if you can guess what the pictures represent, which topics they are? We've got volcanoes, again, one of my favourite topics, cities, and climate change, one of the most important topics in geography.

Now, as you'll find out as you go through your secondary education, is that climate change now links to so many other topics because it has an impact on all of the world.

Now, sometimes geographers try to categorise these different topics into different types of geography.

When I was at school, we just used to say human and physical geography, but now there's a new branch called environmental geography as well.

So we're gonna kind of learn what these different types of geography include.

So physical geography is about the natural world.

Human geography is about people, where they live, what jobs they have.

And environmental geography is thinking about some of the environmental issues that the world faces today.

Let's have a look at each type of geography in a little bit more detail.

Physical geography is the study of the Earth's natural features and processes.

Imagine a world without humans.

This is physical geography.

So even if humans didn't exist, there would still be mountains, there would be rivers, there would be volcanoes, there would be oceans.

Isn't that kind of cool? Right, all of these things are physical geography.

So it's about our natural world.

Now, there aren't many places on Earth now which haven't had some impact on humans, or humans haven't had some impact on those areas.

So often, with physical biography topics, what we might look at is how humans are impacting or affecting them.

Now, we've got two amazing photos on the slide here.

We've got Mount Fuji, which is an example of a really cool volcano, and we've got the Rocky National Park in Canada.

I went there a few years ago.

It's absolutely amazing, a very beautiful place.

So different examples of physical geography topics you may study are volcanoes, glaciers.

Now, glaciers are a really cool one.

They're massive chunks of ice that are found on mountains, or at the North and the South Pole.

Okay, and that, again, links in with climate change because glaciers are being massively affected by the Earth heating up.

Can you think of any more? Because there are loads more.

Have a quick chat with your partner.

Here are some of them.

So rivers, mountains, coasts, so that's areas of land which are next to the sea, earthquakes, so that's when the Earth moves slightly due to tectonic plate movement, glaciation, links to glaciers, so this is when you've got big sheets of ice on top of the land, oceans, and ecosystems. So ecosystems is about the living stuff in the world, so all the plants and the animals, or in geography, sometimes we call it the flora and the fauna.

Human geography is the study of how societies, cultures, and economies differ around the world.

So this is really about us as humans, how we live, what different cultures we have, how we make money, how we move about, okay, and how different countries change in terms of the people that live there.

Now, in geography, one of the big human geography topics is cities, and that's because the majority of people live in cities, and more and more people are going to live in cities going into the future.

I've got a question there.

So how do you think life will differ in the two different photographs that we can see on the slide here? So we've got two photos of urban or city settlements where a lot of people live, but people's lives in the city will be very different.

Okay, so what similarities do you think there may be in people's lives, and what differences may there be? Pause the video, and have a quick chat with your partner.

So some of the human geography topics include cities, but there are lots of other ones as well.

Can you think of any other examples? So think about what people do.

Okay, think about what impact people might have on our planet.

What other human geography topics can you think of? Here are some.

Migration.

Now, this is about the movement of people.

So you can have national migration, when people move within a country, or you can have international migration, when people move across country borders.

Now, that links to the next topic I've got there, population.

Again, one of my favourite topics to study in geography.

Population is looking at how populations change, what population structures look like, okay, what can affect a population.

And the final one, development.

This is about how countries develop, how they change through time, how people's jobs might change through time, how a country might become richer or sometimes even poorer over time, and it's also thinking about what can affect this.

Now, development is a really, really relevant topic if we're thinking about some of the kind of crises that we're facing across the globe at the moment, because some countries are very rich and have a lot of money, and the majority of people don't live in poverty.

But there are countries in the world where a lot of people are struggling because they don't have enough money to live.

Now, we as geographers need to understand why that is, and we also need to understand how we can help those countries develop in a sustainable way going into the future, so everyone can have a good quality of life.

Let's check our understanding.

Which type of geography is the study of the Earth's natural features and processes? Is it A, physical geography, B, human geography, or C, environmental geography? The answer is A, physical geography.

Again, let's check.

Which type of geography studies how societies, cultures, and economies differ around the world? Is it A, physical geography, B, human geography, or C, environmental geography? The answer is B, human geography.

Now, this leads us onto our final type of geography.

Environmental geography studies the relationships between people and the environment, and how this can lead to environmental challenges.

Now, as a geography teacher, I think this is probably the most important geography or area of geography because as we are moving forward as a population, we need to be thinking about the impact that we are having, and making sure that we are looking after planet Earth.

Now, really, the biggest thing that we're thinking of with environmental geography is climate change.

This is because it's having a global impact, and we need to make sure that we look after the people that are going to be affected by it, but also the plants and animals as well.

