Ideas and Resources

The team at ESRI (UK) have identified a list of activities split into different age groups.  These are just ideas and you are welcome to go off and do your own thing!

Primary

Ages 4 – 8

• Great ideas for activities for younger children can be found on the GISDay.com website. Examples include:

1. Run a treasure hunt in the school grounds (weather dependent). Get the children to think about the location of things in relation to others. We can provide you with freebies to hide.
2. Colouring In - Get GIS Day colouring pages from here:
   Colouring in page 1 & Colouring in page 2
3. Map Hats exercise - download the lesson plan and images here
4. World Map Jigsaw - plot out, laminate and cut up the map here
5. A holiday to the Polar Regions - please visit the National geographic website

Ages 8 -10     

• Virtual World from Harper Collins - The Virtual World CD-ROM provides a range of fully interactive atlas and mapping activities to support the teaching of Geography at Key Stage 2. If you would like to request one of our special copies of this product, please contact rwolfe@esriuk.com These will be allocated on a first first serve basis and have a 3 month licence.
• Interpretation of the World - get your class to think about the world around them and draw their own maps of the world. More information is available here

Secondary

Ages 11 – 14

• Epidemic Exercise using ArcReader - Download ArcReader, free software, and get your students to complete the Epidemic activity which is based around the London cholera outbreak in September 1854 and the work of John Snow in deducing that the disease spread through contaminated drinking water - Click here to dowload (Due to large file sizes please select the save option)
• Route to School Exercise - More information is available here
• To play some interactive games on your computer / whiteboard please try this: http://www.mapmsg.com/games/statetris/
  Good luck!

Ages 14 – 18

• Careers Advice (linking into RGS Ambassadors programme) - This powerpoint presentation will discuss what careers children can go into with a geography background. Click here to view presentation
• To view information from the Ambassadors Programme where young graduates have been interviewed to ask them about their career using geography, the skills they have acquired and how their job relates to their geographical background, please click here
• Graduates from the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow have written blogs decribing their careers. To view click here
• GIS Exercise - There are various teaching resources available which you can download to use in a GIS - please go to www.esriuk.com/teachingresources

There are also a host of ideas and activities listed on the GISDay.com website