Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Ms. Chorekdjian.

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

I will be helping you with your geography lesson.

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

Let's get started.

Welcome to today's lesson from our unit called Around the World In 80 Days, What Have We Learned About Our World? Today's lesson is called Geography is All Around Us.

Your learning outcome for today will be to reflect on geography as a subject and discuss the value of learning geography.

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

This links back to previous experience you might have of geographical inquiry, map work, field work, critical thinking, and using a wide range of sources of information.

Let's have a look at the keywords that we'll be using together today.

Before we find out what these keywords mean, let's practise saying them doing my turn, your turn.

Geographer, geographer, reflect, reflect.

Skills, skills, knowledge, knowledge.

Good job everyone.

Let's find out what these key words mean.

Geographer, a geographer studies earth's physical environments and human habitats.

Reflect, to reflect is to think very carefully about something.

Skills, having skills means using your knowledge and learning to do a task or activity well.

Knowledge, knowledge is information, facts, things you have learned and understood.

Let's take a look at the learning cycles that we'll be working through together in today's lesson.

First, we'll be thinking about what geography is.

Then we'll be thinking about what we've learned in geography.

And then finally, we'll be looking at why learning geography is important.

Are you ready to start your learning? Good job, let's begin our lesson.

Imagine you had to explain what geography is to a younger child who was about to start school.

What would you tell them, what is geography? Pause the video here and see if you can answer these two questions with your partner.

What would you tell a younger child who is about to start learning geography at school? And what is geography? Pause the video now.

Great, I'm sure you had some really rich discussions with your partner there.

You might tell them that geography is the study of the world, and then you might explain geography as geography is learning about different places, environments and people and the relationship between these.

Well done if you said something along those lines for both of those questions.

Good job everyone.

Let's move on with our learning now.

What sort of things might a geographer study? Pause a video here and continue that discussion with a partner.

Think about what sort of things a geographer would study.

Pause the video here.

How did you get on? Geography is sometimes divided into these three categories, physical geography.

So a geographer might study the earth's natural features and the processes that have shaped these.

Human geography, human geography is the study of people who live on our planet.

And finally, environmental geography, and that is the study of how humans interact with the environment.

So geographers might study human geography, physical geography or environmental geography, or in fact a combination of all three.

In physical geography, geographers might study how the earth's landscape has formed, the weather and climate, physical features such as mountains, rivers, and coastlines.

So you can see an image there of a mountain, different ecosystems and types of biome, natural hazards such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

So these are all the things that a geographer might study if they're looking specifically at physical geography.

Can you think of anything else that they might study? Just thinking about physical geography.

Pause the video here and tell your partner.

How did you get on? So you could have said studying anything that's natural and linked to physical features.

Moving on to human geography now.

So in human geography, geographies might study where people live in the world, different types of settlements, human features such as cities, roads, and railways.

So previously physical features.

We were just looking at things that were natural and now we are looking at the impact of humans and studying human life, how my people migrate from one place to another and the different ways in which people live around the world.

So these are all examples of what a geographer might study if they're focusing on human geography.

Can you think of anything else that they might study? Pause the video here and answer that question.

Good job.

So for this one, you were thinking about things that humans do or do to the planet.

So it could be things like growing fruit and vegetables or transporting food around the world or anything else that humans have done to impact the environment.

So buildings, types of settlements and things like that.

Well done if you're able to think about more things that geographers might study, if they're looking at human geography.

Thinking about environmental geography, geographers might study how people are changing the earth's climate.

So there's a picture there of lots of pollution coming outta factories, and that's a direct way that humans are changing the Earth's climate and having an impact on the environment.

The cause and effects of pollution, deforestation, the use of natural resources such as oil, water, and minerals.

These are all the things that geographers might study when they're looking at environmental geography.

Can you think of anything else that they might study? Pause the video here and think about what else they might study if they're looking at environmental geography.

How did you get on? Did you talk about things that are linked to the environment? So again, things like pollution, how the earth's climate is changing, any sort of effects that humans are having on wildlife, biomes and habitats.

Good job everyone.

You've worked really hard so far today.

It's time for a quick check here.

So I'd like you to match each category of geography with the correct definition.

So the categories are environmental, human and physical, and the definitions are study of the Earth's natural features and the processes that have shaped these.

Study of the people who live on our planet and study of how humans interact with the environment.

Pause the video here and complete this check.

How did you get on matching these categories with the correct definitions? Did you say that environmental geography was the study of how humans interact with the environment? Good job if you did.

Did you say that human geography was the study of people who live on our planet? Good job, well done.

And finally, did you say that physical geography was the study of the Earth's natural features and the processes that have shaped these? Well done, everyone, if you manage to match those up correctly can give yourselves a big thumbs up.

