PORTSMOUTH - Settlement Location

This resource includes a variety of lesson activities to pick and choose:

*** Starters**

(1) Illustrated glossary of four key settlement terms relevant to Portsmouth - Students draw their own interpretation of the definitions.

(2) Odd-one-out Powerpoint slided - Students discuss and write about four key physical terms relevant to Portsmouth.

(3) 5Ws & 1H - Students discuss the illustrations and their relevance to the founding of Portsmouth in 1194. (Second slide gives possible answers).

• Inter-Galactic Address

(1) Can you be in more than one place at once? Sheet of (up to) 19 features such as your school, Portsmouth, Eurasia, the Milky Way. Students cut them up and arrange them in order of size. They can then write their classroom’s or their home’s inter-galactic address. Template allows the place names to be personalised to your own location.

(2) Link to interactive ‘Scale of the Universe’ which goes from sub-atomic to extra-galactic!

• Location Factors

(1) Worksheet of classic ‘find the best location for a settlement’ activity, but specific to the Portsmouth area.
Students assess five potential sites against eight location factors (eg shelter, sunlight, defence).

(2) Worksheet - allows written conclusion to the ‘choosing the best site’ activity.

(3) Powerpoint slide - Students discuss: ‘Can you suggest where A to E might be in Portsmouth?’. Second slide gives potential answers.

• Portsmouth Site & Situation Mystery

(1) Thirty-two clues to cut up and distribute amongst the class. Includes references to France, Portsdown, marshes, Portsea Island).

(2) Students swap info to enable them to annotate a historic map of Portsmouth to explain why Portsmouth was a good location for Britain’s main Naval Base. (Two versions of the map are included - one with more scaffolding for the annotation, one with an example).

(3) Worksheet - Students write a response to the hypothesis: ‘Portsmouth was an excellent site for a town and dockyard to be built’.

(4) Worksheet - Alternative conclusion: Students make links between six images arranged in a set of hexagons.

• Home of the Royal Navy

Why did the naval base move from Portchester to the Port’s Mouth?

(1) Concept map - Students discuss and colour code thirty-five facts according to named locations, negatives about Portchester, positives about Portsmouth. Includes reasons why the Roman’s chose Portchester, deforestation, silt, narrow harbour entrance.

(2) Worksheet - Students can use the info they have learned to annotate a map of the Portsmouth area… Or can simply write an extended conclusion as exam practice.

(3) Powerpoint slide: photographic analysis - Portsmouth Harbour aerial view to be discussed as a plenary. (What does the photo tell us? What can be inferred? WHat does the photo not tell us?). Second slide gives possible answers.

• Place names

(1) Powerpoint slides introducing the value of place name etymology to geographical understanding of a place (Hilsea as an example).