Lesson video

Hello, welcome to this geography lesson.

My name is Miss Roberts and I'll be your teacher today.

This lesson is all about the city of London.

You are going to explore where London is and find out what it is like.

I'm very excited to get started.

Are you? Let's go.

By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to locate London and identify its features, including the River Thames on maps and in aerial photographs.

I'm going to start by showing you some keywords.

These are words that we will be using a lot in today's lesson.

By the end of the lesson, you will be able to use these words yourself.

Our first keyword is scale.

Can you repeat scale? Well done.

The scale of a map shows you what size an area is in real life.

Our next keyword is capital city.

Can you say capital city? Great job.

A capital city is the place in a country where the government sits and runs the country from.

Our next keyword is an aerial photograph.

Can you try aerial photograph? Lovely.

Well done.

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

Our last keyword for today is river mouth.

Can you say river mouth? Excellent.

The river mouth is where it enters the sea or a lake.

Let's get started on the lesson.

There are two parts in today's lesson.

First, we are going to investigate the question, where is London? Later we'll be thinking about how maps show us the key features of London.

London is the largest city in the UK.

Around 10 million people live there.

Gosh, what a lot of people.

Have you ever been to London? What do you know about it? Around 17 million tourists travel to visit London each year.

Laura says that she went to London last year and it was very busy.

The photograph here shows a very busy street in London called Oxford Street.

There are lots of shops on Oxford Street.

How does this high street compare to your local high street? Now I hope you were listening closely when I told you those facts about London.

Can you recall how many people live in London? Is it around 900 people? Is it around 10,000 people? Or is it around 10 million people? Have a think now and make your decision.

Are you ready? Did anyone choose A? I don't think A is quite big enough a number.

What about option B, 10,000 people? Hmm.

I'm still not sure that that's big enough.

Did you choose option C? Well done.

Option C is the correct answer.

Around 10 million people live in London.

Now, how many tourists did I say travel to London each year? Is that also around 10 million? Is it around 17 million? Or is it around 100 million? Take a moment now and make your choice.

Did you choose the same number, around 10 million? Well, that's not quite enough.

There are more tourists that visit than there are residents in London.

Did you choose option C? Well done, yes, around 17 million tourists come and visit London every year.

A hundred million is a few too many.

Now, let's think some more about the location of London.

The city of London is in England.

England is one of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom.

Do you know what those four countries are? Can you name them? The four countries are England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Thank you, Laura.

Here is a map showing you where the countries are.

Can you remember in which country of the United Kingdom is London? Is London in Northern Ireland, option A? Or Scotland, option B? Or Wales, option C? Or England, option D? Have a think and make your choice.

Have you chosen one? Did you choose option D, England? Well done.

London is in England.

London is the capital city of England.

The city of London is actually in the southeast part of England.

If you look at the map, you can see the circle around London in the southeast of England.

England is the country that is coloured green on this map.

How close do you live to London? Alex says that he lives in Edinburgh, which is in Scotland, and that's a long way from London.

Scotland is the country that is coloured yellow on this map and you can see Edinburgh named there.

London is the capital city of England and of the United Kingdom as a whole.

A capital city is an important place where lots of decisions about how to run the country get made.

Look at the map.

Two cities are highlighted.

Which one of them is London? Make your choice.

Are you ready? Let's check.

The country in the southeast of England is London.

That's the one with the circle.

The other city, in Scotland, is Edinburgh.

You have learned a lot so far about London and the United Kingdom, so let's try an activity now to put that learning to use.

First I want you to add name labels for the four countries of the United Kingdom.

Remember, they are England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

When you have finished adding those labels to the map, I would like you to add another label, this time for the capital city, London and I have put a star on the map to show you where London is.

Pause the video now while you complete this activity.

Are you finished? Good job.

Now let's look at these answers together.

Here is my map, and as you can see, I have labelled all of the countries.

We have Scotland at the top.

That's the most northern city.

We have England, we have Wales, and we have Northern Ireland, and then next to the star, I have added my label for London.

Good work everyone.

Well done.

Now we are going to move to the second part of our lesson.

The second part of our lesson is about how features of London are shown to us on maps.

Maps help us to locate places.

They help us to plan our journeys and help us to find our way from A to B.

There can be many different types of maps showing the same place.

Different maps have different scales and they depend on what we need to use the map for.

Sophia remembers scale by thinking of it like zooming in and out on a map.

Let's see what she means now by looking at some examples.

Maps show us more or less information depending on their scale.

Look at this map.

What features of London can you see? Talk to a partner.

Andeep has noticed that this map shows the names of some of the parks and some of the roads.

I can see that it also shows us the name of the river in the middle of London, the River Thames.

This map shows us a lot of local information and details like those place names.

Can you find the names of three parks on this map? There are lots of parks on this map, aren't there? Here they are.

