National Festival of Fieldwork Activities and Teaching Ideas

What is the National Fieldwork Festival?

Formerly known as National Fieldwork Fortnight, the National Festival of Fieldwork is an annual event held by the Geographical Association to encourage schools to take their students outside to investigate, observe, discover, challenge, test out ideas and gain a deeper and wider understanding of the world around them.

You can find resources for the National Festival of Fieldwork on the Geographical Association website, including some to use in the school playground.

They also list some locations for fieldwork that may not be immediately obvious, along with risk assessment examples and certificates.

Fieldwork Activities on Purple Mash

There are activities on Purple mash to introduce primary-aged students to fieldwork. The Local Area Research template sets out questions for students to think about before conducting their research, making sure that it is focused and well planned.

One area that you may decide to focus on is the human features of a local area, and all research can be compiled into the Human Features template. Children could create their own houses database, like the example one in 2Investigate.

Students could also make their own interactive map of the local area using 2Go or 2DIY3D.

You might be lucky enough to be in a school near a natural geographic feature. You might be able to take your class on a walk to a nearby river, or to the coast. We have templates for lots of different geographical features:

Whatever you are doing to celebrate National Fieldwork Week, we would love to see and share your work. Tweet us @2SimpleSoftware or @PurpleMash, or go to 2SimpleUK on Facebook.