Module 1: Developing an understanding of place

Key Focus Question: How can you use the local environment to develop pupils’ understanding of maps and place?

Keywords: local environment; maps; group work; symbols; investigation; game

Introduction

Most pupils have some understanding of the area in which they live. They know the quickest way to their friends’ houses or the local market. When developing their understanding of place and, in particular, their mapping skills, it is always important to start with what pupils know before you move on to what they don’t know. This gives pupils confidence, because you are using what they already understand.

Building on what your pupils know about the physical features of their home and school environments, ensure you move on to more formal mapping of their local surroundings. This provides a meaningful context to explore the symbols used in mapping. The activities in this section will help you encourage your pupils’ skills in observation and help transfer their knowledge into formal symbolic representations.

You will also develop your skills in using group work in your classroom.

Key Focus Question: What different activities can you use to explore why people settle in particular places?

Keywords: resources; case study; group work; settlements; debate; questions

Introduction

Every day of our lives we use resources of all kinds and as the population of the world increases there is great pressure on many of these resources.

As a teacher exploring these ideas with your pupils, it is important to start by finding out what they already know about the resources in their own environment. It is then possible to plan how to extend their knowledge and engage them in thinking more deeply about the issues. The Case Studies in this section show how some teachers explained these ideas and will help you think about what you will do in the activities.

The shores of Lake Victoria

The Lake Victoria Crescent covers the areas directly influenced by the Lake environment. It receives an annual rainfall of 1,500 mm and it is characterised by fertile dark loam soils, favourable for agriculture. The area is gifted with a tropical climate and has tropical forests. The physical natural environment of this region has attracted settlement activities, such as industrialisation subsistence and commercial agriculture, and eco-tourism among others. It is no wonder that this area is highly populated and full of many economic activities, especially around Jinja, Masaka, Kampala, Mukono, Mayuge, Iganga and Mpigi district.

Adapted from: Straffordshire County Council, Website and Pbase, Website

Reasons for bush burning

A typical example of bush burning is when farmers burn their harvested fields to prepare their farms for the next planting season, or during dry seasons when farmers organise hunting parties for popular game often called ‘bush meat’. The bush is deliberately set alight to trap small animals during hunting. Other fires are caused by accidents during the dry season when most bushes and forests have dried up and are very combustible; cigarettes, matches, campfires etc. can spark up small fires that later grow bigger.

Bush burning management strategies

Bushfires can be managed by professional staff, such as rangers and park workers, with help from volunteers from rural areas. However, large fires are often of such a size that no conceivable firefighting service could attempt to stop the whole fire directly, and so other techniques are needed.

This might involve controlling the area that the fire can spread to by clearing control lines. Here the land is cleared of any vegetation either by controlled burning or digging a ditch. This takes time and does not happen often. This can interfere with the forest ecosystem.

Who is affected by bush burning?

Rural farming communities are rarely threatened directly by bush burning as the fires are usually located in the middle of large areas of cleared, usually grazed, land, where often there is very little grass left. People who live in urban areas that spread into forested areas are more open to threats of fire.

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/ (Accessed 2008)

Bush burning in Uganda

During every dry season, cattle keepers in Nakasongola district indiscriminately set fires on the vegetation so that it sprouts.

The fires destroy habitats for the animals that live underneath the inselbergs. Those that escape hide in burrows, but birds’ nests do not survive the fires.

‘Bush burning is the major environmental abuse in the district,’ says Joseph Kimeze, a 28-year-old herdsman from Wajjala, Nakasongola. He adds that the prolonged dry periods are always accompanied by indiscriminate bush burning.

‘We do not all burn the bushes for fun, but we want fresh grass for our animals,’ Kimeze says. ‘Once we burn the old vegetation, the pastures regenerate … [and] are good for grazing.’

Kimeze and others do not realise that by burning bush, they are exposing the already harsh terrain to more destruction.

Nakasongola has about 20 inselbergs scattered in Wajjala, Sasira and Kasozi parishes. They stand out at around 1,097 metres above sea level.

