Geography at key stages 1 and 2    (Year 5)

• Provide opportunities for the children to identify the key issues about the traffic by-pass scheme through looking at maps, newspapers and photographs, and carrying out local surveys and interviews with key people. If possible, take the children to visit the site of the by-pass.

• Ask the children to locate the area of road construction using Ordnance Survey maps and relate the development to the main roads, local villages and towns and local land forms, eg hills, valleys.

• Discuss with the children how the issue is expressed, eg complaints to newspapers, local protests, meetings, accidents statistics, people's own experience.

• Ask the children to investigate how the land was used and what the area was like before construction began. They could use maps, photographs, old newspapers, documents and oral history in their research.

• With the children's help, devise and carry out a questionnaire survey of the main groups involved.

• Divide the children into small groups and ask each group to analyse the data collected in the questionnaire survey. Ask them to use the results of their analysis to suggest ways the issue might be resolved. They could use ICT to present their suggestions.
• Conduct a role play of a public meeting, concluding by asking groups to decide what they think should happen next.