Lesson video

Hi everybody, I'm Mrs. Lomas, and today, I'm going to be teaching you some geography.

Geography is one of my favourite subjects, so I hope you're as excited as I am.

So let's find out what we're going to be doing today shall we? So in today's lesson, we're going to be thinking about locating our place with an address and directions.

So by the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to describe where a place is and how to get there using an address, maps and geographical vocabulary.

The place we are going to be describing today is our primary school.

Now, I don't know where your school is, so we're going to use an example primary school that we've named our primary school today.

So this is an example, and you can do the same type of thing with your own school.

Okay, let's have a look.

Today, as I said, we're thinking about visiting our school.

So this lesson is in two parts.

The first part we need to know where is our school.

And after that, we need to think about how can visitors find our school.

Okay, so let's start off with where is our school.

Here, you can see some pictures of lots of different schools.

I want you to have a look and see what you think is the same and what is different with these six schools.

If you pause the video, you can collect your answers as a class.

How did you get on? Did you talk about the types of materials used to build the school? Some of them have lots of big windows, don't they? Some of them have really small windows.

Maybe you notice that some have trees around them and others don't.

Some have fields and others don't.

And I'm sure you notice there's a very colourful school in the bottom, isn't there? With lots of painting all over its walls.

Now you've had to go with those pictures, I want you to talk about what your school looks like.

Okay, so I want you to pause the video and discuss.

You can think, pair, share your answers if you want.

What does your school look like? How did you get on? Did you come up with lots of really good adjectives to describe your school? Okay, and my next question is what is the name of your school? Pause the video here and share your ideas with the class.

I hope everybody does know the name of their school.

Okay, so if we were using a map to have a look about where our school was, this is an ordinance survey map, and on every ordinance survey map, schools are shown by the letters S-C-H because they are the three first letters in the word school.

Can you find our school on this map here? Pause the video and have a good look.

There it is.

Can you see that there? You've got the three letters, S-C-H, and then you've got the beige building.

Okay, next to it, well done.

So let's have a little check.

We find schools on a map by looking for is it, A, school, B, S-C-H or C, my school.

Pause the video and we'll check your answer in a minute.

If you said B, S-C-H, you would be correct.

Well done.

If we look at the map closely, we can see other location clues as well.

Can you see that orange line or stripe across the screen? That is actually a road.

And if you look closely at the map you can see it's called Lays Down Road.

So now we know where the school is on the map and what road the school is on.

You might also notice some other things on the map that you pass as you walk to school, maybe other houses and a farm.

A park, okay? By zooming out, we can see more of the land around us.

So you can still see our school there, but now we can see more of the area around our school.

We can see that it's on the Isle of Sheppey, and we can see that it's near the sea, can't we? And you can see on a map the sea is blue and here the land is white, okay? We can also find the nearest town to our school.

Where do you think that might be? Pause the video, have a little look and then check back for the answer.

So the nearest town is Sheerness, and you can you see it there written in yellow and green and circled.

It's not a circle, Mrs. Lomas.

It is surrounded by a black box, okay? So that's the nearest town, okay? So here I want you to choose two.

When we zoom out, we can find out.

A, the nearest town or city, B, the road our school is on or C, if we are near the sea.

Okay, so here I want you to choose two answers, okay? Pause the video and we'll check the answers in a minute.

How did you get on? If you said that the nearest town or city and if we are near the sea is what we can find out when we zoom out, you would be correct.

The road our school is on was on the map before, wasn't it? Where we were more zoomed in, not zoomed out.

So well done.

When we zoom out even further to see all of the UK, we can see whereabouts our school is in the country and how close it is to other places.

So there, you can see the whole of the UK, and our school is just there in the bottom right hand corner.

So our school is in England in the UK.

Our school is in the southeast of the UK, and that's a compass direction which we're going to look at in a minute.

And our school is near the coast.

Okay, so the coast is the seaside, okay? So here we have a compass, okay? And we can use compass directions to talk about location.