An inselberg is a German word meaning a rocky mountain. It is a unique rocky outcrop formed as a result of wind erosion. In Uganda, inselbergs are also found in Karamoja. They are usually endowed with peculiar ecological diversity.

The topography of Nakasongola district is generally flat and is characterised by minimal altitudinal differences, with poor drainage in the wide flat valleys and shores of Lake Kyoga. For the last two years, Nakasongola has been fighting fires, which have led to changes in species diversity.

Heat from the fire kills seeds scattered on the surface. There is a decrease in size of some perennial grasses. Fire changes the species of plants and animals that live in that ecosystem. There is soil compaction, soil erosion and reduced soil fertility, which are all signs of land degradation attributed to bush fires. The annual rainfall is less than 1,000 mm. The district experiences a high evaporation rate.

Jamesbond Kunobere, the Nakasongola district environment officer, says the cyclic nature of fires in the district is an evidence of increasing climatic instability and change in vegetation.

‘Because of the frequent fires, tall vegetation has given way to shrubs like Lantana camara and Acacia Senegalese. These species suppress the production of accessible and palatable forage.’ Kunobere says two of the most affected inselbergs were reafforested with pine in 2003. A lot of sensitisation has been carried out to discourage bush burning. ‘The district has plans to reafforest the remaining Wakibombo and Isungira inselbergs. The district needs more funding to afforest the remaining inselbergs to improve the catchment area.’

Kunobera says during the 2003 World Environment Day, the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) gave Nakasongola enough pine seedlings for two acres.

Other semi-arid areas of Uganda found in the cattle corridor of Kumi, Soroti, Katakwi, Moroto and Nakapiripirit districts also experience extensive bush burning and wind erosion during the dry season.

In response to the effects of drought, the district and development partners are promoting sustainable agricultural practices.

Water is being made available in the form of valley dams, in addition to promoting rainwater harvesting.

Different community and non-governmental based organisations are working hand-in-hand with the local government to promote tree-planting programmes.

Adapted from: The New Vision http://www.dip.go.ug/ english/ news (Accessed 2008)

Key Focus Question: How can you make the study of the weather more open-ended and activity based?

Keywords: problem solving; weather; group work; patterns; observations; brainstorming

Introduction

For many people, watching the weather is an important part of everyday life. For example, farmers need to be able to judge the best time to sow their crops and fishermen need to know when to set out to sea. The weather patterns are different across Sub-Saharan Africa and rainy seasons and sunny periods will vary. Encouraging your pupils to observe the changes and patterns – however small – will help them understand the link between the weather, people and their environment.

In this section, you will use group work to develop pupils’ cooperative and thinking skills. You will plan practical activities to encourage interaction between pupils.

Making a wind vane to measure the direction of the wind

You will need:

• a straight pin
• a piece of card
• a straw
• scissors
• pencil (with eraser)
• tape

Do this:

1. Cut the point and tail of an arrow out of a piece of card.
2. Tape them onto the ends of the straw.
3. Push the pin through the middle of the straw.
4. Stick the pin into the eraser of the pencil. Make sure the straw can turn freely.

Original source http://www.galaxy.net/ ~k12 (Accessed 2008)

Making an anemometer to measure the speed of the wind

An anemometer is a device that tells you how fast the wind is blowing. A real one will be able to measure this accurately. Your model can give you an idea of how fast the wind is blowing, but will not be as accurate as a manufactured anemometer.

You will need:

• scissors
• four small paper cups (e.g. drinking cups)
• a marking pen
• two strips of stiff, corrugated cardboard – the same length
• a drawing pin
• a stick
• some clay
• a watch that shows seconds

Do this:

1. Cut the rolled edges off the paper cups to make them lighter.
2. Colour the outside of one cup with the marking pen so you can see it each time it spins around.
3. Cross the cardboard strips so they make a plus (+) sign. Stick them together and mark the middle.
4. Stick or pin the cross to the top of your stick through the middle point.
5. Blow on the cups to make sure the cardboard spins around freely on the pin.
6. Place the modelling clay on a surface outside, such as a wooden fence, a wall or a rock. Stick the sharpened end of the pencil into the clay so it stands up straight.

