Our School Grounds | Year 1 Geography Fieldwork | Plan View Maps Compass

A no-prep, 5-lesson geography unit on Geographical skills and fieldwork: Our School Grounds. Written for Year 1 (ages 5-6). Pick it up at lunchtime, teach it that afternoon — every lesson has a full teacher plan, projectable slides, two differentiated pupil worksheets, and an exit ticket.

Driving question: What can we see in our school grounds, and how can we draw a map of it?

What’s included

• 5 × Teacher lesson plans (Word, fully scripted)
• 5 × Pupil worksheets in 2 differentiated tiers (Support / Core)
• 5 × Projectable slide decks (PowerPoint, 16:9 widescreen)
• 1 × Knowledge Organiser (Word, A4 landscape)
• 1 × End-of-unit assessment with baseline + mark scheme
• Factually-accurate maps rendered from public-domain Natural Earth data — not AI-generated
• Hand-coded diagrams for the unit’s key processes and labelled features — never AI-generated
• Original illustrations for every lesson hook and teaching scene

Lesson outline

1. Looking Around — What Can We See? — To observe and record what we can see in our school grounds.
2. Bird’s-Eye View — Looking Down on a Place — To understand what a plan view is and how it differs from a side-on view.
3. Drawing a Map of Our Playground — To draw a simple plan of part of the playground with symbols.
4. Which Way? — North, South, East and West — To use the four compass directions to describe where things are.
5. Aerial Photo vs Map — Same Place, Different Pictures — To compare an aerial photograph with a simple map of the same place.