Geography

We explored reasons why some places in the USA have high population density and why some places have a low population density.  We annotated our maps of the US to show the top 10 and bottom 10 states by population density.

We have been exploring different photos of North America to look for clues about what the continent is like.  We discovered that North America is a vast continent with a variety of different urban as well as rural areas.  We noticed that there were different climates and biomes across different parts of the continent.   

Wow- what an amazing 'Trashion' show we had in Beech class today displaying our use of recycled materials as fashion accessories. As part of Earth Day we also learned about what our carbon footprint is and how this impacts on our environment and the climate.  We designed our own footprint to show ideas for how we could reduce our carbon footprint.

Beech class went geocaching in the school grounds.  Geocaching is a digital treasure hunt that uses a GPS (Global Positioning System) device to hunt for hidden treasures or clues.  We not only developed our Geography fieldwork skills, but had to work hard on our team work skills and growth mindset.  

In our Geography lessons, we have been finding out more about the continent of Europe.  We have been using atlases to locate some of the main countries in Europe.

To celebrate International Day, Beech class worked in groups to take part in a treasure hunt about the country of India.  We used atlases to find out the answers to the clues.

We have been finding out about capital cities of Europe.  We first of all thought about what makes a city a capital city and then we worked in groups to try and solve the anagrams of different European capitals.  We now know a lot more than we did before!

Learning how to use different tools on the digital mapping app Google Earth.

We have been exploring all about trade and finding out about trade links that exist between different countries.  We had a fun group game to play where we had to put the traded items into our mini shipping containers to send to the correct country.

We have chosen a European capital city to research and then created our own non-chronological report about it.

Geography in the News

We have been learning more about the issue of building the HS2 train link in England, which has been in the news a lot recently.  Today we worked in groups to sort out the positives and negatives about the issue.  There are strong arguments for and against the building of the new travel link.  Next week, we are going to be holding a debate all about the issue.  

We held a debate into the issue of whether the HS2 train link is a good idea.  In our groups we were given different roles such as wildlife activists, residents of houses due to be knocked down or passengers who travel to London regularly.  We had to consider within our new roles what the positive and negatives would be for the building of HS2.  We then had to debate with other groups our reasons for and against the issue.