SECOND LEVEL

THIRD LEVEL
LEARNING RESOURCES FOURTH LEVEL

My Favourite Place in Scotland

Created by Scottish Book Trust

Contents CfE
2 Introduction to My Favourite Place Learning resources
3 My Favourite Place and CFE
3 Lesson 1: Places and their significance to us
4 Lesson 2 – Postcard/letter writing
5 Lesson 3 – Favourite Place in the school/community
6 Lesson 4 – researching a Place
8 How to share your pupils’ work via Scottish Book Trust
9 If you want to go a bit further...
11 Appendix 1 – Pairs of images
12 Appendix 2 – Others’ favourite places
13 Appendix 3 – Bringing a place to life worksheet (Level 2)
14 Appendix 4 – Bringing a place to life worksheet (Level 3 and 4)

Introduction – My Favourite Place in Scotland

These guidelines are aimed at school teachers and librarians who would
like to use the My Favourite Place in Scotland project in their school.

We are looking for pupils to share their experiences of their favourite place.
People are attracted to all different kinds of spaces and environments, and
so pupils are free to include places which are not well-known. Indeed, if
they wish to describe a place in their own home or similarly personal
spaces, they should feel absolutely free to do so.

Pupils can submit three main types of response:

l A piece of prose
l A poem
l A postcard/letter
However, wider texts are also suitable as responses: if pupils wish to
submit a podcast, slideshow or any other form of response, this is to be
encouraged!

Scottish Book Trust will feature a selection of the responses on our main
website, and we will also be looking for teachers and pupils to submit their
work to our GLOW page for others to see. Instructions for doing this can
be found in the ‘How to Share your Pupils’ Work via Scottish Book Trust’
section.

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My Favourite Place and CFE CfE

These resources are designed to help you:

l Plan lessons which effectively address Literacy outcomes. Talking
and Listening skills are extensively covered in various interview and
discussions tasks. Reading skills are also incorporated through
research tasks. Finally, writing outcomes are prevalent in most tasks.
l Make effective use of ICT. The lesson ideas have been designed to
make minimal use of ICT for those unable to access technology, but
lots of extension ideas are provided which suggest creative and
engaging use of ICT, particularly in the ‘If You Want to Go a Bit Further’
section.
l Engage different learning styles. A variety of responses to tasks are
suggested, including comic strips, slide shows, verbal responses and
digital storytelling.
l Plan effective whole-school and transition activities. The resources
allow for lots of collaboration between different groups of pupils.
l Grab opportunities for outdoor learning! Many of the tasks will allow
you to take pupils out and about with a digital camera and a notebook!

Lesson 1 – Places and their significance to us

Objective: to understand the different ways in which places can mean
things to people.

Additional materials required: pairs of photos (Appendix 1)

ACTIVITIES FOR SECOND LEVEL

Eng 2-27a
Show your pupils a pair of photographs from Appendix 1 on the board. Ask
them to work in pairs. First of all, get each pair to study the first photo and
come up with a list of as many adjectives as possible describing the place
in the photo. Then, repeat this exercise with the second photo.

After this, ask pupils to pick one of the places depicted. Ask them to
imagine what kind of person might like to go there. Get them to draw a
picture of the person in that place, and then they can label their picture
with the person’s thoughts and feelings while they are in this place.

As a homework activity, you could ask pupils to bring in their own pictures
(either photographs, printouts or cutouts from magazines, etc) and repeat
the exercise using their own photographs.

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 ACTIVITIES FOR THIRD AND FOURTH LEVEL
CfE
Divide your pupils into groups and give each group one of the pairs of
images. The pairs have been organised so that each of the places depicted
are quite distinct in terms of character, atmosphere, etc. Ask each group to
study their two images, and then mind map the different reasons why each
place might hold appeal for someone.

For instance, in Pair 1, the park bench might appeal to someone because it
is a place they can be alone, whereas the shopping centre might appeal to
someone of a different temperament who enjoys bustle and activity.

As a homework activity, you could ask pupils to bring in their own pictures
(either photographs, printouts or cutouts from magazines, etc) and repeat
the exercise using their own photographs. To extend this activity further,
you may wish to ask pupils to bring in photographs of their favourite
places on their phones and share them with the class along with a few
adjectives or quick descriptions. The class could then try to guess which
place was nominated by whom!

Lesson 2 – Postcard/letter writing

Objective: To equip pupils with the skills needed to describe different
kinds of places.

