1. Chembakolli: A village in India
Long Lane Primary School
Spring 2008

2. Lesson 1: Where in the world
We started by finding the UK on a globe and then Europe.
Next we looked for India and which continent it is on.
In pairs the children were encouraged to share what they knew about India. As a class we discussed facts about India using a power point from Primary Resources.
I used the BBC’s Big Book for weather to show the children how India is a land of contrasts. ( This also reinforced work done in Summer 2007)
Chembakolli was introduced to the children
The children used atlases to locate the UK and India on a world map outline and several places including Chembakolli on a blank map of India
(Maps from Superschemes A Village in India Jo Price)

3. Lesson 2: Images of Chembakolli
The children looked at a selection of images of Chembakolli :
What can I find out about this place?
What don’t these images tell us about Chembakolli?
What would they like to find out?
Do these pictures give a true impression about India? Why?
(The children thought up some super questions and very reasoned answers were given to the last point)
Next the children had a selection of images of the UK and in small groups had to decide which they would send to India to show what the UK was like.
This was done to show the limitations of using images to find out about places
Photo Action Aid

4. Lesson 3: The village
The children listened to a description of Chembakolli and looked at photographs of the surrounding area and the village. This information was then used to:
Make a collage of the village - these were very colourful! (lower juniors)
Map the village using the local studies CD. (Upper juniors) This group produced some very interesting maps and they found the program very easy to use.

5. Lesson 4: Homes The children were asked to consider 3 questions:
What do the homes look like in Chembakolli?
How has their design been influenced by the weather?
How are these homes similar /different to our own?
Children were reminded about the weather in this part of the world (reinforcing work conducted in a previous topic) and then in small groups they looked at images of Chembakolli homes to consider these questions. Together we discussed the interior of these homes and the importance of the roofs.
They then recorded their observations on sketches they had made of the Chembakolli houses.
Photo Action Aid

6. Lesson 5: Shopping
This lesson the children compared their own shopping experiences with those in Chembakolli. We started by asking 3 questions:
Where do you buy most of your food?
How often does your family go shopping?
Where do you store your food at home? Why?
If we were to ask a child from Chembakolli the same questions, would they give the same answers? Why?
During a discussion session, the children were reminded about what they had learnt about homes in Chembakolli (lack of electricity, lack of running water) and how this could effect their shopping habits.
We also looked at a range of images showing Indian food markets and discussed similarities and differences to their own shopping experiences.
The lesson was concluded by thinking about what we had learnt and what we still did not know.
Photo Action Aid

7. Lesson 6: Rural and urban India
At the start of this lesson I assessed the children by asking them to produce a thought shower of what they had learnt about Chembakolli. It was very enlightening!
This lesson was really an attempt to the counter stereotypical views children may have had that India was Chembakolli. They looked at a range of images of urban India (rich, poor, modern) and then compared them with the images of Chembakolli. They used the Chapatti diagram from A village in India (superschemes) to compare their own locality with rural and urban India.
At the end of the lesson I asked the children why they may have thought all of India was like Chembakolli. One child reasoned it was because we only ever saw this side of India in the media!
All images from Flickr (Creative Commons) Top – Premshee Pillai Bottom- Soulflow

8. Final display
All photographs that are not labelled are copyright of Long Primary School