To measure wind speed:

Using the watch, count the number of times the coloured cup spins around in one minute. You are measuring the wind speed in revolutions (turns) per minute. Weather forecasters’ anemometers convert this speed into miles per hour (or kilometres per hour).

Key Focus Question: How can you raise pupils’ awareness of the issues of resources and pollution in the environment?

Keywords: environment; group investigations; fieldwork; resources; global warming; pollution

Introduction

Developing an appreciation in your pupils of their local environment and the need to preserve and protect it is important if they are to understand their responsibility to care for their environment as a whole. This section aims to help you to structure lessons and activities that will link care of the local environment to worldwide problems of pollution and weather change. To support your pupils, you should read about environmental issues as this will provide ideas for lessons and keep you up to date on key ideas.

By investigating issues such as pollution in real-life situations and by conducting experiments, your pupils will enjoy learning, as they are actively involved in activities that have meaning for them.

Equipment:

• three saucers, labelled 1, 2, 3
• soil
• three maize seeds
• water
• paraffin

Method:

On a Monday, set up three numbered saucers, each with its own maize seed buried in some soil.

Put water on saucers 1 and 2, and paraffin on saucer 3.

Each day for a week, put water on 1, do not put anything more on 2, put paraffin on 3.

Predictions:

What do you believe will happen to the seeds over the next five days?

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Observations:

Conclusions:

Article 1

Global warming is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It is changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.

What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it – coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains – hangs in the balance.

Greenhouse effect

The ‘greenhouse effect’ is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but, like the glass walls of a greenhouse, keep heat from escaping.

First, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, greenhouse gases (GHGs) trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more GHGs are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped.

Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, and have calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate habitable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 °F cooler. Humans can enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a GHG.

Levels of GHGs have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other GHG emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth.

Scientists often use the term ‘climate change’ instead of global warming. This is because as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling. As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas.

Aren’t temperature changes natural?

The average global temperature and concentrations of carbon dioxide (one of the major GHGs) have fluctuated on a cycle of hundreds of thousands of years as the Earth's position relative to the sun has varied. As a result, ice ages have come and gone.

However, for thousands of years now, emissions of GHGs to the atmosphere have been balanced out by GHGs that are naturally absorbed. As a result, GHG concentrations and temperature have been fairly stable. This stability has allowed human civilisation to develop within a consistent climate.

Occasionally, other factors briefly influence global temperatures. Volcanic eruptions, for example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth’s surface. But these have no lasting effect beyond a few years.

Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades.

Why is this a concern?

The rapid rise in GHGs is a problem because it is changing the climate faster than some living things may be able to adapt. Also, a new and more unpredictable climate poses unique challenges to all life.

Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted back and forth between temperatures like those we see today and temperatures cold enough that large sheets of ice covered much of North America and Europe. The difference between average global temperatures today and during those ice ages is only about 5 °C (9 °F), and these swings happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.

Now, with concentrations of GHGs rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets (such as Greenland and Antarctica) are starting to melt too. The extra water could potentially raise sea levels significantly.

The climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to sea levels rising, weather can become more extreme. This means more intense major storms, more rain followed by longer and drier droughts (a challenge for growing crops), changes in the ranges in which plants and animals can live, and loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.

Scientists are already seeing some of these changes occurring more quickly than they had expected. 11 of the 12 hottest years since records became available occurred between 1995 and 2006.

Article 2

Article 2 looks at the impact of global warming in Africa.

The African continent is a rich mosaic of ecosystems, ranging from the snow and ice fields of Kilimanjaro to tropical rainforests to the Saharan desert.

Although it has the lowest per capita fossil energy use of any major world region, Africa may be the most vulnerable continent to climate change because widespread poverty limits countries’ capabilities to adapt.

Signs of a changing climate in Africa have already emerged: spreading disease and melting glaciers in the mountains, warming temperatures in drought-prone areas, and sea-level rise and coral bleaching along the coastlines.

