Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Chorekdjian, I'm so excited to be learning with you today.

I will be guiding you through our geography lesson.

I'm really excited to get started.

We are going to have a great time learning together today.

Let's start our learning.

Welcome to today's lesson from our local area unit called, "Local area: How is it changing?" Today we're going to continue our learning about our local area and exploring how it is changing.

Today's lesson is called, "Recording local Views." Our learning outcome is to use inquiry to find out what people think about local changes.

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

This links back to previous learning you might have done investigating your local area and how it's changed over time by looking at settlement size and population increase.

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

Here are the key words that we're going to be using throughout today's lesson, "Enquiry questions, analyse, interview, and survey." Let's do my turn, your turn to practise saying these keywords.

Enquiry questions, enquiry questions.

Analyse, analyse.

Interview, interview.

Survey, survey.

Good job, we are going to be using these keywords throughout our lesson.

Let's think in more detail about what these keywords mean.

Here are the definitions of our keywords.

"Enquiry questions set out what you want to find out in your geographical investigation." "To analyse is to study something in close detail." "An interview means talking to people to gather information." "A survey is a way of collecting information by asking a set of questions." Here are the learning cycles that we'll be working through today.

First, we're going to be exploring, "Recent changes in our local area," and then we'll be, "Collecting people's opinion of our local area." I'm really excited about today's learning, I hope you are too.

Let's get started.

Some changes happen over a long period of time.

How can we find out about changes that have happened more recently in our local area? So thinking about the changes that we've explored over time, remember we looked at historical maps of St.

Albans from 1890 through to 1950 and finishing in 2023.

If we are thinking about changes that are happening recently, we won't necessarily have maps that show that information.

Pause the video now and think about how we could find out about more recent changes to our local area.

How did you get on? "We could identify more recent changes in our local area by looking at Google Street View, talking to local people and by reading or watching the local news." All of these different things can help us identify more recent changes in our local area.

So let's have a little check here.

"What three ways could we use to find out about recent changes in our local area? A, Google Street view.

B, historical OS maps.

C, talking to local people.

Or D, looking at local news." And I'll give you a tip, there's more than one correct answer here.

Pause the video now and answer this question.

How did you get on? Did you answer A, Google Street view, B, talking to local people or D, looking at local news? So all of those things can help us find out about more recent changes in our local area.

Historical OS maps show us about historical changes or can show us what something looked like in the past to now, but it won't help us look at and identify more recent changes.

Now we're going to look at three different images of my local area in St.

Albans.

Let's see if they show us any recent changes.

"This is a view of Sandpit Lane in St.

Albans in February, 2009.

What is the land being used for? What can you see in the image?" Pause the video now and answer these questions with your partner.

How did you get on? So I can see a hedge, a field, lots of trees in the distance and there's no buildings or roads in this image, so I think this land might be used for agriculture.

Here's another image from the exact same location on Sandpit Lane in St.

Albans, but this image was taken in March, 2019.

This image was taken 10 years later than the first image.

"What is the land being used for now? What can you see? Has anything changed?" Pause the video now and discuss this with your partner.

So I can see that there's lots of metal fencing there and I can also see that there's lots of houses that are under construction, so that means these houses are newly being built.

There's still some land in the distance that hasn't been built on to the left of the image and there's a dark road running through the middle.

Quite a lot has changed in this picture and I think the land use has gone from agriculture to residential.

Let's have a look at the final image from the exact same location of Sandpit Lane in St.

Albans in April, 2022.

"What is the land being used for here?" What can you see in the image? What has changed from the previous two images? Pause the video now and answer these questions.

How did you get on? This time, I can't see any fields or agriculture at all, it's completely different from that first picture In 2009.

That dirt road has become a tarmac road and it runs through the middle of what is now a housing estate on both sides of the road.

I can see cars and people, so people must be living in this house.

This is now residential land use.

So all of these changes have taken place since 2019.

Let's have another little check here.

I want you to put these views of Sandpit Lane in chronological order.

