A Slice of Services

A post on the SLN forum by Alan and an article in Teaching Geography about learning outside the classroom reminded me of a lesson idea. This Year 11 lesson involved popping out to the local shopping precinct and talking about urban structures. This was followed up by a homework. The task was for the pupils to take photographs of the services within a 5 minute walk from their home. Sounds risky? I got the students to carry out their own risk assessments for this - an activity that they scarily enjoyed!

I did the same activity and the results would be used to compare our access to services. At the time I was living in inner city Portsmouth while the school is located in a suburban area. The results were shown and the following discussion revolved around whether the students or myself had a better quality of life. I argued that I had access to fashionable shops, a great hairdresser and of course entertainment establishments...

A movie of the 'Slice of Services' can be found here. Please note the typeo on one of the title slides though! This year I am going to develop the idea and get pupils to produce their own mini-movie of their local area.

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David Rogers

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