The following show some related events:

• Cairo, Egypt – Warmest August on record, 1998. Temperatures reached 41 °C (105.8 °F) on August 6, 1998.
• Southern Africa – Warmest and driest decade on record, 1985–1995. Average temperature increased almost 0.56 °C (1 °F) over the past century.
• Senegal – Sea-level rise. Sea-level rise is causing the loss of coastal land at Rufisque, on the south coast of Senegal.
• Kenya – Mt Kenya’s largest glacier disappearing. 92% of the Lewis Glacier has melted in the past 100 years.
• World ocean – Warming water. The world ocean has experienced a net warming of 0.06 °C (0.11 °F) from the sea surface to a depth of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) over the past 35–45 years. More than half of the increase in heat content has occurred in the upper 1,000 feet (300 m), which has warmed by 0.31 °C (0.56 °F). Warming is occurring in all ocean basins and at much deeper depths than previously thought.
• Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda – Disappearing glaciers. Since the 1990s, glacier area has decreased by about 75%. The continent of Africa warmed by 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) during the past century, and the five warmest years in Africa have all occurred since 1988.
• Kenya – Deadly malaria outbreak, summer 1997. Hundreds of people died from malaria in the Kenyan highlands where the population had previously been unexposed.
• Tanzania – Malaria expands in mountains. Higher annual temperatures in the UsamabaraMountains have been linked to expanding malaria transmission.
• Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Seychelles Islands – Coral Reef bleaching. Includes Seychelles; Kenya; Reunion; Mauritius; Somalia; Madagascar; Maldives; Indonesia; Sri Lanka; Gulf of Thailand [Siam]; Andaman Islands; Malaysia; Oman; India; Cambodia.
• Kenya – Worst drought in 60 years, 2001. Over four million people were affected by a severely reduced harvest, weakened livestock and poor sanitary conditions.
• Lake Chad – Disappearing lake. The surface area of the lake has decreased from 9,650 sq mi (25,000 km²) in 1963 to 521 sq mi (1,350 km²) today. Modelling studies indicate the severe reduction results from a combination of reduced rainfall and increased demand for water for agricultural irrigation and other human needs.
• South Africa – Burning shores, January 2000. One of the driest Decembers on record and temperatures over 40 °C (104 °F) fuelled extensive fires along the coast in the Western Cape Province. The intensity of the fires was exacerbated by the presence of invasive vegetation species, some of which give off 300% more heat when burned compared to natural vegetation.

• Uganda – Falling levels in Lake Victoria. Victoria is the largest of Africa's Great Lakes. It has dropped fast, at least six feet between 2003 and 2005, and by as much as a half-inch a day in 2006 before November rains stabilised things. Much of what is happening to Victoria and other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have. A report based on supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria raises alarming concerns – not just about the lake’s future – but also that of the Nile River, which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey at Jinja. A further dramatic drop in Lake Victoria's water level could cut off the flow into the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others (based on reports in 2006).

• Adapted from: Climate Hot Map, Website

Key Focus Question: How can you help pupils explore similarities between different people and different places?

Keywords: research; cultures; places; environment

Introduction

When teaching social studies, you are confronted all the time with questions of human diversity and commonality.

This section looks at how you can help your pupils compare lifestyle and economic practices across different contexts and cultures. This will help to develop important social studies thinking skills for you and your pupils.

What is education for sustainable development?

Sustainable development is an integral part of citizenship that will enable pupils to:

• understand that despite physical, material and cultural differences, there is a lot that connects us with the wider world;
• think critically and challenge injustice and inequalities;
• identify, respect and value diversity;
• develop a concern for and commitment to environmental issues and sustainable development;
• be willing to act to make the world a fairer and more sustainable place;
• take responsibility for their actions.

Both citizenship and ESD provide great opportunities for active, pupil-centred learning styles from which pupils get a sense of their role as global citizens. Such an approach to learning includes lessons that explore distant localities and environmental issues. Exploring the local community and then communities further afield will help pupils to expand their thinking about how different communities and cultures can be and how the same problem can be solved in many ways, and provide new ideas to try and test. ESD also explores ways to be more self-sufficient. This means making best use of the resources around you but not using them all up. Thinking about ways you can replenish or replant will ensure continuity. It means using only what you need.