I want you to start with the image that was first, then the image that came next and finally, the most modern image of Sandpit Lane.

Here are the images that I'd like you to order.

Pause the video now and put these images in chronological order.

How did you get on? Did you put these images in chronological order? Image B was first, that was our image from 2009.

Then we had image C, which was when the building work had begun in 2019 and finally the most recent image was image A from 2022, when the whole housing estate is complete and people have moved into the houses.

So this shows us quite clearly that this land in Sandpit Lane went from being agricultural use to residential use.

Well done for putting those in correct chronological order.

Give yourselves a big thumbs up.

It's now time for task A.

So what I'd like you to do is to use these images that we've just looked at and describe the local area in each of these views.

Use this sentence starter to help you.

"The land here is being used for.

I can see.

." Pause the video now and complete Task A.

How did you get on? Did you describe what was happening in these images using a lot of detail? Here's what I've done for Task A.

For the first image, I've said, "The land here is being used for agriculture.

I can see a field, a hedge and some trees in the distance." For the second image, I've said, "The land here is being used for building.

I can see a road, some houses being built and some diggers." So that gives me clues there that the land is changing to residential land.

And finally in the last image, I can see that, "The land here is being used for housing.

I can see a road going into the housing estate.

There are cars driving around and parked at houses." Well done for completing that task, you've been brilliant! Let's continue with our learning now.

Now that we've investigated what recent changes there have been in our local area, we are going to find out what people think of these recent changes by collecting their opinions and remember opinions mean someone's thoughts or beliefs.

"We know that to find out more about changes to a local area, we could investigate these enquiry questions, How has the local area changed? Why has it changed? What do people think about these changes? Let's look at what people think about these changes." So again, we are focusing on people's opinions.

"Changes that happen could be thought of as positive or negative.

So positive means good, and negative means bad.

People can have their own opinions about things.

So that means that you could have a different opinion to your friend or your classmates sat next to you.

An opinion is someone's viewpoint, which is not always based on fact or knowledge." It's based on what they believe and their thoughts.

So for example, here we've got Laura who says that she likes superhero films. And then we've got Alex that says he doesn't like superhero films. Both of these comments are their own viewpoints.

It's their own opinion.

They don't have to be the same and they don't have to be based on any fact or knowledge, it's just purely based on what you think.

Let's have a check here.

"Which statement about St.

Albans is an opinion? A, The River Ver runs through St.

Albans.

B, St Albans is a lovely place to live.

Or C, St Albans is close to the M25 motorway." Which of these statements is an opinion? Pause the video now and answer this question.

Let's have a look at how you got on.

The correct answer is B, "St Albans is a lovely place to live." That's someone's opinion, that's what someone thinks.

The other two statements, "The River Ver runs through St.

Albans," and, "St.

Albans is close to the M25," both of those statements are facts, which are true, so they're not opinions.

By asking people questions, we can find out about their opinions on different things.

We need to record answers that people give us, this is called a survey or an interview.

Knowing how to write a great survey is an excellent geographical skill to have and that's what we'll be doing today.

Let's imagine that I have been asked to interview children about their opinion of St.

Albans.

"Here are some of their answers to the question, 'Do you like living in St.

Albans?" Aisha answered, "I love living here, it's a beautiful city." Jacob said, "I moved here from London and I like it here better.

London was too big and busy." Lucas said, "St.

Albans is great! I love living here." And finally Andeep said, "It's okay.

All of my friends live here." All of the children gave us their opinion, but do they all have the same opinion? What do you think? Pause the video now and discuss this.

Do they all have the same opinion? So that was a lot of written information that you had to go through on the last slide and lots of written answers can make it confusing and harder to understand the data.

Look at the answers from the same people when we change the question to, "Do you like living in St.

Albans? Yes or no?" So let's have a look there.

All of the children have said, "Yes." So this time our survey produced only one word answers, rather than loads of text.

So it's really easy to see here that all of the children do like living in St.

