Lesson video

Hello, my name is Ms. Chorekdjian.

You've made a great choice to learn geography with me today.

I will be guiding you through our lesson.

We're going to have such a great time learning together.

Let's get started.

Welcome to today's lesson from our unit on our local area.

Where do we live? This lesson is called our local area.

You'll be learning to talk about the area where you live and find some features on an aerial photograph or a large scale plan.

Some of this learning is brand new, but I'm here to help you.

This links back to previous learning you might have done exploring your local area, looking at aerial photographs or maps of your school grounds and your homes, and you might have also located some special features from above.

I'm really excited to get started, I hope you are too.

Here are the key words that we'll be using today and we'll be learning more about them later.

But first, let's practise saying these key words.

Let's do my turn, your turn.

Local area.

Local area.

Village.

Village.

Town.

Town.

City.

City.

Aerial photograph.

Aerial photograph.

Well done.

We'll be learning about these words later.

Here are the learning cycles that we'll be working through together today.

First, we'll be looking at geographical features in our local area, and then we'll be locating features in our local area from above.

Are you ready to get started? Fantastic, let's begin.

Settlements are where groups of people live and can be grouped into villages, towns, or cities.

So you can have a look there.

We've got a photo of a city, and then we've got a photo of a village.

Which ones which I wonder, do you think you know? Pause the video and answer that question.

So we've got a photo of a city on the left, and then we've got a photo of a village on the right.

Your local area is the area of settlement close to where you live, and that's what we'll be talking about today.

Villages are small settlements where only a few 100 or 1000 people live.

Villages often have a few shops, they sometimes have a place of worship and a school.

Villages are often surrounded by countryside and farmland.

Towns are settlements that are larger than villages where a few 1000 people live.

Towns usually have more houses and shops, a few places of worship, and some schools.

They may also have a town hall and some leisure facilities, like a gym or a cinema.

Cities are the largest type of settlement where millions of people could live.

Cities have more houses and shops, lots of different places of worship and lots of schools.

They also have lots of places to work like offices or different types of workplace buildings.

They may have leisure facilities like gyms, museums, restaurants, or cinemas.

Let's check our understanding of a village, town or city.

Which of these pictures shows a village? Is it picture A, picture B or picture C? Pause the video now and answer this question.

How did you get on? Did you say picture B? That's correct.

Picture B shows a village.

Remember that villages are surrounded by countryside or farmland and you can see in the distance there there's a lot of greenery.

Now it's time to see if we can identify which of these pictures shows a town.

Pause the video now and have a go at answering this question.

Is it picture A, picture B or picture C, that shows a town? How did you get on? Did you say picture C? That's correct.

So towns are larger settlements than villages, but they're not as large as cities.

Now it's time to have a look and see if we can identify, which image shows a city.

Is it picture A, picture B or picture C? Pause the video now and answer this question.

How did you get on? Did you say picture A? That's correct.

Remember, cities are the largest type of settlement where millions of people could live.

They also have lots of different types of buildings, offices, shops, schools and places of worship.

So picture A is the correct answer.

Well done for completing all of those checks.

You can give yourselves a thumbs up.

Now let's carry on with our learning.

Your local area is the area in the village, town or city close to where you live.

A suburb is on the edge of the town or city, furthest away from the centre.

Do you live in a village, a town or a city? Pause the video now and tell your partner which type of settlement do you live in? Good job, I'm sure you were able to tell your partner if you live in a village town or a city.

Now let's think about if you live in a town or a city.

Do you live in the city centre where there might be lots of shops, offices and workplaces, or do you live on the suburb? So the edge of the town or the city that's furthest away from the centre, where there might be more residential land, more houses where people live.

Have a think.

Do you live in a town city centre or do you live in a town or city suburb? Pause the video now and answer that question.

Good job.

I'm sure you were all able to answer that.

Well done, I'll give you another thumbs up.

It's now time for a true or false check.

That means that you've got to read this statement and decide whether or not it's true or false.

A town or city suburb is the area in the centre of the settlement.

Pause the video now and answer that question.

How did you get on? Did you say false? That's correct.

A town or city suburb is not the area that's in the centre of the settlement, but how do we know that? Let's think about justifying our answer.

The suburb is the area on the edge of a city or town or B, the suburb is the area outside a village.

Which of those justifies our answer? Is it A or B? Pause the video now and answer that question.

How did you get on? Did you say A? That's correct.

The suburb is the area on the edge of a city or a town.

It's not the area that's in the centre of the settlement.

Well done, you can give yourselves another thumbs up.

Fantastic learning so far.

Features that you might find in your local area include, houses, shops, schools, places of worship, green spaces and some healthcare.

So things like doctors or dentists or maybe even a hospital might be in your local area.

Let's look at some examples of these features together.

Some examples of features in your local area are houses, shops, shops that you could buy food from, shops that you buy your clothes from or any types of medicines.

There could be schools, places of worship that you go to with your family or your loved ones.

Places like mosques, churches, synagogues or temples.

You might also have some green spaces around you, your local park or wildlife area.

Medical centres like we've talked about, so doctors, dentists, maybe even some hospitals.

There would be some transport links like bus stops, stations, underground stations or national railway stations.

And there could also be leisure facilities like theatres, cinemas, restaurants, and many other different types of leisure facilities.

It's now time for to have a check.

Examples of local area features are, you can choose three from this list, A, homes, B, pets, C, schools or D, shops.

Pause the video and answer this check.

How did you get on? Did you choose A, homes C, schools and D, shops? Those are correct.

They're all examples of local area features, so things that you could find in your local area.

