Geography

The earth, the world we live in, is a powerful layer in and of itself. 

In IGL students are encouraged to get out of the classroom and to explore their environment as well as the diverse climates in the region they live in and the world has to offer. This is where geography as a subject begins. Being curious about the environment and adventure. What will you feel and find in the great outdoors? Being curious about the world we live in, the rivers and lakes, the savanna, the mountains, hills and valleys - everything the world outside has to offer young minds is very important aspect of education.

When it comes to geography students should ideally see the world around them as their classroom. They should be encouraged to have a spirit of adventure. This includes knowledge of man made environments and the changes brought about as humanity interacts with its environment.

Geography is introduced to students using 10 fundamental infographs each representing a unique type of terrain they must experience, understand and explore. Students are expected to associate each infograph with a specific type of terrain. Teachers are encouraged to expose students to the 10 basic types of terrain and geography as a subject is built around these ten environments. As students learn to associate or read the infographs using geography the learning experience should involve taking students out of the classroom to give them the opportunity to experience each of the 10 fundamental types of terrain as they learn about them over the years in different locations, wherever a learning opportunity presents itself.

Geography is a subject students begin to learn as early as kindergarten by being introduced to variations in terrain and mapping or integrating this with infographs. Geography is an essential subject due to the fact that it is tied to the environment and taking an interest in the world we live in is central to grounding students and aligning this to the thought process. Just one forgettable experience gained through interacting with the outdoors and surroundings that becomes reinforced using infographs accelerates a child's capacity to learn. In IGL this is what is meant by learning and teaching as being a craft where a student's education is carefully sculpted layer by layer into a beautiful, mindful and yet an academically formidable person. This grounding is achieved by making terrain a fundamental part of the learning process through 10 infographs.

An emphasis is placed on the outdoors

An IGL programme is sensory based. The ability of teachers to take students out of the classroom into the 10 fundamental types of terrain and the climates associated with them gives students a real and living experience that eventually forms yet another important layer that is carefully crafted into a student's learning experience. The importance of the earth, the environment and world children grow in consequently becomes centered in geography, where being close to these different environments stirs a an affinity for and appreciation for the physical world. Children will learn to love, respect and protect something they grow close to through experience and interaction with it. 

Get out of the classroom: All the environments pictured above can be mapped
fundamentally into the learning process.
An IGL programme requires interaction with distinct
types of terrain, which are integrated or mapped
into the learning process as an introduction to Geography.

Geography becomes a doorway into the great outdoors and the world we live in. And yet as learners step into the outdoors through integrated linguistics they, in the same instance, step into their own minds. The ten infographs and the real experiences they create can be applied in language to learn any subject.  

Getting students to experience all 10 terrains will seem a tall order at first. However, if it is accepted that this experience is an educational requirement achieving this becomes a challenge to schools and educators to overcome. If this experience is set as the minimum standard of education, a way to get students to experience these environments will be found and through collectivism a method for getting students to have this experience will be found.

There is a need to refine education and move it beyond mere academic content. The way to do this is through mapping and layering that involves actual interaction with the tools of learning where what is interacted with becomes the foundation of the academic content itself. The fact that each type of terrain is mapped into an infograph allows a convergence of the academic and the ability to integrate this with actual life experience ties this to learning experience to create a powerful formula for education that is currently missing due to lack of layering and integration.

Often this kind of education is considered arbitrary, in that taking students on a mountain hike, or to see Victoria Falls/ Mosi-Oa-Tunya is simply a fun exercise or a visit to a landmark, however, in IGL these environments are like learning the ABCs of language which not only makes it necessary to have the experience, but revolutionary in terms of the impact it will have on cognitive development when this layer becomes fully formed in a student's mind.

Layering of the kind found in IGL geography is very important. These experiences and the permanence they gain in a students mind reinforce the mapping process. When a child learns to read using animation and is cruising through 3,000 ideas or words per minute the academic content being revised is not just mundane information but forms part of a living experience that propels them towards a level of academic excellence current approaches to education and curricula may fall far short of.