Around our school - the local area

Understand the variety of features that form part of their local area; understand the part people play in developing and changing the area.

How can we make our local area safer?

Carry out a small local survey and draw some specific conclusions from the evidence they find; discuss ways of tackling the parking issue in their locality.

Teaching Resources

Travel to School Survey
Carry out a survey on how children travel to school.

• Enter information into a data handling package.
• Create an animation journey using Textease
  ( Download Textease doc example)

A Road Traffic Survey
Lesson plan and resources from UK Department for Transport

The Journey to School
Lesson plan and resources from UK Department for Transport

Local Area Walk
Take the children for a walk around the local area.

On return use a simple painting program to

• create a picture of a building of their favourite place in the area around the school.
• draw street signs or other signs see during the walk.

A Safe Street
Lesson plan and resources from UK Department for Transport

Street Furniture
Lesson plan and resources from UK Department for Transport

Take photos with a digital cameral of local facilities and/or or danger spots around the school. ICT Link Unit 2D
Lay the digital photos out on the floor. Can the children programme a pixie or roamer to re-enact the journey, using appropriate positional language as they do so?

Rosie's Walk ICT Link Unit 2D
"Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins is an excellent way for teaching positional language to young children. Photocopy key pages, lay them on the floor and encourage children to programme pixie or roamer to follow Rosie's journey, using appropriate positional language as they do so.
Pixie activities for Reception

Answering questions about shops (WSGfL)	Photographs of different kinds of shops

Answering questions about houses (WSGfL)	Photographs of different kinds of houses

This resource pack introduces pupils to different types of homes. Pupils look at and explore a variety of homes such as a house, a flat, a caravan and a bungalow, and talk about what sort of home they live in. Pupils also look at house numbers and complete sorting and matching games involving numbers 1-9. www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/where_we_live/eng/Introduction/

Buildings - BBC Game	Road Safety	www.upmystreet.com

Map Work Use Multimap find the school using the postcode. Look at aerial photographs and identify roads and amenities with the help of the map overlay tool. Plan routes using the map www.multimap.com

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