Place Based Learning within Primary Education

Geographical Association, 2011 Louise Francis Co-founder Mapping for Change l.francis@mappingforchange.org.uk

Maggie Hewitt Freelance Education Consultant

• Project pilot • Method • Outcomes • Opportunities

Putting Ourselves on the Map

Putting Ourselves on the Map

Placed based education: A traditional approach using new tools in an urban community

• To connect the local to global

• Maps as grids and stories

• Putting Google Maps into the hands of pupils

• Links between fact and personal knowledge/experience

• London borough of Tower Hamlets

• Three schools

• Majority of students working in English as a second language

• Year 4 (8-9 years old)

• Mixed group (year 4-6)

Context

“What's important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it, before being asked to heal its wounds.” Sobel

“ I hope the project will really capture the pupil voice and help us to see where we are in the world.” Headteacher of John Scurr School

My World

Click to edit Master title style

09/05/2011 8

My World

My World

On My Way to School Diaries

The Orange Lamborghini

The orange Lamborgini is mysterious because it is always in the same place on Wednesdays near Bonner School.

He looks like black glasses, brown hair, black shoes, red lips, cream leather seats, a black and orange boot, a silver engine, silver and black rim tyres and orange body, eyebrows are black, a yellow and white number plate and always near Cyprus Street and it looks like this.

Fraser

Perception Mapping

The students’

ideas across

different ‘layers’

were first written

onto large paper

maps using post-

it notes

Walk around the school area

Pupils identified landmarks important to them during a perception mapping exercise in class

Mixture of Themes

Online mapping: Mapping For Change

www.communitymaps.org.uk

Putting Ourselves on the Map

Environmental themes

• Litter

• Dogpoo

• Parks & spaces (non recorded ‘green space’)

Social behaviour

Oral history

The current

library was an

asylum in 1914

Barmy park

Behaviour

“They are beginning to understand that they are entitled to an opinion about their environment and that their ideas are valid.”

Teacher at Columbia School