Changes in Our Local Environment:

How is the UK changing?

In this unit, the children will find out about the regions of the UK, discovering how some of these areas have changed over time. The children will then research how specific areas of the UK have been affected by change, before conducting a fieldwork activity and looking at what has changed or what is planned to change in their own local area.

Fieldwork

In this unit, the children will take part in fieldwork in their local area, investigating the question: Is our local area changing? They will observe changes, take photographs, draw field sketches, interview local people and form their own opinions on the changes occurring around them.

We were walking to school today and Lola pointed to the solar panels on a roof. She said, 'Mum, when I have my own house, I'm going to have solar panels to help generate electricity and to be more kind to the world - Parent

I keep checking the brownfield to see if the building work has begun. I'm so excited to see it - Patsy

At present, Silk Street, in Newton Heath (our local area), remains an under-used brownfield. However, planning permission has been granted for the development of 69 low-carbon social homes on the site. These will consist of 36 one-bedroom apartments, 12 two-bedroom apartments, 17 two storey, three-bedroom houses and four three storey, four-bedroom houses.

The houses will have generous gardens and solar panels, while the apartments will feature living green roofs as part of the project’s low carbon commitment. This will also include the use of Ground Source Heat Pumps and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery to keep utility costs down for residents. Thus, delivering properties to meet low carbon standards and sustainable technologies, which will reduce costs for residents and help our city to meet the target of being a zero-carbon city by 2028.

There was even more exciting news! Celebrity architect George Clarke, a man on a mission to bring good-quality council housing back to Britain, was starting right here in Newton Heath, Manchester! He too had visited the brownfield and rumour has it - he's going to return for a three-part Channel 4 series, which will document progression! Will these be the houses of the future?

With this exciting news, we decided to plan and visit the local brownfield, where we took photos and sketched and labelled the site. We also imagined what it would look like once building had finished! We then designed our own questionnaires so that we could collect the views of local residents and make our own opinions about the way our local area is changing!

We had even more fun and stood in the same position as the celebrity architect, George Clarke!

We may have some future architects of our very own in the making!

How can I support learning at home?

You can reinforce and support pupils' learning through lots of ways:

• Use Digimap for Schools or Google Street View to zoom into an area known to the children and add/discuss facts, recollections and opinions, e.g. ‘Where Grandma lives’, ‘I ride my bike here’, 'there was a school here' or ‘New houses are being built there’. 
• Encourage children to create their own 3-D area maps of past, present or future.
• Use appropriate geographical vocabulary to help children to understand that change is continual
• Describe what their local area was like in the past and explain that their local area will continue to change
• Offer and exchange opinions on change