Live through this

Categories: Urban, S1 and s2, Rivers

I had a class today who are quite behind my other class for the settlement topic. Instead of giving them the same homework as my other S4, I decided to give them a different type of home activity which will hopefully have some impact in raising their awareness of themes in the topic. The task is simple; a five minute walk. the walk can be anywhere at all. We talked about some potential locations, with obvious ones such as the house, through the town, in the city. It was left entirely up to the student to decide. The students have been asked to track the changes they observe in a number of areas:

1) Housing-does it change, is it old/new, high density, type?

2) People-are there lots/little, do they notice you, does the volume change trhoughout your walk?

3) Land use-is it industrial, residential, farmland, park etc?

4) The type of services- are they high, middle or low order?

5) Transport- is it congested/quiet, how is the traffic managed?

I said I did not mind how they did this, as long as they could provide evidence of the above. They could record the walk on their phone, walking and talking, photograph it, video it, write it, record it on a continuous roll of paper, anything at all. I know this is a little bit mission:explore and urban earth territory, but I'm hopeful that students will perhaps relate better to the topic they are studying and, as a desirable side consequence, relate better to the environments they live through. The big catch is that I've said I'd do it too...

For other classes tomorrow, probably a bit of Top Gear in S2 if we have time and a double option for S3, either comic life cartoons of a river's lower course or an old fashioned poster :())