Ideas for your classroom: your current environment
The strategy suggested below will help you to start thinking about ways of developing pupils' perceptions of their environment as it is now.
Young people's photographs taken in the local community can be used as a basis for studying the local area and for helping them to consider and plan more sustainable futures. Children get to think critically about the positive and negative aspects of their local environment or community through developing a photo album of their neighbourhood.
The activity on the right provides you with an opportunity to try this method with your pupils. The activity relates closely to various units of the geography programmes of study, such as 'Unit 1: Around our school - the local area'; 'Unit 6: Investigating our local area'; 'Unit 8: Improving the environment'; and 'Unit 21: How can we improve the area we can see from our window?'
Activity Resources:
- Images
- Interactive
- Sound
- Text
- Video
Activity
This activity involves pupils taking photos with disposable cameras (or digital cameras if available) of positive and negative images of their environment or community.
- Plan how and when to let pupils have a camera to use, for example at the weekend, on their journey home, or during school time.
- Involve your pupils in determining and plotting a route around the neighbourhood.
- Consider the following questions with your pupils.
- What makes a positive image?
- Why is it positive?
- What makes a negative image?
- Why is it negative?
- Who, if anyone, is responsible for creating the situation in the positive/negative image?
- What would need to happen in order for a negative image to become a positive one?
- What actions or events in the future might make a positive image become a negative one?
- Who should we contact or tell about the negative images?
- Who could or should be involved in transforming a negative situation into a positive one?
- Once the photos have been taken, let pupils compare their images.
- Is there any consensus on which images are positive and which are negative?
- What do pupils base their judgments on?
- Help your pupils organise their images into albums, and plan how these can be displayed beyond your classroom.
Ultimately this can lead on to pupils questioning, challenging or making recommendations to those in positions of influence or authority, for example the local council or other groups who might be able to address community problems. It can also lead to an understanding of personal responsibility towards the environment and other members of the local and global community.