Albans.

On the previous slide, even though they gave us quite descriptive answers, we had to sit down and think about whether they liked living there or not.

This way we can clearly see straight away that they do like living here.

So let's check our understanding of survey questions.

This is a true or false question, that means you've got to think really carefully about whether or not this question is true.

"Yes or no questions are easier to analyse." 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, yes or no questions are easier to analyse.

It's now time to justify our answer.

So we've got to think why the answer to that statement was true.

Is it, "Because it doesn't tell us any information," or, "Because it's easy and quick to spot patterns in the data?" Think carefully about those two reasons and justify your answer.

Pause the video now.

How did you get on? Did you say B? That's correct, yes or no questions are easier to analyse, because it is easy and quick to spot patterns in the data.

Good job, that was really tricky, but you answered that so well, give yourselves another thumbs up.

Let's move on with our learning now.

"The only problem with yes or no answers is that they hide the strength of people's opinions.

For example, both of these children answered, 'yes,' but Lucas obviously likes it a lot more than Andeep." Lucas said, "St.

Albans is great! I love living here." But on the other hand, Andeep said, "It's okay.

All my friends live here." Our yes and no answers have hidden how much Lucas likes living in St.

Albans.

So there are different types of survey questions that we can use instead of yes or no answers.

You can give people a five scale rating.

For example, "On a scale of one to five, how much do you like living in St.

Albans?" And then you can see the breakdown there of the scale score.

So one means that I don't like it at all, three means it's okay and five means I love it.

If we gave Andeep and Lucas a scaled rating question rather than a yes or no question, we would be able to see how much more Lucas liked living in St.

Albans compared to Andeep, because Lucas gave it a five and Andeep gave it a three.

So Lucas said, "I love it." And Andeep said, "It's okay." "Yes or no answers and a one to five scale are quite easy to analyse and present as data.

Look at the graphs showing answers to the question, 'Do you like living in St.

Albans?" On the first graph, it's clear that more people like living in St.

Albans than don't, because more people have said yes than no.

The second graph shows us the strength of their feeling towards living in St.

Albans.

Most of the people who answered the survey said they were a three on the scale rating, which was the same as Andeep.

And that means that they're okay with living there, but they don't love it or they don't hate it.

Let's check our understanding of survey question types.

"What is missing from this one to five scale question about St.

Albans?" Here's the question.

"On a scale of one to five, how much do you like living in St.

Albans?" Pause the video now and discuss with your partner what is missing from this question.

How did you get on? Did you spot what was missing? Som the scale is missing.

How do children know what to answer if they don't know what one means and they don't know what five means? So here, one means I don't like it at all, and five means I love it.

So the number meanings have been missed off here.

It's really important to tell people whether number one or number five means you like it the most, otherwise, you won't get a clear picture of people's opinions.

It's now time for Task B.

What I would like you to do is to, "Create a survey to ask people in your school community about their opinions of our local area and the changes that have taken place.

Try to write at least three questions, which either have yes or no answers, or one to five scores." And remember, "Don't forget to explain what each number means." Pause the video now and complete task B.

How did you get on? Did you think of any of these questions to ask the people living in your local area? "On a scale of one to five, how much do you think a local area has changed for the better?" One, "I don't think the changes have improved St.

Albans at all." And five means, "It definitely has changed for the better." I remembered to include what each number means there.

Question two, I said, "Do you think our local area has enough housing? Yes or no?" And for question three, I said, "Are there enough green spaces in our local area? Yes or no?" I'm sure that your questions were similar as well.

Well done everyone, that was a tricky task, thinking about questions, but you've done so well.

We've now come to the end of our lesson, well done! You've done some excellent geographical thinking and learning in this lesson.

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

"Good questions will help find out what opinions other people have about current changes." "Interviews and surveys are useful tools for collecting data." And, "Surveys or questionnaires with yes or no answers or one to five scores can be easy to understand." You've been fantastic today.

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

See you soon for more geography lessons, bye!.