Click on the following link to bring up an image of the Forth Rail Bridge on
your board: www.flickr.com/photos/kyz/3055812477/sizes/l/in/photostream

(There is an image of the Forth Road Bridge here if you prefer:

www.flickr.com/photos/40299618@N00/3187947922/sizes/l/in/photostream/)

ACTIVITIES FOR SECOND/THIRD LEVEL

Ask pupils to imagine that they are standing at the scene of one of the Eng 2-27a
photographs. Ask them to write five headings in their jotters: See, Hear,
Touch, Taste, Smell

Now, ask them to list all the different things they are experiencing through
their senses as they stand at the scene.

After this, ask pupils to imagine they are writing a postcard to a friend,
trying to describe what the scene is like. They should use the notes they
have made to create a short, descriptive postcard or letter.

You can vary this activity by splitting pupils into groups and giving each
group only one sense rather than all five.

There are also videos available on our website to help pupils describe
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 setting effectively: www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/teaching-
resources/lower-secondary/creative-writing-resources
CfE

ACTIVITIES FOR FOURTH LEVEL

Places do not have to be scenic or striking for them to assume significance Eng 4-27a
for us.

Ask pupils to study a pair of images of less visually arresting places. Ask
them to imagine that they are a character, and ask them to mindmap all the
reasons why this place might be the character’s favourite place because of
memories or emotions it stirs up.

Then, get the pupils to work on a descriptive passage about the place,
through the eyes of their chosen character. You can choose to get them to
write a comic strip where the character’s descriptions accompany images
of the location.

EXTENSION

If you want to put a real focus on descriptive skills, you could ask some Lit 4-24a
members of the class to write a descriptive passage in traditional prose,
and then ask others in the class to adapt their classmates’ written work
into a comic strip, slide show or other suitable format. A guide to adapting
texts into comic strip format is available on the Scottish Book Trust
website at the following link:
www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/cpd/toolkits/graphic-novels

Lesson 3 – Favourite Places in the school/

in our community
Lesson objective: to identify all the things about a place that make it
appeal to us.

Additional materials required:

l People describing favourite places (appendix 2)
l Bringing a place to life worksheet (appendices 3 and 4)

ACTIVITIES FOR SECOND LEVEL

Eng 2-30a
Show your pupils the selection of quotes from people describing their
favourite places.

Ask your pupils at the beginning of the lesson to think about their favourite
place in the school building. Then, they can fill in the worksheet with all the
aspects of the place which give it significance.

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 ACTIVITIES FOR THIRD AND FOURTH LEVEL
CfE
Show your pupils the selection of quotes from people describing their Eng 3-30a
favourite places. Eng 4-30a

Ask your pupils at the beginning of the lesson to think about their favourite
place in the school building. Then, they can fill in the worksheet with all the
aspects of the place which give it significance.

HOMEWORK TASK
Lit 2-05a
Ask pupils to go home and interview a parent or family member about their Lit 3-05a
favourite place. Get them to prepare a list of questions which they feel are Lit 4-05a
important to ask. For instance, what are the surroundings like? What do
they do there? Are there other people there with them? Why do they like it
so much?

WHOLE SCHOOL/TRANSITION ACTIVITIES

You can choose to extend this activity by getting older pupils to do

presentations about their favourite places in the school or community to S1
pupils. This can even be used as a transition activity, with S1 pupils going
out to P7 classes to present. If you want to use a class blog to share work
between pupils, have a look at the ‘If You Want to Go a Bit Further’ section
for some help with running blogs. S1 pupils could also devise a lesson plan
for P7 to share the process they went through for writing their pieces. They
could host a return visit and then P7 could write their own pieces about the
secondary school.

Lesson 4 – Researching a place

Lit 3-14a
Lit 4-14a
ACTIVITIES FOR THIRD AND FOURTH LEVEL Lit 3-25a
Lit 3-26a
If they are choosing to write about a public place in their final piece, pupils Lit 3-26a
should find out a little bit about it by researching it on the internet. Here are Lit 4-26a
some good places to start:
l www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk – pupils can search for their town to
see if it has a feature page
l www.s1community.com – sites designed specifically for people to find
out about Scotland’s small communities, go to ‘Memories’ section for
an area’s history
l http://ssa.nls.uk – the National Library of Scotland’s Scottish Screen
Archive, where pupils can search for films about their town

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Split the pupils into groups, and give each group a local area to research.
Ask pupils to collect as many images, videos and text as they can about
CfE
their local area. The following research goals can be used to focus the
work:
l Most interesting fact
l One famous/interesting person associated with the place
l One number-based fact about the place
l Best photograph
You can use Wallwisher to bring together all the images, videos and text
which pupils find about their chosen area. Wallwisher is easy to use and
free, and you can find a tutorial here:
www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/cpd/toolkits/online-tools/wallwisher

Alternatively, you can create a wall display, using a large map of the local
area. Pupils can label different parts of the map with things they have
found out.

