Park Explorer - Teachers' area introduction

Teachers' area

Introduction

Introduction

Park Explorer has been developed by the London Parks and Gardens Trust, with the generous assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, to provide information and education resources based around London's rich wealth of parks and open spaces.

In this pilot phase of the project, four London Boroughs have been selected, namely Enfield, Greenwich, Newham and Wandsworth. It is hoped to extend into further boroughs in the future.

This area contains notes and guidance for teachers, suggestions for classroom activities, details of how the work contained within this website fits within the National Curriculum, and invitations to take part in the ongoing project. There is a comprehensive Curriculum Grid which details the NC key skills covered by the different activities as well as highlighting relevance within Breadth of Study and QCA schemes.

Note that although the activities have been developed with a Key Stage 2 curriculum focus and target audience, many of the ideas and concepts can easily be adapted for work with other levels of students.

The website consists of five major components:

	Details of parks and open spaces		A database of details on the parks in each borough, including their history, location, facilities, contact details, and historical photographs where available.
	Generic Park Activities		Educational activities which can be carried out onscreen, downloaded for classroom use, or undertaken on visits to local parks and gardens. These activities cover general areas which are applicable to many different open spaces, and are categorised into five topics.
	Park-Specific Activities		Educational activities which are focused on aspects of one particular park or garden. Although these activities are designed to be carried out using the specified site, many of the concepts can be applied more widely if desired.
	User-contributed sections		An area to showcase work which has been carried out by London and other schools using the website materials and the parks featured.
	Teachers' area		This section! Contains curriculum rationale and links as well as suggestions for using the activities and details of contributing individuals and organisations.