Scheme of work Human geography: Changing places This scheme of work for AS Geography specification (7036) suggests possible activities and resources that you find useful in your teaching. 3.2 Human geography 3.2.1 Changing places Week 1 Specification content Subject specific skills development Learning outcomes Suggested learning activities (including ref to differentiation and extension activities) Resources Introduction to The concept of place and the importance of place in human life and experience. Insider and outsider perspectives on place; categories of place: near and far, experienced and media places. Use of key subject specific and technical terminology. Core and ICT skills. An overview of the concept of place. Learn that place is more than just a location but also incorporates the notions of locale and sense of place. Understand the terms ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ in relation to place and the different categories of place. Understand the difference between sense of place and Small group discussions followed by feedback – what is place and what does it mean to different people? What is the difference between space and place? Why does place matter? Use photographs of a range of places (local/global scale) to illustrate how different places mean different things to different people, for example Old Trafford (Man Utd v Man City fan); Kos (seen through eyes of tourist or refugee); Jerusalem (seen through eyes of people from different religions). How do people develop a sense of place? This can be linked to the notions of experienced place and near place. Get students to think of a place special to them and write down a number of words to describe their feelings about that place. They might want to The first three resources detailed here would be useful to read before starting to teach this module: Introduction on defining pp1–21, in Cresswell T, Place: an introduction, second edition, Blackwell, 2015. on the RGS website. It provides a useful introduction to the different aspects of place. ‘Teaching places’, Freeman D and Morgan A, Teaching Geography, 39:3, 2014. Cultural Geographer Jon Anderson has written a good book on entitled Understanding Cultural
Extension/cross-disciplinary: Think of places associated with Shakespeare’s plays. How did Shakespeare know of these places (he was rumoured to have travelled little)? Why were they set here? How has his work affected these places today (for example, Verona: Romeo and Juliet)? Weeks 5-6 Specification content Subject specific skills development Learning outcomes Suggested learning activities (including ref to differentiation and extension activities) Resources The impact of relationships and connections on people and place with a focus on: changing demographic and cultural characteristics and economic change and social inequalities. How the demographic, socio-economic and cultural characteristics of places are shaped by shifting flows of people, resources, money and investment. Collect, analyse and interpret information from a range of secondary sources – including factual, numerical and spatial data. Online research. Evaluating and presenting findings from research. Core and ICT skills. Appreciate that places are dynamic and they are always changing. Discuss the impacts of globalisation on Discuss how places are shaped by factors such as migration, employment opportunities and investment. Recognise that different places have responded to these How and why does migration affect different places? Identify places have experienced mass immigration and research the impacts of this. Students could produce a mind map here. This is also a good opportunity to use the census to produce geospatial data. You could use the example of East London here. It has experienced significant change in recent years as a result of migration and regeneration. There is also a wealth of quantitative and qualitative information to be found about the area. Use and national newspaper sources to research the different attitudes towards gentrification and regeneration in East London. There were some interesting editorials after the anti-gentrification protests in 2015. See also RGS online lecture on gentrification. For census data and social and economic characteristics of places in the UK, go to For interactive visualisation of 2011 census data, go to the . You can also use the website to explore different areas. An internet search on East London Olympics regeneration will yield many interesting resources. The RGS website also has some useful links. Time Out article Follow who writes about life in and around Spitalfields and Brick Lane in East London. Articles such as (of London) can be found in The Guardian. The RGS has produced
Local place study (ongoing). Start to research distant place study. changes in different ways. Week 7 Specification content Subject specific skills development Learning outcomes Suggested learning activities (including ref to differentiation and extension activities) Resources The characteristics and impacts of external forces operating at different scales including either government policies or the decisions of or the impacts of international or global institutions. How past and present connections within and beyond localities shape places and how past and present development influences the social and economic characteristics. Distant place study (ongoing). Collect, analyse and interpret information from a range of secondary sources – including factual, numerical and spatial data. Online research. Evaluating and presenting findings from research. Core and ICT skills. Describe and explain the impacts of either government policies or the decisions of or the impacts of international or global institutions on place. Detail how past and present development influences social and economic characteristics of a place. Students to research examples of external forces on place: government policies such as regeneration schemes; decisions of MNCS (Tata Steel) or international or global institutions (UN, IMF, World Bank) and present findings to rest of the class. Opportunity for individual or group presentations. Detroit is a good example of somewhere affected (both positively and negatively) by the decisions of major car manufacturers (‘Motown’ nickname for Detroit). Ford have just started to redevelop large areas of Detroit – students could research this. Get students to conduct a survey or search newspaper websites to compare the views of local people with the local government and corporate bodies involved in marketing and regenerating places? The London Olympics regeneration wasn’t welcomed by everybody for example. Resources about the impacts of the London Olympics on East London are useful and plentiful. Find and discuss examples of places influenced by past development. These might include former industrial cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow or mining towns. You could make links to rebranding/reimaging here as well as to the contemporary urban environments topic looking at urban regeneration and the use of industrial or heritage Follow the developments after Tata Steel announced plans to sell off their British steel interests. Look at Three minute clip about is an excellent resource for researching topical issues. Case study of Detroit: article aboutand the in Detroit.
quarters (Sheffield industrial quarter). Consider how industrial cities attracted migrants and the subsequent impacts of mass migration to British cities. 8-9 Specification content Subject specific skills development Learning outcomes Suggested learning activities (including ref to differentiation and extension activities) Resources How external agencies, including government, corporate bodies and community or local groups make attempts to influence or create specific place meanings and shape the actions of people. Distant study (ongoing). Use of key subject specific and technical terminology. Collect, analyse and interpret information from a range of secondary sources – including factual, numerical and spatial data. Core and ICT skills. Understand the terms rebranding and reimaging and provide examples of where and why these strategies have been adopted. Awareness of crowd sourcing and big data. Discuss the meaning of the term branding and how and why it is done. Take The Guardian city logo quiz. Students could investigate a place they know or one of the following to look at the causes and consequences of rebranding (GeoFile 619 Reimaging settlements suggests some fieldwork tasks): Liverpool, Manchester, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Melbourne and Hong Kong. Crowd sourcing and social media was used in the 2013 rebranding of Glasgow – the ‘People make Glasgow…’ campaign. This campaign is also worth looking at in terms of peoples’ lived experience of place. The Lake District National Park authority has wanted to brand the Lake District NP as the ‘adventure capital’ of the UK to attract younger visitors. What has it done and how successful has it been with this strategy? Watch BBC documentary ‘Tales from the National Parks: Lake District’. Rebranding of other rural areas has been carried out – this is another area to research. See See Glasgow rebranding resources at and ‘Case of regeneration: the Jewellery quarter, Birmingham’ in GeoFile, 642, April 2011 A case study of rebranding – El Raval, Barcelona, GeoFile 635, Jan 2011 Reimaging settlements, GeoFile 619, April 2010 The has some useful resources and web links about rebranding Regenerating Liverpool: Information at Article in How being Investigating rural rebranding, GeoFile, 676, Sept 2012 Rural rebranding: a case study from Shropshire in Geography Review, 27:1, Sept 2013.