GIS at The High Arcal School

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GIS at The High Arcal School

• Year 7 Improving the School Grounds

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Context

• By the end of a series of lessons pupils will
• know why school grounds need improving
• understand how school grounds can be improved
• be able to plan, to scale, an area of the school
  grounds showing and justifying changes

• A fieldwork -based project running for many years

• Part of a planned series of lessons,assessed at
  the end

• Involves a cross-curricular element such as
  literacy (writing for a purpose, numeracy)

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• aim in July was to replace use of paper maps so
  that pupils can use GIS to show show changes to
  part of the school grounds

• also to actively integrate other ICT aspects
  into the sequence of lessons use of PAINT to
  show before and after images use of EXCEL to
  work within a budget of 2,000 use of resources
  based on our departmental website

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The area to be improved
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Lesson 1 Class based Brainstorm why school
grounds need improving Watch Learning through
Landscapes video Revisit why school grounds need
improving Homework letter to Headmaster aiming
to convince him that money should be spent on
improvements
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Lesson 2 Visit school grounds (fieldwork) What
has been improved already, where and
why? Homework page for a magazine aimed at young
people showing how High Arcals grounds have
improved
Lesson 3 Planning for the future draft plan of
improvements Homework get price information for
benches, fencing, bins etc
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Lesson 4 Fieldwork Using draft plans visit area
to be improved and revise plans cost up in draft
form within 2,000 budget
Lesson 5 GIS In ICT room, work in pairs, using
detailed instructions to produce a digital map
(using drag and drop symbols) Compare before
and after images (spot the difference) Have a
go at manipulating the aerial digital image to
show their changes (no-one got this far!)
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How did it go?
Far better than expected usual hiccups with
missing mice otherwise a valuable experience.
Pupils navigated the system easily, most got on
to the before and after image comparison.
Tips Only named work to be printed No printing
off until told Stay in seats whilst work is
printing off
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Difficulties Scale and resizing symbols Not
leaving a gap between elements of the post code
(easily rectified)
Advantages of GIS over paper-based
maps Speed Neatness WOW factor Pupil motivation
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Next.
Year 9 Sustainable Development project How might
the negative environmental impacts of the High
Arcal estate best be reduced?