We have Holland Park, Regents Park, Hyde Park, Green Park, St.

James' Park, Kennington Park and Burgess Park.

These parks are not the only parks in London, but they are the only parks on this map of this part of London.

Other maps like this one show a bigger area and they show less detailed information.

This map has motorways and main roads shown on it, but not much other detail.

Compare the two maps that you have just seen.

Both of them show us where the City of Westminster is.

That's an area within London.

What do you notice about the City of Westminster on each map? Talk to a partner and share your ideas.

Westminster is bigger on map B than on map A.

On map A, the City of Westminster is that little area surrounded by a blue boundary.

On map B, the area of Westminster is within the red boundary and it's lot larger.

This is because each map has a different scale.

Look at the two maps again.

Which of the maps shows the parks in more detail? Is it map A or is it map B? Have you chosen one? It's map B.

Map B shows us more detail about the parks.

I can't even see the parks on map A.

Photographs of places taken from above can also help us to locate the features of a place.

Photographs taken from above are called aerial photographs.

This is an example of an aerial photograph.

On an aerial photograph, you can identify features such as rivers, settlements, they're places where people live, transport routes like roads or motorways, or train tracks, as well as large buildings and maybe some green spaces.

You can see all of those sort of features on an aerial photograph.

Let's try a question now using your new learning about aerial photographs.

I'm going to read you a sentence and I want you to decide if it is true or if it is false.

The sentence is: aerial photographs are taken from the side of an object.

Is that true or is that false? You can give me thumbs up if you think this is true and thumbs down if you think this is false.

So, do you have thumbs up or thumbs down? Thumbs down.

This is false.

Aerial photographs are not taken from the side of an object, but how do we know that that is false? We need to provide some extra information to prove how we know that that is false.

I'm going to read you two more statements now.

I want you to pick the one that is most helpful in this situation.

Statement A is that aerial photographs are taken from above, or is it B, that aerial photographs are taken from below? Which of those two sentences is the most helpful here? Have you chosen one? Did you choose sentence A? Well done.

That's the most helpful here because this tells us that aerial photographs are photographs that are taken from above.

Well done.

Good job.

Look at this photograph.

This is a type of aerial photograph taken from space.

This is a satellite photograph of a much wider area of London.

This photograph has a lot less detail.

We can only see major or large features in this photograph.

The River Thames flows through London.

We can see the River Thames here in this photograph.

We can see a lot of the River Thames, actually, here.

Look at the river in the photograph and talk to a partner now.

Describe what you think the River Thames looks like in this photo.

What ideas did you have? Did you think that the River Thames looks like a wiggly worm or a snake slithering through the city? It certainly does.

It has lots of twists and turns along the way.

Yes, Jacob agrees.

Jacob thinks it looks very curvy.

It's not straight at all.

I agree with Jacob.

The River Thames doesn't just flow through London.

It flows through several other towns and cities before it gets to London and it continues flowing after London as well.

After London, it flows to a place called Southend and that is where the mouth of the River Thames flows into the North Sea.

Remember our keywords from earlier? The river mouth is where the river flows into the sea.

Now, let's try putting your new learning to use with a question.

This is a multiple choice question, but the answers here are all pictures.

Look at them now.

A is a map of the Thames, B is an aerial photograph showing the Thames, and C is a map of London.

I want to know which of those includes the mouth of the river, A, B, or C? Have a think now and make your choice.

Have you decided? Now all of them show the River Thames, but only one shows the mouth.

The mouth is where the river flows into the sea.

Only one of these pictures shows the sea, and that's picture A.

Did you choose option A? Well done.

Let's try another activity.

Now, I want you to look at this photograph, which is an aerial photograph of a small part of London called Clapham.

What features can you identify from this photograph? What can you say about Clapham from looking at the photo? Talk to a partner or work in a small group now and share your ideas.

Have you finished? I think you have some excellent ideas.

Some of the Oak Academy children are going to share their ideas with us now.

Jacob says that he can see lots of houses, but there are also some green spaces and some trees.

Alex says he thinks there are lots of people that live in Clapham.

It has lots of roads and transport routes.

Laura has spotted a football pitch as well.

Did you have observations like these? This has been a very interesting lesson all about London.

Let's review what we have covered today.

We know that London is the largest city in the UK and that almost 10 million people live there.

We know that London is located in the southeast of England and it is the capital city of England and of the United Kingdom.

Maps and aerial photographs can help us to locate places and their features.

Maps use different scales to show different amounts of detail.

And the River Thames is the river that runs through London.

The city is close to the mouth of the river.

The River Thames, if you remember, flows into the North Sea.

I enjoyed learning about London today, and I hope you did too.

I'm looking forward to seeing you again for another lesson about life in the city of London.

Bye for now.