Can you name any directions on the compass? Pause the video and collect some ideas as a class.

How did you get on? The four directions shown on this compass are north, east, south and west.

So you have N for north, E for east, S for south and W for west.

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to remember all of that.

So there are some silly rhymes that you can remember.

One of them is never eat shredded wheat because never begins with an N, just like north.

Eat begins with an E, just like east.

Shredded begins with an S, just like south.

And wheat begins with the W, just like west.

Or my favourite one is naughty elephants spray water.

Okay, so you might like one of those rhymes to help you remember the order on the compass directions.

So now we know our compass directions.

What direction is our school from Sheerness? If you had somebody in Sheerness and they wanted to go to our school, what direction would you send them in from the compass? Pause the video and collect your ideas.

Our school is to the east of Sheerness, isn't it? If you were to go from Sheerness to our school, you were going in the same direction as the E arrow on the compass or east.

So let's have a look at another way to find where something is.

And that is a postcode.

A postcode is a special combination of letters and numbers.

So our school is in this area on the map here that's been shaded in orange, and that is the area that has the postcode ME12 4AB.

So a group of addresses all have the same postcode.

So everything in the orange part on the screen that you can see there has the postcode ME12 4AB, and a postcode is called that because it is a code that the post office uses to work out where they have to send all the letters, okay? So you get all the letters for the postcode in area ME12 4AB in a pile, and then the postman or the post lady can go and post them all in the right area, and they're nice together in a group, which makes it a lot easier for them.

Now, it is also very useful to help us find where something is.

Quite often, if you are using a map on your phone or in your car on the satellite navigation, on the sat nav, you will put the postcode in, okay? And that's one of the easiest ways to find where something is.

So we've learned a lot of information here, haven't we? Okay, but we could put all that information together to write our school address.

So let's have a look at that, shall we? So you start with the name of the school.

So in this case it's our primary school, and then the road or street of the schools, so our primary school is on Lays Down Road.

Then the nearest town or city, which was Sheerness.

Do you remember looking on the map? And the county, which is Kent.

And finally the postcode of the school, which was ME12 4AB.

So you start with the name of the school, the road or street of the school, the nearest town or city, the county, and finally the postcode.

And each new piece of information goes on a new line, just like you can see on the screen there.

It's not one long line of information, you start a new line for each new piece of information because that makes it much easier to read, doesn't it? Okay.

Okay, so let's just have a little check, shall we? In your address, our primary school is which part of the address? So our primary school, is it the name of the school? B, the road or street of the school? C, the nearest town or city, or D, the postcode of the school.

So our primary school, is it A, the name of the school? B, the road or street of the school? C, the nearest town or city, or D, the postcode of the school? Pause the video and come back and check your answers in a minute.

You're right, it was A, the name of the school, well done, In the address, what is ME12 4AB? Is it A, the name of the school? B, the road or street of the school? C, the nearest town or city? Or D, the postcode of the school? So ME12 4AB, which part of the address is that? Pause the video, and come back and check your answer in a minute.

You're right, it's D, the postcode of the school.

Well done.

How about Sheerness? So what part of the address was that? Have a think about where we were looking at it on the map.

Is it A, the name of the school? B, the road or street of the school? C, the nearest town or city, or D, the postcode of the school? Pause the video and check your answer in a minute.

You're right, well done.

It was C, the nearest town or city.

Okay, so we've got our first task for you today.

I want you to write down our school address or your school address on this address label here, okay? So remember you start with the name, street, nearest town or city, county and postcode.

A new line for a new piece of information.

Okay, pause the video and come back when you finished your task.

Okay, so this is what our primary school address is here.

You've got our primary school, Lays Down Road, Sheerness, Kent, ME12 4AB.

And don't forget if it's the name of a place, it needs a capital letter.

Okay, well done if you managed to do that today.

So now we know where our school is, how do we think visitors can find our school? Let's have a look, shall we? So what transport will visitors use to get here? There are lots of ways for visitors to get to our school.