It's now time for task A.

What I would like you to do is to write one or more letter for each topic to show which category or categories you think it belongs to.

There are no right or wrong answers.

So looking at the list of topics we've got plastic pollution, earthquakes, major cities in Africa, the water cycle, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and where people live in the UK.

And then in the column on the right, you're going to write P for physical, H for human, and E for environmental.

Remember that some of these topics might link to one or more categories.

Pause a video here and complete this task.

How did you get on with task A? Here's an example of a completed table.

So if we look at plastic pollution, it links to physical and environmental geography.

Earthquakes belong to the topic of physical geography, major cities in Africa.

So you could be looking at human geography and environmental geography there.

The water cycle, we are looking at physical geography and environmental geography, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, so you could have said physical, human and environmental for that one.

And then where people live in the UK.

So that's looking at physical and human geography.

Good job.

Well done, if you are able to complete the table in a similar way, you can give ourselves a big thumbs up.

Doing this activity helps us to appreciate that geography doesn't always fall easily into one of these categories.

You'll probably find reasons why each of these topics is connected with all three categories if you think long enough.

And that's what Izzy had to say, so I'm sure your answers could have been the same as mine or they could have been different based on your reasoning and how you would've linked those topics to the categories of geography.

So well done everyone.

I'm going to give you another big thumbs up.

It's now time to continue with our lesson.

Now we're going to be thinking about what we've learned in geography.

Think about the geography you've learned during your lifetime.

What knowledge have you gained? What skills have you developed? Where and when have you been learning geography? Pause a video now and answer those questions.

How did you get on? Did you talk about knowledge of different countries, knowledge of different people, knowledge about the environment.

Did you talk about skills that you've developed? So your inquiry skills, your critical thinking skills and being able to follow and lead an investigation.

Have you thought about when and where you've been learning geography? So you might have been learning geography at school, but you might have also been learning it on holiday with your family, for example, or maybe walking around town at the weekend.

You've got to remember that geography is happening all around us.

We don't just learn it at school, and geography is one of those subjects where learning it and going outside and exploring the world is just as rich and valuable as learning about it in school from behind a computer screen or a textbook.

So well done if you were able to talk about all of that.

Here's what some pupils had to say.

Laura said that geography has helped her develop her team working skills.

Izzy has said that she can name the seven continents and five oceans in the world.

Andeep has talked about learning how volcanoes are formed and why they erupt.

So we've talked about skills here and we've talked about geographical knowledge.

Aisha says, "I've learned how to use symbols and keys in a map." John has said, "In year five we learned about North and South America.

Did you know the capital of Ecuador is Quito?" Why do you think it's useful to reflect on our learning? Pause the video here and answer this question.

Well, did you talk about the process of reflection? Helping us to celebrate what we've achieved in our learning, identify gaps in our knowledge? That's a really important one.

Reflecting always allows us the chance to go back and revisit our knowledge and see if we've got any gaps and work out how we're going to fill those gaps so that all of our knowledge makes sense.

The process of reflection also helps you think about the skills that you've developed and how you can improve these further, and it helps you to apply your existing knowledge to help you learn new things.

We can also consider our strengths and weaknesses through the process of reflection.

We can also use it as a way of thinking about what helps us to learn and appreciate how everyone learns in different ways.

Were you able to think about some of these points.

Good job if you were, it's time for a quick check here.

Give one reason why it is useful to reflect on our learning.

Pause the video here and answer this check.

How did you get on? Did you say that the process of reflecting on learning helps you to celebrate what you've achieved in your learning? Identify gaps in knowledge.

Think about the skills that you've developed and how you can improve these.

Apply existing knowledge to help us learn new things and consider our own strengths and weaknesses.

It also helps you think about what helps us learn and appreciate how everyone learns in different ways.

Well done if you are able to say some of these, you can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

It's now time for task B.

What I would like you to do is to think of something awesome, something surprising and something interesting that you've learned in geography.

You can use these sentence starters to help you.

Something awesome was, something surprising was, and something interesting was.

Pause the video here and complete task B.

How did you get on completing task B? Here are some examples that I've said.

Something awesome was learning about the Alps.

I would love to visit these mountains one day.

Something surprising was learning that Mount Everest isn't actually the tallest mountain in the world.

And something interesting was learning how to use a compass and read a map so you could have said anything for these answers.

It was a good chance for you to reflect on your learning to think about something awesome, something surprising, and something interesting that you learned throughout all of your geography lessons.

Well done for completing task B.

You can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

Before we move on, I've got a final question for you linked to this task.

What else would you like to learn about in geography? You can tell your partner now.

I'm sure you had a great discussion there about more things that you would like to learn about in geography.

