Activities to help supplement your studies and learning.

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Human and physical features

Subject area: Geography

Suitable age range: 5–7 years, Key Stage 1

Resources needed: A set of about 20 cards – each card shows a pictorial or photographic representation of a different physical or human feature, e.g. mountain, ocean, river, lake, volcano, beach, wood, bridge, footpath, campsite, school, sports field, church, hospital, motorway, railway, port, factory, farm.

(This activity works well as a focus group activity, but can be conducted as a whole class lesson. Multiple sets of the cards will be required if using as a class activity – one set per group).

Expected timings: 30–40 minutes

Expected outcomes of the activity: Pupils: a) use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to key physical and human features; b) recognise differences and similarities between features; and c) recognise basic human and physical features on aerial photographs.

Details of the activity:

Introduction: (5 minutes) Show children the different picture cards to make sure they are aware of what each card shows. Some pictures may require a bit of questioning and discussion, although keep this very brief.

Explaining the task: (10–15 minutes) Explain to the children that they will be working in a small group (about 4–6 children) and their task is to put the cards into groups of things that are alike. Allow the children to explore their own ideas and encourage them to explain their reasoning about why certain things belong in the same group. They can try various ways of classifying the cards.

Human and physical features: (10 minutes) In the next section of the lesson introduce the idea of human and physical features, without mentioning these concepts by name. Select a few cards and put into two groups, e.g. the pictures of the ocean, mountain and volcano in one group and the pictures of the school, railway and factory in the other group. Allow the children time to discuss what might be the same about each group and to try to classify the rest of the cards into these two groups. There are several cards that might cause debate, e.g. a wood or a sports field. Encourage the children to come up with their own solutions for these trickier features to classify. Through the discussion, the children might offer their own definitions for the two groups and come towards an understanding that some features are the result of human action, especially in terms of where and how we live, whereas other features are the result of natural forces shaping the earth. At this young age, children cannot be expected to understand these concepts; in this lesson the discussion is more important than getting ‘right’ answers.

Follow-up: As a conclusion to this lesson, or as a follow-up lesson, the children work in pairs to see if they can recognise some of these human and physical features on aerial photographs.