Geography for 3rd Class

Follow four resources named by the outcome (water, land, food and transport) to where each comes from and where it goes. Two field lessons and two datasets the class gathers itself show how these resources are used and managed in the locality.

Map and classify the economic activities of the locality now, then ask the same question of three generations ago and characterise the change. The module closes by proposing one kind of work that could plausibly happen here, argued from the maps on the wall.

Step the scale up from the locality to the island. Investigate how people responded to the opportunities and challenges of Ireland's natural environment, and identify the major infrastructural networks as national answers to national problems, always returned to what reaches the class's own place.

Investigate the importance of the sun and moon for life on Earth through measurements the class makes itself: shadows, day and night, seasons, weather, the growing year, and the moon's cycle with tides and sleep. Built on the class's own data rather than on diagrams alone.

Reach the widest scale last by putting the known inside the new. Compare Ireland's physical features with Europe's and the world's, understand borders as lines people agreed, practise locating and naming, describe places in Ireland that traditions attach to, and meet children's daily lives elsewhere through geography.