They could go by train by using the rail network.

They could go by car or bus by using the road network, or they could even go by plane by flying into an airport.

Can you think of any other ways that visitors could get to our school? Pause the video and think, pair, share your ideas with the class.

How did you get on? Did you come up with lots of other ways to get to your school? So how can visitors find our school? They might use a map to help them, and the map key unlocks information on the map.

Okay, so here can you see in our key, the red circle with a line either side means it's a station.

Can you spot the red circles on the map here? Can you pause the video, have a look, and then we'll have a look at the answers when you get back.

Why do you think you might use red circles instead of writing the word station all over the map? Have a little think and share your answers as a class.

Pause the video here and come back in a minute.

How did you get on? Did you notice that there were a lot of red dots, weren't there, on the map? And if you wrote the word station every single time, you wouldn't be able to see any other information on the map, would you? So don't forget, we use these symbols to make it easier for us to read the map.

So a train line runs to Sheerness where there is a station.

There, you can see Sheerness station and the black lines joining up.

The red circles are the train tracks.

How can our visitors get closer to our school though? Because Sheerness station still is a little bit away isn't it? Pause the video and have a think.

So there are road links to the Isle of Sheppey, and on the map key, an orange line is a B road.

So they're the smaller roads.

A pink line is an A road, which is a bit more of a main road.

Green and yellow is a dual carriageway.

So you have two lanes on either side of the road.

And a blue one is the motorway.

So they're the big, big roads where you can go quite fast.

Yeah, they often have three or four lanes on each side of the road.

So if you'd gone into Sheerness station, could you maybe use the road network to get to our school? Maybe by bus, by taxi, bicycle.

Okay, hopefully you came up with some ideas like that.

How can visitors find our school if they're coming from a different country though? So coming from another country, a visitor could fly to London, and can you see there are quite a few airports I think around London.

So the little aeroplane in a black circle is the symbol for airport.

So there's our school.

How many airports can you find on this part of the map? Pause the video and then come back.

How did you get on? There are quite a few, aren't there? Okay, I can see one, two, three, four already.

Which one is closest though to our school? Okay, let's just see if you have been paying attention.

Can you match the map symbol to its meaning? So your options are the railway station, motorway, airport and road.

I want you to pause the video and match the map symbol to its meaning, and then we'll check the answers once you're done.

How did you get on? Let's have a look, shall we? So the railway station is the red circle.

The motorway is the blue line.

Airport is the aeroplane, and the road is the pink or red line.

Well done.

Okay, so for your second task, you are going to create a guide to show someone where our school is.

I want you to include transport links, okay? So you've got a map.

You might want to add in anything important for the map key, okay? Maybe a train station or a road or an airport.

And how are you going to find the school? Okay, so you need to write down instructions for how to find our school.

Once you've had a go, come back and we'll see how you got on.

But don't forget, thinking about compass directions, transport links and all those symbols on the maps that we've just been having a look at, okay? Now is your chance to show off everything you've learned and make a fantastic guide for how to get to our school.

How did you get on? Okay, this was just a little example I had to go at for finding our example score.

So there's the map, and I said that the train station and the A road were the most important symbols that they needed to know.

I said if you're coming by train to our school, there is a station at Sheerness, then you could take a bus or a taxi to the school.

How did you get on? Okay, so today, we've been learning all about visiting our school, haven't we? So the important things to remember today are that our school is located in the southeast of the UK.

The address and postcode will help you find it.

You can reach our school by road or rail.

If you're coming by rail, you'll need to take a bus or a taxi from the station.

And if you are coming in from overseas, you could fly into a London airport, okay? Well done today, everybody.

You did some fantastic geography learning today, didn't you? And you were amazing listeners.

So well done.

Don't forget to have a go at the exit quiz because then you can see how much you've remembered and if there's anything you just need to have a little practise over again, okay? And I am very excited to see you for our next lesson.

So have a good day and I will see you again soon.

Bye-bye, everybody.