As an alternative, you could get pupils to create a slideshow of images,

picking appropriate music to accompany it. This website gives lots of links
to unlicensed music which can be used in presentations: http://reading-
active-and-engaging.wikispaces.com/Creative+Commons+%28CC%29

WHOLE SCHOOL/TRANSITION ACTIVITIES

You can choose to extend this activity by getting older pupils to do

presentations about their favourite places in the school or community to S1
pupils. This can even be used as a transition activity, with S1 pupils going
out to P7 classes to present. If you want to use a class blog to share work
between pupils, have a look at the ‘If You Want to Go a Bit Further’ section
for some help with running blogs.

Pupils can also interview each other about their favourite places. This can
be done in class, or pupils from your class can go to other classes and do
interviews there. Don’t feel you have to restrict interviewees to just the
pupils – it might be a good idea for pupils to go round and interview
teachers about their favourite places too!

If you want to record interviews, Audacity is an easy place to start – the

programme is portable and can be held on a USB stick. All you need is a
microphone!

Audacity can be found here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net

There is an excellent get-started guide here:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_for_Teachers_-
_Installation_and_Basic_Editing

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How to share your pupils’ work via Scottish Book Trust CfE

GLOW

The Scottish Book Trust For Schools GLOW group can be accessed
through this link:
https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Working%2
0Together/Scottish%20Book%20Trust/default.aspx

Alternatively, in GLOW, type ‘Scottish Book Trust for Schools’ into the
search bar at the top right. The Scottish Book Trust for Schools GLOW
group will appear in the search results, either in the main column or in the
Published GLOW groups section at the top right.

Once you are in the GLOW group, click on the tab which says My
Favourite Place. After this, depending on the type of response your pupils
have written, do one of the things below:
l If a pupil has written a piece of prose, go to the Prose section and
click Add New Document.
l If a pupil has written a poem, go to the Poems section and click Add
New Document.
l If a pupil has written a postcard or letter, go to the Postcards and
Letters section and click Add New Document.
l If a pupil has come up with another kind of text, go to the Other
Responses to My Favourite Place section and click Add New
Document.
After this, click Choose File, browse through your computer to find the file
you want to upload, and click on Save and Close.

When you return to the My Favourite Place page, you should now see the
document you have just uploaded.

EMAIL

If you are unable to submit pupil responses through GLOW, you can email
them to Chris Leslie, Scottish Book Trust’s Learning Resource Developer,
at chris.leslie@scottishbooktrust.com. We will then upload the responses
to GLOW on your behalf.

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If you want to go a bit further... CfE

CREATING A DISPLAY MAP OF SCOTLAND

If your pupils have researched various places in Scotland, you may wish to
compile their findings and display them in the school.

One way to do this would be to create a display using a large map of

Scotland. This website is a good starting point if you want to create a wall-
sized map of Scotland:
www.yourchildlearns.com/megamaps/print-europe-maps.html

You can find a blank map of Scotland here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Scottish_Parliament
ary_regions_2011.svg

After the map is up on the wall, you can populate it with pupils’ work about
the places they have researched. If they have chosen to produce
informative leaflets, for example, you can pin these to the map in the
appropriate place.

CREATE A DIGITAL INTERACTIVE MAP

You can use the online interactive presentation tool Prezi to create an
interactive map of Scotland.

This tutorial on the Scottish Book Trust website tells you everything you
need to know to get registered and started with Prezi:
www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/cpd/toolkits/online-tools/prezi

There are several steps in creating a digital interactive map:

l First, you will need to find an image of a blank map of Scotland. There
is a good one available here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotland_map_blank.png
l After you have put this image into your Prezi, you will need to allow
your pupils to edit the Prezi. This is a simple process and a tutorial is
available here: http://prezi.com/meeting/
l Pupils can now zoom in to the map of Scotland and put in their own
images, text and videos relating to the place they have found out
about.

