Lesson video

Hello! My name is Ms. Chorekdjian.

I'm so excited to be learning with you today.

I will be guiding you through our lesson.

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

Let's start our learning! Welcome to today's lesson from our unit on our local area, how do we read maps and plan routes? This lesson is called "Planning a Route." You'll be learning to plan a route to your local play area using aerial images and a large-scale map.

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

This links back to previous learning you might have done, exploring your school grounds and your local area, looking at aerial photographs or maps of your school grounds, and mapping a route around key areas within your school grounds.

I'm really excited to get started.

I hope you are too.

These are the keywords that we'll be using together in today's lesson.

Let's do my turn, your turn.

Play area.

Play area.

Map.

Map.

Risk.

Risk.

Route.

Route.

Well done, everyone.

I want you to be using these keywords throughout our lesson.

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

First, we'll be locating favourite places to play, and then we'll be planning a route.

Are you ready to get started? Great.

Let's start our learning for today.

Do you remember these important places to play in school? We've talked about them and how they help us and we've also expressed our opinion as to why these important places are our favourite.

We've talked about the playground, the trim trail, the outdoor gym, the multi-use games area, the slide and the field.

Let's remember these places and tell our partners why these places are important.

Pause the video now.

I'm sure you were able to tell your partner why these places are important.

Remember, they help us develop our bodies physically so that our muscles get stronger and so that we can develop our balance and our coordination.

They also help us with our mental health.

It's really nice to be outside and to be close to nature.

Some of these areas also develop your problem-solving skills and support you to develop your creativity and your imagination.

They also might help you with team building, if you play team sports for example, and problem solving and taking controlled risks.

So working out how to get to the top of the climbing frame and then working out a safe way to come back down.

These places are all really important because they help you in so many different ways.

Those were the play areas that we had in our school grounds.

Now it's time to think about how we can locate play areas in our local area.

What could we use to locate play areas in our local area? Pause the video and answer that question.

How did you get on? Did you say that maybe we could use an aerial photograph or a large-scale map of our local area? Aerial photographs or large-scale maps can be used to locate local features in our local area.

So features like our school, the local library, some of our homes, and local play areas.

Well done if you got that right.

You can give yourselves a thumbs up.

Well done.

Here is an aerial photograph of a local area.

Think about the places that you like to play.

Pause the video and have a look at this aerial photograph.

You can discuss it as a think, pair, and share activity.

How did you get on exploring this local area? Did you see any places to play? Pause the video and see if you can see any local play areas.

Let's have a look at this aerial photograph together.

We can zoom in like this so we can see an area more clearly.

Now can you see any local play areas? Have a look at this zoomed-in section of the aerial photograph and see what areas there are to play here.

How did you get on? Did you locate the tennis courts? Maybe the basketball courts.

Did you locate the table tennis area? Or maybe the park gym? There's also the park playground there as well.

And we've got some park playing fields.

These are all local places to play and we found them by zooming into an aerial photograph of our local area.

Well done if you could find those places.

Let's now zoom out so we can see a wider area with more potential play areas.

Can you see any play areas now that we've zoomed out? Pause the video and see if you can locate some play areas.

How did you get on? Shall we see if we can locate some play areas together? Did you locate these places? Woodcock park? There it is.

It's right at the edge of this aerial photograph.

Did you find Fryent country park? There it is.

That was one of the larger green spaces that we could identify on this aerial photograph.

Did you locate the Welsh Harp? So not only can we play, but we can also see lots of animals and wildlife there.

Did you locate Flip Out? There it is.

That's our local trampoline park.

So that's a really exciting and fun place to play.

Did you locate Topsy Turvy World? That's another indoor play area.

There it is.

So looking at this aerial photograph, we've located three outdoor areas to play and then two indoor areas to play.

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

This means you've got to think carefully about whether or not this statement is true.

Maps of different scales, or a zoom function, can help us identify features more easily.

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

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

Do you remember I zoomed into an aerial photograph to help me find and locate some features more easily and then I also zoomed out of that aerial photograph and that also helped me find more play areas that were a little bit further away.

So I used both functions.

I used the zoom-in function and the zoom-out function.

Good job, everyone.

It's now time to think about justifying why this is true.

Is it true because zooming in shows a narrower area in more detail or a wider area in less detail? Or is it because zooming in shows you no detail at all? Think about what we've discussed together and what I've shown you.

Pause the video and justify that answer.

How did you get on? Did you say A, zooming in shows a narrower area in more detail or a wider area in less detail? That's correct, and that's exactly what I showed you when I zoomed in and I zoomed out of the aerial photographs that we were working through together.

Good job, everybody.

You can give yourselves another thumbs up.

Fantastic.

Here's our aerial image again so we can see the features on a larger scale.

So that means I've zoomed into this particular area here.

I'm looking at this area in more detail.

There again, we can see that we've got the tennis courts, the basketball court, the table tennis area, the park gym, the park playground, and the park playing fields where we can play some team sports.

