30 C O N T E X T 8 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 IHBC education pack The conservation lesson was ‘injoyerbull’, said Ryan Conserving the Built Environment is an education pack, mainly for children in the final two years of primary school. It successfully promotes two of the IHBC’s five key activities, by raising the profile of building conservation and the level of debate surrounding it. The pack has two overall aims. The first is to make children more aware of the buildings around them. This means understanding that different building styles are related to different periods in history, and that the amount and type of building in a particular period can be an indicator of social change. The second aim is to stimulate an interest in becoming actively involved in managing the built environment. This is developed through creating a greater understanding of the environment’s significance, and an awareness of the planning process and how people can be involved in it. The pack, based around six geography lessons, includes all the resources necessary to teach those lessons in the classroom. It also includes fieldwork activities with practical guidance such as an example risk assessment. ‘Conserving the Built Environment’ is designed to be versatile, making it useful to schools with differing needs. It can be used to study Blyth on its own, either with or without a fieldwork visit. It can also be used to provide an area of contrast with where the children live, enabling them to look at similarities and differences between places. This can become the basis of a study of why the two places are different. In addition, the activities in the pack can be taken out and used to study any area with buildings from different periods in history. Lesson 1, ‘Where is this place?’, sets the village of Blyth in its geographical context. Maps on the Ordnance Survey website are used to find features such as roads and other settlements around Blyth, which are then recorded on the children’s own maps. Lessons 2 and 3 make use of the Extensive Urban Survey Report on Blyth produced by Nottinghamshire County Council in 2001. This deskbased survey draws on information from the County Sites and Monuments Record, local histories and early maps. It provides information on Blyth’s urban development in different historical periods as well as its social, cultural, economic and physical connections to other places. In lesson 2, ‘What is this place like?’, the children look at photographs of buildings in different parts of Blyth. They then use a Building Style Guide, with drawings of typical architectural styles from different periods, to identify the ages of the buildings in the photographs. The children use this information to complete their own map of the village’s development, showing the amount of growth in different centuries. Lesson 3, ‘Why is this place like this?’, builds on lesson 2 by giving the children a list of historical events associated with Blyth, divided into different centuries. Working in pairs or small groups, they decide which events would have caused Blyth to grow. At the end of the lesson it is clear that certain centuries had more events causing growth than others. This information can be cross-referenced to the map from lesson 2 so the children can see the impact of these events on the development of the village. Lessons 4 and 5 address the question, ‘How is this place changing now?’ Working in groups, the children go through the process of planning a new housing development, receiving a planning decision from another group in the class and possibly appealing to the whole class against the decision. This idea is based on a real housing proposal for five new houses within the diverse conservation area at the centre of the village. The proposal included the original aerial and elevation plans, and the conservation officer’s response to them, and proposed modifications illustrated on a three-dimensional sketch. The response made it clear that new housing in a conservation area was not objectionable in itself, but that it had to be in keeping with the character of its surroundings. This is emphasised to the children along with the importance of meeting current needs such as car parking. As an aerial plan and two-dimensional elevation drawings of the houses on the proposed site were provided, these requirements were built into the lesson activity. A three-dimensional sketch was not asked for, as using perspective effectively would have been too difficult for most junior age children. In lesson 6, ‘How do I feel about this place?’, the children conclude their work by designing a village sign. This draws on elements from previous activities to prompt children’s reflections on the existing built heritage and the events that have helped to create it. It also encourages them to think about their aspirations for the future of the village’s built environment. Conserving the Built Environment is based on the statutory requirements of the national curriculum. All the knowledge, skills and concepts that teachers of junior age children have to teach through geography are covered in a progressive way, with lessons building on what has been learnt before. By teaching through ‘a locality in the United Kingdom’, a national curriculum required area of study is also covered. Beyond the statutory requirements, IHBC president David Lovie, at the launch of the pack
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