Following the successful submission of a Frederick Soddy Schools Award application (https://www.rgs.org/in-the-field/grants/teacher-grants/frederick-soddy-schools-award), North Nibley C of E Primary School were fortunate to receive sufficient funding to facilitate a fieldwork week for all 110 pupils from EYFS to Year 6. The Headteacher, Mr Steve Hodgkinson, and myself met together via Zoom and corresponded by e-mail several times prior to the week to discuss and develop the initial proposal. Both he and I also spent some time in and around the village doing a recky ahead of the scheduled activities.
We took inspiration from the ‘Twelve wonders of Gresford‘ article published in the Geographical Association (GA) Summer 2022 Primary Geography journal (https://portal.geography.org.uk/journal/view/J004304) and a similar resource available under the National Festival of Fieldwork section of their website (https://geography.org.uk/resources/fieldwork-the-12-wonders-of-your-area/). There are some fantastic spiralised fieldwork resources that have recently been added to the Geographical Association (GA) website, which we were keen to incorporate if we could too (https://geography.org.uk/resources/spiralised-fieldwork-resources-collection/). I did mention our intentions to Dr Rebecca Kitchen, Head of Professional Development at the Geographical Association (GA), and offered a case study if all went according to plan! It was decided to concentrate on developing children’s questioning techniques in conjunction with the identification of their ‘twelve wonders of North Nibley‘.
Following my involvement in the planning and preparation, the remainder of my input was very much centred on the Monday and Friday afternoon of the school’s fieldwork week. The week began with a whole school launch in the school hall. During this time, I asked the children what the word ‘wonder’ meant, what makes something a ‘wonder’ and if a ‘wonder’ changes as we become older and develop a deeper understanding of place. I shared a recent article that had appeared in The Week Junior magazine entitled ‘Moments of awe boost health‘ too. Next, I displayed both my and the Headteacher’s ‘twelve wonders of North Nibley’. I invited the children to identify the features photographed and we contemplated whether our ‘twelve wonders of North Nibley’ were similar or different. (The Headteacher studied geography at A level and has excellent observational skills as a result!). In addition, I quizzed pupils about the difference between human and physical features.
I explained that all children were to become geographers today and would shortly be investigating their school grounds and local area to identify their ‘wonders’. However, before we took learning beyond the classroom, I reinforced that is was important to conduct a risk assessment. Together, we brainstormed the hazards that we might encounter and considered how we might overcome or avoid these.
Then, the children and teachers separated into their classes. As a group, they were asked to identify their ‘twelve wonders of North Nibley’ and locate them on a local OS map and aerial photograph. Each class had to agree on two human and two physical ‘wonders’ that they wished to later visit and discover more about.
Next, it was time to go outside with each class in turn.
EYFS’ activities were scheduled to take place over the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They went on a walk through the village, crossing items off their sheets as they saw them. The children paused at a number of key physical and human features enroute and expressed their feelings about each one using a thumbs up or thumbs down symbol. On their return, pupils drew and wrote about the ‘wonders’ that they had seen.
Before venturing out, those in Year 1 and 2 were asked what they expected to find at their ‘wonders’. Whilst outside, they attempted to cross off items that they observed on their Bingo cards, completed a sit and sense exercise at two of their ‘wonders’, along with a sticky note activity to help them justify their choices and a 5Ws + how task to support effective questioning. Their follow-up work involved annotating photographs of their ‘wonders’, in addition to conducting research to find answers to their ‘best’ questions. They also attempted to draw chalk maps of the school grounds and local area in the playground.
Year 3 and 4 trialled question wheels in the school grounds and carried out pilot questionnaires with both older and younger pupils and members of staff before doing similar activities in the local area and among the general public. Small groups had a journey string to add to on their travels to an allocated wonder. These were used as stimuli and a scaffold for a written/oral description of their journey once back in the classroom. Pupils also conducted research to find the answer to some of their questions for each ‘wonder’ and presented, analysed, interpreted and drew conclusions linked to their two questionnaire surveys.
Year 5 and 6 pupils were given a questioning grid to help them formulate questions that could be asked at each ‘wonder’. They later evaluated these. I explained that we would be exploring the local area and conducting an enquiry to try and answer the following questions:
- What might attract people to visit our wonders?
- Who is using North Nibley?
- Who is not using North Nibley?
We thought about what questions we could ask the public to help us answer our enquiry questions, evaluated how valid/useful and appropriate each of their questions was and how we might best gather the data required. Once in the field, pupils carried out a perception check and recorded demographic data. Back at school, they collated their data and made use of MS Excel to generate simple graphs and a tool (https://worditout.com/word-cloud/4249960) to create a word cloud or word salad. Like other year groups, the children conducted research to uncover answers to some of their questions in the questioning grid relating to their ‘wonders’.
We reconvened in the school hall for 15 minutes on the Monday afternoon to enable each class to share what they had achieved during the day, both in and beyond the classroom. I subsequently initiated a SWOT analysis, before asking the children what they now knew, understood and were able to do following the day’s activities.
I returned to the school on the Friday afternoon for a whole school assembly. The Headteacher invited representatives from each class to talk about their learning and experiences throughout the whole week and to showcase some of the work that would later go on display in the local community centre for parents/carers and members of the wider community to appreciate. Some classes had gone above and beyond and utilised our day of fieldwork as a stimulus for further cross-curricular learning, which was wonderful to see. We had tried not to be too prescriptive and allow a degree of freedom to see where a few hours immersed in nature might take them. Teachers were instructed to identify the ‘geographer/s of the week‘ within each class and individuals were presented with a certificate and badge to recognise their effort and attainment.
Some of pupils’ and teachers’ ‘concluding comments’ can be viewed below:
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Well done to all pupils and teachers at North Nibley C of E Primary School. What a week you have had! Look out for an article in a future issue of the Geographical Association (GA) Primary Geography journal; your hard work, enthusiasm and curiosity deserve to be celebrated widely.