The Everyday Guide to Primary Geography: Art

This Guide uses works of art to stimulate, enliven and enrich geography teaching and learning at key stages 1 and 2. It presents a wide range of classroom strategies for using art to develop pupils’ geographical thinking, knowledge and understanding, and to extend their geographical skills. It also explores the rich possibilities for cross-curricular work through linking geography with art and other subjects.

The aims of this Guide are to:

• demonstrate the value of art as a stimulus for promoting geographical thinking and language
• exemplify strategies for developing geographical skills such as enquiry, map work, fieldwork and visual literacy through all kinds of artworks
• illustrate creative ideas for enhancing pupils’ knowledge and understanding of places, physical, human and environmental geography, and their locational knowledge through art
• provide valuable ideas and resources to use in and beyond the classroom.

CONTENTS

• Geography through art
• The Block by Romare Bearden - investigate local houses and buildings
• Rush Hour by George Segal - investigate your local area and urban landscapes
• Winter Tunnel with Snow, March, 2006 by David Hockney - rural landscapes and seasonal change
• Adire cloth by the Yoruba women of Nigeria - the clothes we wear and where they come from
• Riverside Museum, Glasgow by Dame Zaha Hadid - iconic buildings – their design, function and location
• The Nenets of Northern Siberia by Sebastião Salgado - landscapes, weather and life in Polar regions
• 175 The Almost Circle by Friedensreich Hundertwasser - settlement patterns, land use and routes
• Red Slate Line by Richard Long - physical landscapes, rocks and land art
• Day and Night by Maurits Cornelis Escher - lines of latitude, time zones and seasonal change
• Cattle Market, Braintree, Essex, 1937 by Edward Bawden - food production and distribution
• Paintings of London and Venice by Canaletto and Monet - London and Venice, waterways in cities
• Surprised! (or Tiger in a Tropical Storm) by Henri Rousseau - tropical rainforests, biodiversity and deforestation
• Cotopaxi, Ecuador by the Quechuan people of Ecuador - volcanoes, mountains and life in a village in Ecuador, South America
• London Underground Map by Harry Beck - maps as art forms and ways to communicate spatial information
• Northumberlandia, the Lady of the North by Charles Jencks - the creation, destruction and management of landscapes, including National Parks
• Useful resources and websites