So this is the area that we'd like to focus on.

This is our local play area.

Let's look at these play areas from a local area in more detail.

So there's the playground that's inside the park.

There's a closer look at the table tennis area.

And here's a closer look at the park gym.

So those are three of the areas that we located on that aerial photograph.

Let's look at the other areas that we located.

The playing fields for playing team sports, the tennis courts, and the basketball courts.

All of these photos show us those areas that we located on that aerial photograph.

Now we're going to locate those same play areas on a large-scale map.

Can you find them? Have a look at this before I show you the answers.

See if you can locate those six places.

Pause the video now and have a go at that.

Good job, everyone.

Did you locate those places? There's the park playground.

There's the playing fields that we looked at for team sports.

Here's the park gym.

Here's the table tennis area.

And then we've got the basketball courts.

And finally, the tennis courts.

Now there were some clues there to help you.

It did have a few labels already from the large-scale map to help you, but other places didn't have any labels, and I had to use my knowledge of the area based on the aerial photograph and the real photographs to help me locate them.

So for example, the park playing fields didn't have a label, but I knew that they were in between the park playground and the park gym.

And then also the basketball court didn't have a label, but again, I remembered that the basketball court was in between the table tennis area and the tennis courts.

So that helped me locate it, and I'm sure that helped you locate them as well.

Good job.

Let's think about which play areas in our local area are our favourite.

So we have two pupils here.

They've said, "I like the table tennis in Roe Green park.

It's my favourite play area." And then another pupil has said, "I like playing in the playground at Roe Green park." So they were both able to share their opinions with us.

Remember that an opinion is what someone thinks or believes.

Let's think about your favourite play area.

Where is your favourite place to play in your local area? Pause the video now and tell your partner.

Good job, I'm sure you were all able to share where your favourite place to play is in your local area.

What I would like you to do now for task A is to write all of your favourite local play areas or places to play in this list below.

It says, my favourite places to play in my local area are, and you can write down as many as you can think of.

You can use those bullet points as a guide and maybe add some more bullet points if you have more favourite local play areas that you want to add to the list.

Pause the video now and complete task A.

Good job.

How did you get on? Here's an example of my task A.

I've said, my favourite places to play in my local area are Roe Green playground, the basketball court in Roe Green, the park gym, the table tennis court, or the tennis courts.

And I'm sure you were able to write down all your favourite places to play in your local area as well.

Good job, everyone.

You did really well for task A.

You can give yourselves a thumbs up.

Let's move on with our learning.

We're now going to think about planning a route.

Remember that a route shows the starting point and end point of a journey, sometimes with stops in between.

You might have previously planned a route around your school to show a visitor the important areas there.

Today, we're going to be thinking about planning a route to our local play area.

So we're going to be using some of those same skills and developing them.

Geographers use aerial photographs or large-scale maps to plan a route from one place to another.

Remember we've got a starting place and we've got an end place and we might even have stops in between as well.

We're going to plan a route on a map from our school to our favourite play area.

That's what we're going to do together.

So that's the start of our route, which is our school, and then, the route is going to show us how to get from that place to another place, which is our favourite play area.

We can plot important parts of the route on our map.

Where are the start and end points of our route? Pause the video and see if you can answer that question.

How did you get on? Did you say that the start point is my school, and that the end point is the playground? Well done if you did.

Good job.

Now we can plot important parts of the route on our map.

So those important places are going to be stops in between our start place and our end place.

But how could we get from our school to the playground? Could we travel there in a straight line? No, that's not how we get from one place to another.

Pause the video and see if you can answer that question.

How can we get from our school to the playground? Planning a route involves making decisions about the best way to get from one place to another.

So that's what you would do when you were looking at that map.

You were thinking about different things to help you find the best route.

Things that we need to consider for a route are it being direct.

So not travelling a longer distance than it needs to be.

Safe.

Our route has to be safe.

It has to include well-lit areas, places that we can cross safely, and no extra hazards like building works.

And thinking about the time.

We need to get from one place to another as quickly as possible.

So all of these three things are factors that we think about when we are thinking about the best route that we could take to get us from one place to another.

Play areas need to be accessed safely.

So thinking about routes and risks is important.

Here is the map that I asked you to look at earlier and I asked you to think about a route.

But now that we've talked about those factors that help us think about the best route, I wonder if you can tell me which of these two routes might be the best route to get to my play area? We're going to look at each of these routes in detail together before we make our decision.

Sometimes, we also have to use local knowledge of an area, as not everything is shown on a map.

Local knowledge might be the knowledge that we all have together as a class because we might walk this route to school in the mornings or we might walk this route to school on our way home.

So we could share knowledge about the area to help us plan the best route.

Let's use this key to identify things along our route.

This symbol means a zebra crossing.

That means that we can cross a road safely.

This image means road works.

