GIS at The High Arcal School

Year 7 Improving the School Grounds

Context

•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)

• 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

• 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

The area to be improved

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 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!)

Lesson 4 Fieldwork

Using draft plans visit area to be improved and revise plans; cost up in draft form within £2,000 budget

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?”