It's now time to move on to the final part of today's lesson.

So we are going to be thinking about why learning geography is important.

We've talked about what geography is and we've talked about what we've learned in geography.

So now it's time to think about its importance.

At the start of this lesson, you thought about how to explain what geography is to a younger child.

Now think about how you would explain why learning geography is important.

What reasons would you give? Pause the video here and answer that question.

How did you get on explaining why learning geography is so important to a younger child? What reasons did you give for why learning geography is important? Here's what some pupils had to say.

Geography helps you make sense of the world around you.

So that's definitely a reason why this subject is important.

You develop skills in geography that are useful in many areas of life.

That's so true.

Those inquiry skills that you develop and all of that critical thinking that you develop through geography helps you with other subjects as well.

It's important to learn about other cultures and ways of life.

There are many differences with my own life, but lots of similarities as well.

So I definitely think that is another important reason why we need to learn geography and why geography is so important.

Understanding the relationship between different peoples and cultures is really important, but then also thinking about the world and understanding the world and the environment is also equally important and that goes hand in hand with all of the skills that you develop as well.

Well done if you were able to explain that to a younger child.

We've got some more ideas here.

Everyone needs to learn about the problems facing our planet and the different ways in which people are taking action to make things better.

Geography helps us to be part of these solutions now and in the future, so it's really important that we all do our bit to protect the environment and do what we can to reverse the impacts of climate change or even just stop climate change from taking place.

Geography helps us make connections between different people and places.

So we've talked there a lot about why geography is important.

Hopefully you had some of those answers as well.

You could have also said learning geography opens the door to lots of different and exciting careers.

Can you think of something that a geographer might do? You can pause the video there and think about things that geographers might do.

Great, I'm sure you thought about lots of different things that a geographer might do.

Another really important reason is that learning geography is fun.

It's a really exciting and interesting subject and all of the things that you talked about in Task B, something awesome, something interesting that just shows how fun geography really is.

What other reasons can you think of? So we've talked there about quite a lot of reasons.

See if you can tie all of that together with your partner.

You might do this as a think pair and share activity to see if there are any other reasons that you can think of.

Good job everyone.

I'm sure you had a really good discussion there about why geography is so important and why learning geography is really important.

What skills does geography help us to learn? What do you think? Pause the video here and answer this question.

How did you get on? Did you talk about map reading skills, collecting information, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, presenting and interpreting data, questioning, your communication skills and your team working skills.

Can you think of any other skills that geography might help you to learn or develop? Pause the video now and answer that question.

Good job, I'm sure you talked about lots of different skills there that geography helps us to learn.

It's time for a quick check here.

Can you think of three skills that geography helps us to learn? Pause a video here and answer this check.

How did you get on, did you remember these skills? Map skills, collecting information, critical thinking, problem solving, presenting and interpreting data, questioning, communication and team working skills.

Good job if you were able to remember all of these skills.

You might have thought of some other ideas as well.

You can give yourself a big thumbs up.

It's now time for task C.

Write a letter to a child in year three explaining why learning geography is important.

What reasons will you give? What skills and knowledge can geography help us to learn? How has learning geography helped you? Pause the video here and complete task C.

How did you get on with task C? Here's an example of a letter that you could have written.

Dear Isaac, I'm writing to explain why learning geography is so important.

Geography is an exciting subject that helps us understand the world around us in many ways, it teaches us about different countries, cultures, climates, and landscapes.

By learning geography, we can explore how people and places are connected, how humans interact with the environment and ways in which we can take action for our planet.

Understanding geography can help you appreciate similarities and differences between people's lives around the world.

It can help you to learn new skills such as problem solving, team working and communication.

These skills are extremely useful in our lives, both inside and outside of school.

By learning geography, you can also discover exciting career opportunities in areas that you might not have considered before.

Most importantly, learning geography is fun.

I encourage you to explore the wonders of this subject ask questions and never stop learning about the world around you.

Best wishes, Andeep.

So you can see there that Andeep has talked a lot about the value of geography, what geography gives you with regards to knowledge and also skills, and that geography is really fun and it can open up multiple different career options for you.

Good job everyone if you were able to write a similar letter.

You've worked really hard there reflecting on geography as a subject and discussing the value of learning geography.

We've now come to the end of our lesson, so it's time to go through a quick summary of all the learning that we've completed together today.

Geography is a diverse subject that helps us to make sense of the world around us.

Reflecting on prior learning can help us to develop new knowledge and skills.

Geography is important in many different ways.

Well done everyone, you've been fantastic today.

You can give yourselves one final thumbs up.

Thank you for joining me today and for sharing your learning with me.

I'll see you next time for more geography lessons.

Goodbye.