As I said, environmental geography includes topic like climate change, but there are other topics as well.

So can you think of any other environmental geography topics? So have a think.

How are humans impacting on the world? Here are some of them.

Plastic pollution.

So that's plastic going into the ocean, but also on land as well.

Deforestation, the chopping down of forests and woodlands, and the destruction of habitats, so destroying where plants and animals are living.

This is having an impact on the number of them.

And unfortunately, many animals are becoming endangered or even extinct, which is very sad.

Let's check our understanding.

So you need to decide whether these statements are true or false.

An example of physical geography is studying population.

Why don't you do a T for true or a cross for false? So that first one is false.

Okay, population is a human geography topic.

An example of physical geography is studying the formation of a beach.

That is true.

That's a good coast topic, which is a physical geography topic.

Environmental geography is the study of where cities are built.

That's false.

Okay, that's a human geography topic.

The Grand Canyon, which is in America, is an example of physical geography.

Absolutely true.

Canyons are formed by rivers, which are natural features.

And the final one, the impacts of humans on the Great Barrier Reef is an example of environmental geography.

That is true because we are having an impact on that special ecosystem.

Now, there is an overlap between physical, human, and environmental geography topics.

Topics do not always fit into one category, and that is because we live in a complicated world.

Humans live off the natural landscape, and we are having an impact on that.

Okay, now volcanoes are considered to be a physical geography topic because they happen naturally.

If humans weren't here on planet Earth, there would still be volcanoes.

However, can you think about how humans are affected by this physical geography topic? Volcanoes can harm people, so they can be violent, and they can even kill or injure people, but they also encourage tourism.

So people like to visit volcanoes, which helps them make money.

So even though it's a physical geography topic, it has human aspects to it too.

Rivers are often considered a physical geography topic, but I want you to think, how do you think they could impact humans? So how could they affect humans even though it's a physical geography topic? Have a quick chat with your partner or write your own ideas down.

So Andeep here says "They can cause flooding." So that's when the rivers overflow, and that can destroy people's homes and businesses.

And Alex said, "They may provide drinking water." So often, people decide to live near rivers because they've got a source of water that they can use for drinking or farming or washing.

So even though it's a physical geography topic, humans have a big impact on it too.

Now, your task here is you are going to put these topics here, so volcanoes, cities, farming, coasts, you're going to put them into the Venn diagram.

Now, have a look at the diagram there.

You need to decide whether it's a physical, a human, or an environmental geography topic.

Now, if you think it might be two of the topics, that's absolutely fine.

And if you think it might be included in all three, then put it in the middle.

Now, for this task, there is no perfect answer because there are many different ways you could argue your point of view, and that's absolutely fine.

That's what geography is all about.

It's about being able to put across your viewpoints.

So pause the video and have a go at putting the topics into the correct part of the Venn diagram.

Your second task for this is I want to explain your reasons for where you decided to put these place.

So have a look.

Where did you put cities, where did you put coasts, and where did you put climate change? And I want you to give a very quick explanation of why you put that topic within that part of the Venn diagram.

Let's check our understanding.

On the slide here, I have put where I would put those different topics.

Now, hopefully, your Venn diagram will look similar to mine.

However, there may be some that you've put in more than one thing, and if it doesn't look exactly the same, that's absolutely fine as well.

So for example, you could have put farming in physical geography as well because you need the land to be able to farm.

So that's absolutely fine.

On my slide here, I have been able to say why I've put these topics within the certain part of the Venn diagram.

So for cities, I've placed cities in the human geography section, as this will mainly be about the culture, economy, and society differs in different places.

Coasts, I placed coasts between the human and physical geography sections, as although the sea is a natural feature, there are a lot of people living at the coast who will be affected by it.

And finally, climate change, I placed this in the environmental geography section because it is about how people are affecting nature, and this is leading to a big environmental challenge.

Now, have you got something similar to this? It's absolutely fine if you've not written that word for word, but hopefully you've got something on similar lines.

That's it for today's lesson.

So I'll go through a summary before we finish up.

Geography is the study of places around the world and the relationships between people and their environments.

Physical geography is the study of the Earth's natural features and processes.

Human geography is the study of how societies, cultures, and economies differ around the world.

And environmental geography studies the relationships between people and the environment.

Now, that is it for today's lesson.

Well done on your first geography lesson at secondary school.

I've had a great time teaching you.

It's got me very, very excited to teach you more stuff in geography secondary school.

There's just so many interesting and cool things to learn about.

Anyway, make sure that you've shared what you've learned today with your family and your friends, and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.

I'll see you later.

Bye.