Key Stage 1 geography · Geographical skills and fieldwork

KS1 fieldwork: exploring the school grounds and nearby streets

Fieldwork means learning geography outdoors by looking carefully at real places. In Years 1 and 2 children use simple fieldwork and observation to study their school, its grounds and the human and physical features of the surrounding area. They use first-hand observation to build a sense of where things are and practise the vocabulary they have learned. It is the part of geography most likely to feel like play, but it teaches real skills.

Fieldwork in the school grounds, explained

Fieldwork is geography done outside the classroom. At Key Stage 1 it needs no special equipment. Children look, listen, count, draw, photograph and talk, and the place they study is the one they know best: their own school and the streets around it. This is a deliberate choice. A familiar place is safe and manageable, and children already have ideas about it, so they can compare what they thought with what they actually find when they look closely.

In the school grounds children find both kinds of feature. Human features include the school building, fences, gates, benches, bins, paths and the playground surface. Physical features include trees, grass, soil, bushes and perhaps a slope or a patch of wild ground. On a short walk to the surrounding area they may spot houses, shops, roads, a park or a church, and perhaps a hill, a river or a stretch of woodland. They use the vocabulary from their earlier work, sort what they see into human and physical, and use words such as near, far, in front of and behind to say where things are.

Recording is simple. Children make tally charts to count things, such as how many trees, benches or bins there are. They draw labelled sketches, take photographs and draw sketch maps with a few symbols and a key. They may add compass directions, for example “The pond is north of the climbing frame.” They ask basic geographical questions, such as “What is the most common thing in our playground?” or “Which places are noisy and which are quiet?” and then check their answers against what they actually saw.

Schools plan and supervise fieldwork carefully. Any walk beyond the school gate is led by staff, and parent helpers are sometimes asked to come along. Fieldwork matters because it builds a child’s locational awareness: knowing where the school is, how it relates to home and the local shops, and what the area is like. In Key Stage 2 it grows into measuring, recording and presenting data. The habits formed now, careful looking and honest recording, are exactly what that work depends on.

Words your child will hear

Fieldwork: Learning geography by studying real places outdoors.
Observe: Look carefully and notice what is really there.
Tally chart: A way of counting by making a mark for each thing and grouping them in fives.
Sketch map: A quick, simple map drawn by hand, without measuring.
Human feature: Something built or made by people, such as a bench or a fence.
Physical feature: Something made by nature, such as a tree, grass or soil.
Surroundings: The area around a place, such as the streets around the school.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 1 says:

Pupils should be taught to use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment
Pupils should understand basic subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, to enhance their locational awareness.

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: a tally of trees and benches

A class wants to answer the question: “Are there more trees or more benches in our playground?” How could they find out and record the answer?

Start with the question and a prediction. Ask your child, “What do you think?” Writing the guess down first makes the result more interesting.
Prepare a simple recording sheet with two rows: trees and benches. Take a clipboard or paper and a pencil outside.
Walk around the playground together and make one mark each time you see a tree or a bench. Touch or point to each one as you count so that nothing is counted twice. Group the marks in fives, with four upright lines and a fifth to cross them.
```
Trees:    IIII/ IIII/ II
Benches:  IIII/ II
(IIII/ = a group of five)
```
Count up each row, counting in fives and then ones. Trees: 5 + 5 + 2 = 12. Benches: 5 + 2 = 7.
```
Trees     12
Benches    7
12 − 7 = 5
```
Answer the question, compare it with the prediction and ask a follow-up, such as “Why do you think there are more trees?” Trees are a physical feature, while benches are human ones, so the result also says something about the place.

There are more trees than benches: 12 trees and 7 benches, so 5 more trees.

Common mistakes and how to help

Thinking fieldwork has to mean a long trip to somewhere special

The word sounds grand, and children associate geography with distant countries, volcanoes and deserts.

What helps: Explain that any place can be studied, including the playground, a road or the garden. The important thing is to look closely and write down what is really there.

Counting things twice, or missing some out

Young children get excited and move quickly, and a moving group makes it easy to lose track.

What helps: Count slowly, touch each item once and make a tally mark straight away. Ask a partner to count the same thing and compare. If the totals differ, count again together.

Mixing up opinions with observations

Children naturally say what they like or dislike, such as “the playground is boring”.

What helps: Use two sentence starters: “I can see…” for observations and “I think…” for opinions. Both are welcome, but geography begins with what can be seen, counted or measured.

Assuming there is nothing new to find in a place they know well

Familiar surroundings fade into the background, and children stop noticing details they pass every day.

What helps: Give a task that changes how you look. Try finding five round things, three things made of wood or something you have never noticed. A fresh question makes an old place new.

How to help at home

Garden or park tally. Choose three things to count in the garden or on a short walk with an adult, such as trees, bins and benches. Record with tally marks, decide which is the most common and talk about why.
Listening map. Sit still in the garden, a park or beside a window for two minutes. Draw a simple map and mark where each sound is coming from, using compass directions or words like near and far.
Human or physical hunt. On a pavement walk with an adult, find three human features and three physical features. Stay off roads, and do the sorting when you stop. Ask your child to explain how they know which is which.
Sketch the view. Draw a sketch of the view from a window or a bench and label what you can see. Return a few weeks later and look for changes that the seasons or people have made.
Compare two places. With an adult, visit two different places, such as a quiet street and a park. Ask your child what is the same and different, and which has more trees, more buildings and more noise.

Leads on to

Key Stage 2: Atlases, globes and digital maps
Key Stage 2: Compass points and grid references
Key Stage 2: Ordnance Survey map symbols
Key Stage 2: Fieldwork: observe and measure
Key Stage 2: Fieldwork: presenting findings