Well done everyone.

It's now time for task A.

What I would like you to do is to discuss answers to these questions with a partner.

Question one, what is the name of your local area? Two, is it in a village, town or city? Three? Is it in the town or city centre or the suburb? Four.

How do you know? What local area features are there in your local area? And finally, what could you use to show a visitor the features of your local area? Pause the video now and discuss the answers to these questions with your partner.

Well geographers, how did you get on with task A? Here are some examples that you could have written for these questions.

What is the name of your local area? The name of my local area is Kingsbury.

Is it in a village town or a city? My local area is located in a city called London.

Is it in the town or city centre or a suburb? My local area is in a suburb of a city.

How do you know? I live on the edge of London in a suburb, as we travel by train to get into the centre.

I know London is a city as it has a population of nine million and there are lots of different types of shops and leisure facilities.

What local area features are in your local area? The geographical features in my local area include schools, houses, restaurants, places of worship, leisure facilities, an underground station and a bus stop.

And finally the last question, what could you use to show a visitor the features of your local area? I could show a visitor a map of the local area.

Well done everyone.

That was great learning and thinking for task A.

Let's continue with our learning for the rest of the lesson.

We are now going to locate features in our local area from above, we can use aerial photographs and maps to locate special places or local area features in our local area so there you can see a large scale map of my local area, and I've used labels to locate some local area features such as my school, my home, and my local park.

This is a digital map of our local area from Google Maps.

What local area features can you see here? Pause the video and complete this as a think pair and share activity.

Were you able to identify a local park or a green space? Were you able to locate a supermarket, some restaurants or places to eat maybe? Did you locate the station? Well done.

I'm sure you found lots of local area features from this map.

Digital maps can switch from map to aerial photograph view to help us identify familiar features of a local area.

So when you switch to an aerial photograph view, you might be able to recognise more of those features, because you'll be used to seeing them.

To do that, you've got to press this icon.

Then you can see all the different types of maps that you can switch between.

This is a true or false question, so again, we've got to think about whether or not this statement is true.

Digital maps can switch from aerial photograph to map view.

Is that true or false? Pause the video now and answer this question.

How did you get on? Did you say true? That's correct.

So now let's think about justifying it, and why that statement is true.

Is it true because it helps us locate large cities or to help us locate features of a local area? Why can digital maps switch from aerial photograph to map view? Pause the video now and answer that question.

How did you do? Did you say to help us locate features of a local area? Well done, that's correct.

Give yourselves a thumbs up.

Fantastic, let's carry on with our learning.

We can use the details we see on aerial photographs and maps to locate local area features.

What else can you locate? Pause the video now.

How did you get on? What were you able to locate? Shall we work through this together? Did you locate a supermarket, the park gym, or maybe the local park? The medical centre, A place of worship, my school? So we're used to seeing my school from an aerial photograph.

The allotments, my local park, my house, the station, the library, and maybe even a restaurant.

There could have been some other local features that you spotted.

For example, I can see a basketball court there, and I can also see a tennis court as well.

Good job for working through that.

Let's describe some of these local area features using locational language.

Locational language describes the location of a place in relation to another place.

So words we can use are left, straight ahead or right.

Here's a reminder of some locational language that you might have used before.

Next to, in between, far away, above or near.

And you might also know some other examples of locational language too.

So let's go back to looking at these features in our local area from above.

Here are all the places that we've located.

Let's describe some of these features using locational language.

My house is next to the local park, so there we go, we can see my house and to help us locate the house, we could say that it's close to or next to my local park and that's helped me locate some of those features.

The place of worship is in between the medical centre and the allotments.

If I'm trying to locate the place of worship, I will use that locational language to help me find it.

So there's the place of worship and we can see the medical centres here and the allotments are there.

So the place of worship is in between the medical centre and the allotments.

If I'm trying to find the supermarket, I could say it's to the right of the restaurant and that might be a restaurant that I go to quite a lot.

So if I'm trying to explain where the supermarket is, it's a good place of reference so that I can find another place in relation to it.

So let's complete this check here.

I've got that aerial photograph of my local area and you can see that I've used labels to locate my house and the station.

What I would like you to do, is to describe the location of the station in relation to my house.

Pause the video now and complete that check.

How did you get on? Did you use locational language to describe the location of the station in relation to my house? You could have said the station is far away from my house.

It's now time for task B.

What I would like you to do is to locate local area features on an aerial photograph or large scale plan of your local area.

Then I would like you to write a sentence to describe some of your favourite features using locational language.

Pause the video now and complete task B.

How did you get on? Did you locate these local area features? You could have located some others, but these are the ones that I've chosen to do as an example.

Well done.

Were you able to describe them using locational language? So you could have used some examples like this.

My favourite restaurant is in between the library and the supermarket.

Or you could have said my house is next to my favourite local park.

Well done geographers, you've worked really hard today.

I'm sure you were able to identify lots of local area features from above.

And describe your favourite features using locational language.

I'm going to give you a thumbs up there because that was really tricky learning.

We've now come to the end of our lesson.

So let's go through a summary of all the learning that we've completed together today.

Your local area is the area in the village, town, or city, close to where you live.

Most local areas include local area features such as houses, shops, places of worship and green spaces.

We can use aerial photographs and maps to locate special places or local area features in our local area.

Digital maps can switch from aerial photograph to map view to help us identify the familiar features of a local area.

Well done, you've all been fantastic today.

You can give yourselves one last thumbs up.

Thank you for working so hard and for joining me today, and sharing your learning with me.

See you next time for more geography lessons soon.

Goodbye.