www.mhsgeog.co.ukwww.mhsgeog.co.uk| YEAR 7: TOPICS STUDIED |
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| What is Geography? |
| Occupations |
| Maps |
| The Home Region |
| Transport |
| Places |
| Europe |
| Local fieldwork |
There are three main geographical themes: Physical, Human and Environmental Geography...
Physical Geography:
Human Geography
Environmental Geography
Year 7: What is Geography?
This is the study of the natural features of the earth - or what would have still been here if people had never existed. Physical Geography includes continents (e.g. Antarctica) and oceans (e.g. The Pacific), mountains (e.g. Mount Everest), rivers (e.g. The Amazon) and deserts (e.g. The Sahara). It also includes topics such as the weather (e.g. Stockport's weather) and natural phenomena (e.g. tornados), as well as natural hazards (e.g. earthquakes and volcanoes).
Click here for an interactive World Physical Map.
This is the study of where and how people live - including the study of settlements (e.g. Manchester) and population, as well as industry, energy, agriculture, leisure and tourism, etc. (all of which are studied during years 7 to 9).
Click here for an interactive World Political Map.
This is the study of how the physical and human worlds interact. It includes looking at how people exploit and change/pollute their environment, as well as looking at specific environmental issues (e.g. acid rain and global warming).
Occupations (or jobs) can be classified into 'Primary', 'Secondary' or 'Tertiary' (click here for more information).
As part of this topic, we conduct surveys of parents' and/or relatives' jobs and represent the information using appropriate graphical technigues (e.g. bar graphs,
pictographs or pie charts).
Year 7: Occupations
Click here to view the standard Ordnance Survey 1:50000 map symbols (including, for example, roads, abbreviations, tourist information or general features), while this site shows you an interactive example of exactly how a 1:50000 map looks.
Try here for more information on grid references, and here for a guide to Compass directions and bearings.
This American site provides info on scale. Just for interest, this site calculates the distance between any two places in the world - and plots routes on a map.
We also look at the various methods of showing height (or relief) on maps - layer shading, spot heights, triangulation points and contours. Click here to view the standard Ordnance Survey 1:50000 map symbols for relief features, while this general guide to maps & globes includes a section on relief.
After studying contours in more detail, we then look at various landforms (e.g. valley, spur, escarpment, col, knoll, cliff, plateau, etc.) and learn how to recognise them from their contour patterns. Try this site for an explanation of contours (including how to draw a cross section) and here for further information on landforms and their contour patterns.
We go on to look at intervisibility and how to draw cross-sections from O.S. maps. This fantastic intervisibility page shows all the monuments (stones) in the Stonehenge area, and by following the instructions (e.g. add contours from the control panel) you get an excellent idea of what intervisibility is all about - well worth a look!
For the more active amongst you, the Ramblers' Association have a site explaining all about the use of various types of maps. If you visit there, you might also need to visit this next site which explains how to use a compass.
Finally, www.softseek.com has a shareware programme which can be downloaded to help practice basic map skills.
Year 7: Maps
Unfortunately there are very few sites on the web to help practice map skills (so you'll just have to pay attention in class!) - but if you want to find out more about maps, map making ('cartography') and so on, there are several sites worth a visit: An obvious place to start is the official Ordnance Survey website - including the Mapzone, which contains games, competitions and so on. Alternatively, click here for a general guide to maps & globes.
This site gives more information about the North West region.
Other things associated with the North West include: Granada TV (e.g. Coronation Street), The Lake District, The Peak District, football (e.g. Man. City, Liverpool, Everton, Stockport County, Hyde United... oh and Man. Utd.) and other sports (e.g. Lancashire CCC, Manchester Giants, Manchester Storm, Mellor Lacrosse Club,
Wigan Warriors,
Oldham RUFC,
and Strines Tennis Club!), North West Water, Norweb, and major towns and cities (e.g. Manchester, Liverpool, Stockport and Marple).
If you can think of anything else, please send us an email.
These sites provide general information about Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Cumbria, North Wales, Merseyside and Greater Manchester.
Year 7: The Home Region
Within this topic we look at various transport types, problems and issues - at both a local and national scale:
Road transport
Rail transport
Canals
Air transport
We also look at cross-Pennine routes - e.g. the M62 motorway and the Leeds-Liverpool canal.
Other areas studied include networks (links and nodes), accessibility and topological maps (e.g. the London Undergound), the channel tunnel, transport problems (e.g. congestion and pollution) and solutions (e.g. by-passes), and public tansport (e.g. Metrolink in Manchester).
Year 7: Transport
The Highways Agency is a good site for all sorts of information, including a history of roads in Britain.
Click here for an interactive route map for British railways.
The British Waterways Homepage is a good starting point - including another interactive map. Other local sites include the Peak Forest and Macclesfield canals.
For general information on British airports, go to the British Airports Authority site, or click here for Manchester Airport specifically.
The features and places students should know and name are shown on the following maps:
One of the best interactive atlases we've come across on the Web is at multimap.com - try typing in 'Stockport'. Another good interactive site, especially to help with understanding latitude and longitude, can be found here. This American site provides more information on latitude & longitude and map projections.
A freeware programme can be downloaded from www.familygames.com which helps you learn the names and locations of the countries of Europe. Other geographical games and quizes can be downloaded from www.softseek.com - including Geopuz, a jigsaw puzzle programme based on maps of the world.
Year 7: Places
Geography National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 map:
The United Kingdom
Geography National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 map:
Europe
Geography National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 map:
The World
A very good starting point is this European Union page which provides a simple map of the fifteen member states of the E.U. with their national flags. Clicking on the flag of any country will provide a map of the country, a set of factsheets, graphs and some good colour photographs of landscape regions and major cities (although, to be honest, some countries are dealt with better than others).
Other sites useful for students' projects...
France:
Germany:
Spain:
Year 7: Europe
Click here for a map of France
The Yahoo search engine, like all search engines, provides an excellent starting point with it's links to France - including information on all French cities (e.g. capital city Paris), French society and culture, food and drink, and so on.
Another good source of general information is the French Government's Official Tourist Office site.
Click here for a map of Germany
The Yahoo search engine again provides an excellent starting point for finding out about all aspects of Germany - including information on all German cities (e.g. capital city Berlin), recreation and sports, history, etc.
Another good source of general information on Germany can be found here.
Click here for a map of Spain
Once again, the Yahoo search engine is our starting point for Spain - including information on all Spanish cities (e.g. capital city Madrid) and islands, arts, religion and festivals, etc.
Also worth a look, the All About Spain tourist information site.
Students undertake a full day field trip to Etherow Country Park and Compstall village. The data and information collected is then used in follow-up lessons in school over the next two weeks.
Year 7: Local fieldwork
