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GIS at The High Arcal School. Year 7 Improving the School Grounds. Context. By the end of a series of lessons pupils will: know why school grounds need improving understand how school grounds can be improved
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GIS at The High Arcal School Year 7 Improving the School Grounds
Context • By the end of a series of lessons pupils will: • know why school grounds need improving • understand how school grounds can be improved • be able to plan, to scale, an area of the school grounds showing and justifying changes • A fieldwork -based project running for many years • Part of a planned series of lessons,assessed at the end • Involves a cross-curricular element such as literacy (writing for a purpose, numeracy)
aim in July was to replace use of paper maps so that pupils can use GIS to show show changes to part of the school grounds • also to actively integrate other ICT aspects into the sequence of lessons: use of PAINT to show “before” and “after” images; use of EXCEL to work within a budget of £2,000; use of resources based on our departmental website
Lesson 1 Class based Brainstorm why school grounds need improving Watch Learning through Landscapes video Revisit why school grounds need improving Homework: letter to Headmaster aiming to convince him that money should be spent on improvements
Lesson 2 Visit school grounds (fieldwork) What has been improved already, where and why? Homework: page for a magazine aimed at young people showing how High Arcal’s grounds have improved Lesson 3 Planning for the future: draft plan of improvements Homework: get price information for benches, fencing, bins etc
Lesson 4 Fieldwork Using draft plans visit area to be improved and revise plans; cost up in draft form within £2,000 budget Lesson 5 GIS In ICT room, work in pairs, using detailed instructions to produce a digital map (using drag and drop symbols) Compare “before” and “after” images (spot the difference) Have a go at manipulating the aerial digital image to show their changes (no-one got this far!)
How did it go? Far better than expected: usual hiccups with missing mice otherwise a valuable experience. Pupils navigated the system easily, most got on to the “before” and “after” image comparison. Tips: Only named work to be printed No printing off until told Stay in seats whilst work is printing off
Difficulties: Scale and resizing symbols Not leaving a gap between elements of the post code (easily rectified) Advantages of GIS over paper-based maps: Speed Neatness WOW factor Pupil motivation
Next……. Year 9 Sustainable Development project “How might the negative environmental impacts of the High Arcal estate best be reduced?”