Type: Booklet
Individual or group work: Individual
Levels of assessments: Four, five and six
Number of lessons: Three
Number of homeworks: Two
As an early Key Stage Three Assessment, the Adventure Landscapes assessment is likely to be the first piece of extended writing. The success of this is largely dependent upon the quality of processes, namely organising, finding information and making decisions. Students will need to decide on a landscape and a place for this assessment. Whilst some landscapes are easier to describe and explain than others students may wish to use landscapes and/or that they have experienced themselves.
The assessment is designed for students to complete individually. It is assumed that students have prior experience of how to produce sketches. Their written information can be supported with appropriate writing frames. The latter would be especially useful for describing and explaining features.
The assessment requires students to produce a booklet about features and their sustainable management within a chosen landscape. It is to be written for junior children. The assessment is written at three different levels - four, five and six. For levels four and five students follow a plan (Resource Sheet C) and for level six students produce their own plan; it is advisable to check level six student plans before they start their work. A guide to planning would be:
Lesson one: Set up assessment, produce plan and find resources
Homework: Research chosen activity, location and features. Print out a map and decide on a title.
Lesson two: Produce draft writing on introduction, and features.
Homework: Produce neat version of above, leaving space for sustainability section and conclusion.
Lesson four: Writing on how adventurers cause damage and how this can be reduced, and conclusion.
There is a lot to be covered in three lessons and two homeworks. Success will depend upon good planning during the first lesson, good access to texts about landscape features and students gathering their own research information for homework.
Presentation of work is of paramount importance. Word processing and digital images would help here but of more importance is care with presentation of writing and cutting out of paper; such care improves the overall presentation. When there is so much good Geography being produced it is a shame if it does not look good. One solution to this is to only allow students to choose their paper once their draft work has been produced to their best standard. Whilst students like to produce varied and interesting booklets the emphasis needs to be on the contents.
Resources available for this assessment are:
For level four
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Resource Sheet A4 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet B4 - Using Sources
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Resource Sheet C4 - Planning for Poster
For level five
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Resource Sheet A5 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet B5 - Using Sources
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Resource Sheet C5 - Planning for Poster
For level six
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Resource Sheet A6 - Assessment Activity
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Resource Sheet B6 - Using Sources
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Resource Sheet C6 - Planning for Poster
Whilst this assessment does not include assessment for citizenship, it could with further time be included as adventurers can create both a positive and negative impact which creates a lively debate.