History and Geography in Action

Year 7 and 8 have been exploring what it takes to be an effective Historian and Geographer, looking in particular at the skills required to excel in each field. As well as investigating famous historians such as David Olusoga and environmental heroes like Wangari Maathai and Steve Backshall.

In History source analysis is a fundamental part of a historian's work: gathering, analysing, interpreting and forming inferences. Our Historians took to Cottage Hospital Road to hunt for primary sources of their own! One class approached ‘Carol’ a local restaurant owner getting a sack of her rubbish and the other went to the Hub bicycle shop approaching a mystery mechanic who gave them a paper bag of interesting items. On returning to the classroom, gloves were sought from the nurse and the rubbish bags were dissected to much excitement.

The children found a plethora of items from snippets of receipts that provided evidence of the owners location at set times and dates, empty coffee cups, used nappies, newspapers and empty perfume bottles. Each piece of evidence further helped the children to build a picture of who the source belonged to. After establishing the difference between what the source 100% told us and what inferences we could make, the children wrote their own descriptions about the people and their lifestyle based on their rubbish!

In Geography the children have been honing their map skills. Starting by questioning whether paper maps still have a role to play or if we should only learn about digital maps. After deciding they are still important (PHEW), we looked at a range of skills from how to read longitude and latitude - very helpful to visualise when lots of us cross the equator every day! The children took great pleasure in walking around the school grounds with their compasses, quickly realising they have to be held very flat to be read effectively.

A skill that was enjoyed by all was uncovering the meanings of the symbols found on the legends of Ordnance Survey Maps. They used a variety of means to complete their own legends and then enjoyed testing their knowledge with a very competitive game of OS Map symbol Bingo!