So that might be an extra risk to our route because it might mean that some pavements are closed, and that would mean there isn't a safe place for us to walk.

Traffic lights.

Traffic lights help us because they stop the flow of traffic and they give us a safe time to cross over.

These three things might not be shown on a map, but we would know it based on our local knowledge of the area.

They will help us identify risks along our route.

Do you know what the word risk means? Pause the video and answer that question.

A risk is something that might put us in danger.

Well done if you knew what that word meant.

So now that we've thought about local knowledge and how that can help us create our route, let's go back to looking at the two routes that I'd shown you.

Can you see there that I've highlighted the route in blue? It starts at my school and it ends at the playground, and I've also put a little symbol on there.

Do you remember what that symbol means? Turn to your partners and see if you can remember what that means.

Did you say a zebra crossing? Well done if you did.

Now let's look at this route in more detail.

Is this route direct? So it's a route that isn't a longer distance than it needs to be.

Pause the video and turn to your partner and see if this is a direct route.

I think this is a direct route.

It does get from one place to another, covering the shortest distance possible.

Let's also consider if this route is safe.

Does it have well-lit areas and safe crossing points and no hazards like building work? Pause the video again and tell your partner if you think this is a safe route.

It is a safe route because we've already identified that that symbol means that that is a zebra crossing and that's a safe place for us to cross.

Let's think about time now.

We need to get from one place to another as quickly as possible.

Do you think that this would be a quick route to get to our play area? Pause the video and tell your partner.

I think so.

I think the time that it would take us to get from one place to another using this route would be quite quick.

So overall, this is a really good and safe route that we could take to get to the play area from our school.

Let's have a look at the other route.

So this was the other route that I showed you.

You can see there again it's highlighted in blue.

So let's think about this route now, using those same three factors that we looked at the first route with.

Is this route direct? So not a longer distance than it needs to be.

Pause the video and tell your partner if this is a direct route.

Did you say no? I don't think it is either.

It goes quite a long way around to get to the same place.

So this is quite a long distance to travel.

Let's think about this next thing.

Is this route safe? Has it got well-lit areas and crossing points and no hazards like building works? Talk to your partner and see if you think that this route is safe.

So you can see there, there are two other symbols that we talked about earlier.

There's a symbol of a traffic light, which might mean that there is a safe place to cross, but there's also a symbol of road works.

So that traffic light could be a temporary traffic light because there's road works there.

So if there's road works and a temporary traffic light, it means that there's a lot more traffic and it's more risky because there might not be a safe place to cross.

So I don't think this route is safe.

And the final thing, the time needed to get there, would this route get us to the play area as quickly as possible? Pause the video now and answer that question.

So we've already talked about this route not being very direct, and if it's not a direct route, it would take a lot more time for us to get there, so we wouldn't get there in the quickest possible time.

So looking at this route, it's not direct, it's not safe, and it doesn't get us there quickly.

It's now time for a check.

We've looked at both of these routes together.

They both show a route from my school to my local play area, but which one of these routes is the best and why? Think about those three factors that we talked about.

Pause the video and answer that question.

How did you get on? Did you all say that the route on the left was the best route and the route on the right was not the best route? Were you able to explain it in terms of it being a route that was safe, direct, and took the least time? Good.

Remember we talked about the first route being more direct because it's a shorter distance.

There's also a zebra crossing there, which means it's safe, and it would take us the least amount of time.

We talked about the other route being indirect, so that means it's a longer route to walk.

We also talked about there being a set of temporary lights and road works there, so that wouldn't be a safe way for us to cross that road and that this route would take us more time to get from one place to another.

So well done for completing that check.

It's now time for task B.

So what I would like you to do is to use a zoomed-in map of your local area.

I'd like you to draw a route to your favourite play area from your school, and explain why this route is safe from risks.

Pause the video and complete task B.

Well done, everyone.

I'm sure you worked really hard for that task.

Let's go through my example.

So you can see there that I've highlighted the best route from my school to my local play area on my zoomed-in map.

And I've explained it and I've said that this is the best route to get to my favourite play area, which is the playground in the park.

This is the best route from my school because it is the most direct, I cross at a zebra crossing, and there are no traffic works nor much traffic.

So I've assessed the risks of this route and I've decided that this route is the safest, most direct, and takes the least time possible.

Well done, everyone.

Good job, geographers.

I'm sure you were able to explore local play areas and identify and plan the best route possible to get to your favourite play area.

Well done, everyone.

Let's just go through a quick summary of the learning that we've done together today.

Maps of different scales, or a zoom function, may be needed to locate pupils' favourite play areas.

Aerial photographs and large-scale maps show local features, including play areas.

Aerial photographs and large-scale maps can be used to plan routes.

And finally, play areas need to be accessed safely.

So thinking about routes and risks is important.

You've been fantastic today.

You can give yourselves one last thumbs up.

Well done for joining me for today and for sharing your learning with me.

I'll see you soon for more geography lessons.

Goodbye!.