VISIT SOMEONE’S FAVOURITE PLACE

If it turns out that either you or your pupils can identify a favourite place
which is reasonably close by, you may wish to visit the place. Depending
on the type of location, you can ask local people or staff if they can be
interviewed by pupils about the place and what it means to them.

You may also like to ask your pupils to produce a resource which can be
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kept at the location for other people to see. For instance, the pieces of
writing that they do could be laminated and displayed in local cafes, visitor
CfE
centres, etc.

CROSS-CLASS BLOGGING

If you would like other classes to read and interact with your class’s work,
it is easy to set up a class blog to showcase photographs and research
findings. These GLOW instructional videos tell you all you need to know
about setting up GLOW blogs:
http://cookbooks.glowscotland.org.uk/blog/2010/10/29/lego-activities-at-
slf-part-3-using-glow-blogs/

There is also an excellent tutorial video on YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zQnWj5VKeE

WAYPOINTING/GEOCACHING

Waypointing provides a great opportunity for learning in an outdoor

environment. There is a comprehensive tutorial video on how to use
waypointing here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cy7DP0lA-M

There are many ways this technology can be applied in the classroom:
l You can include written tasks with the caches when you hide them.
When the pupils find the cache they can carry out the task.
l Depending on the location, you can make the tasks specific to
buildings or objects. If you hide caches around the school grounds, for
example, the tasks can relate to the location they are hidden in. You
could ask pupils to think of five adjectives to describe a particular
location, or list things they experience with the five senses.
l Waypointing can be used as a variation for the tasks in Lesson 3 in
particular.

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Appendix 1 – Pairs of images
Pair 1

Park bench Shopping centre

Pair 2

Bmx Track Bookshop

Pair 3

Playing sports at an all weather park Watching sports at a stadium

Pair 4

Sunny beach Freezing Cairngorms!

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Appendix 2 - Others’ favourite places
CHILDREN’S FAVOURITE PLACES

My favourite place is on the Leckie Estate at a little burn because all I can
hear is the burn trickling and the birds tweeting. I can breathe in the
country air. I always feel relaxed there and I really like it.
– Pupil aged 9

My favourite place is up the tree in my front garden because I can see the
whole neighbourhood. I feel safe up the tree and if I'm playing tig no-one
can catch me. Sometimes cherries grow that are safe to eat. It is quite hard
to climb up the tree.
– Pupil aged 10

My favourite place is my back garden. I like it because I like to play football

with my dad and brother.
– Pupil aged 8

ADULTS’ FAVOURITE PLACES

I love Woodchester Mansion in the Cotswolds. You should go in November

at dusk; it's really spooky and full of stories. There's a wonderful tale
associated with it about a beautiful young woman in medieval times who
was supposed to be getting married to a horrible man. But she ended up
riding off with the man she adored while the bridegroom was eaten by
wolves. It's haunted beyond belief.
– Jilly Cooper, Writer

I have always loved old buildings for the feeling of history that seems to
have seeped into the very walls and the memory of all the people who
have walked the halls. The first time I visited Glasgow University’s main
building, the word “gothic” had me imagining all kinds of ghosts drifting
around the place, labouring under loads of heavy books instead of
clanking chains, as they hurried to classes that had long since ended.
– Cassandra Connolly-Brown, Scottish Book Trust

Best of all I love knowing this place so well that I can slip into its moods
and seasons like a slipper. I know where the ice will trip me in winter and
where the wild garlic will send out its pungent whiff of early summer. I
know where the primroses hide and where tiny raspberries will flaunt their
sweetness behind an armour of nettles. I know the smell, the lovely smell,
of the rain-sodden earth.
– Sally Magnusson (BBC broadcaster and writer) describes her favourite
walk in farming countryside in the north of Glasgow

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Appendix 3 – Bringing a place to life
WORKSHEET FOR LEVEL 2

What is your favourite place in the school?

What can you see and hear when you are there?

What kind of things do you do there?

What kind of things do you think about there, and how do you feel?

What is the best thing about the place?

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Appendix 4 – Bringing a place to life
WORKSHEET FOR LEVEL 3 AND 4

What is your favourite place in the school?

What kind of things can you see, hear, etc?

How does the place make you feel? What kind of things do you think about
when you are there?

How else would you describe the place? Is it busy or quiet? Light or dark?

What do you do when you are at the place? Are there any memories that
stand out about it?

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