Local resources are not everlasting but have a limit unless we try to share and use these wisely and replace, where possible, what we use.

Information sheet: The Tlholego Ecovillage

‘Tlholego’, is a Setswana word meaning:

‘creativity from nature’

The Tlholego Ecovillage is situated on 150 ha of land near Rustenburg in the Northwest Province of South Africa and was established in 1991 to address the challenge of rural sustainable development. One of their main aims is to inspire people towards more integral and sustainable lifestyles.

Tlholego has evolved through a process of practising, learning and teaching sustainable approaches to land use, housing, food security and cultural/social development within our local community and watershed.

Tlholego works with leading professionals from Southern Africa and around the world to develop and refine an integral model for rural settlements. The project is focused on five key areas: sustainable agriculture, cooperative economics, education, cultural/social development, and the Molokwane Iron-Age Village Conservancy.

The Tlholego Building System (TBS)

The TBS is a flexible, owner-built, low-cost, high-quality housing system. It avoids the serious shortcomings of current low-cost housing construction in South Africa, while addressing environmental and resource problems that are not usually considered in South African low-cost housing. It combines the principles of sustainable building systems with natural waste treatment and the permaculture approach for designing food self-reliance. This includes using modern techniques of unburned mud brick, passive solar design, appropriate technologies of rainwater collection, compost toilets, grey-water irrigation and solar water heating.

TBS houses perform to modern standards and use natural materials to minimise damage to the environment. Although this system was conceived as a solution to the low-end of the housing market, it is in fact applicable to all sections of the housing market. It is also flexible enough to accommodate conventional building materials.

Water harvesting

Harvesting of water is a key element of any sustainable housing system. The general idea is to build up the water harvesting capacity around our house over time. The more water a household is able to harvest in this way, the greater the level of food and water security. This strategy can be applied equally well at the household level as it can at the village scale or wider catchment level. The first level of water catchment takes place on the rooftop through a gutter system into a storage tank, which is then available as a high-quality water source for drinking or irrigation. If there is insufficient funding for water tanks and guttering in the initial stages of construction, water flowing off the roof during the rainy season can be directed along the ground into tree plantings, or to food gardens around the house. Excess water can be directed into below-ground storages and used for irrigation during the dry times of the year. Wastewater is another available source of water at the household level. The TBS incorporates a grey water filtration, which cleans wastewater, so that bathroom and kitchen wastewater can be used for irrigation purposes.

Permaculture food security

There is a natural integration between the TBS and permaculture food security gardens that have been established in the immediate vicinity of the house. Permaculture is a system of producing food that integrates traditional systems of knowledge and modern science with common sense. This provides a complete food production system incorporating annual and perennial plants, small animals and useful trees. It relies on low external energy inputs. The beauty of this system is that, in addition to establishing a valuable source of healthy food, it increases the size of a family homestead’s living environment, and adds a tangible dimension of quality to a rural or urban lifestyle.

Energy efficiency, solar design, thermal mass

It is generally accepted today that housing designed with good thermal performance includes the basic concepts of passive solar design. One of the basic principles of passive solar design is the use of wall materials of high thermal mass to mediate hot and cold temperature extremes. These high thermal mass materials include burnt brick, concrete, stone and earth. A second principle of passive solar design is solar orientation, which in our case allows solar energy to enter the large north-facing windows during the winter months and to soak into the walls and floor, which then radiates back into the house during the colder evening time. In summer months, the roof overhangs prevent sun heat from entering the building and the thermal mass of the walls help to retain the coolness. With this passive solar technology for heating and cooling, residents can save up to 50–60% of the lifetime energy costs for providing a very comfortable living environment.

Another important aspect of TBS is that materials are chosen so that the overall energy embodied in them, as well as the carbon emitted into the atmosphere during their manufacture, is minimised. This, together with the long life of the buildings and ease of recyclability, produces a housing system that minimises the production of greenhouse gases, while providing a high-quality lifestyle.

Adapted from: Changemakers, Website