Comparing two regions
Geography · Key Stage 2 · The School
Compare like with like
A comparison is only useful if both places are described under the SAME headings. Use relief and climate, water, settlement, work, and transport for each. Comparing one region’s weather with another’s history tells you nothing. Fill in the same table twice and the differences appear on their own, without you having to hunt for them.
Physical and human
PHYSICAL differences are the land itself: mountains, rivers, coast, rainfall, temperature. HUMAN differences are what people have done there: where they live, what they work at, how they travel, how many of them there are. Keeping the two apart matters because it lets you ask the interesting question — how much of the human difference follows from the physical one?
From describing to explaining
"The Lake District has fewer people than Greater Manchester" is a description. "Fewer people live there because steep, wet, high ground is hard to farm, build on and cross, while Manchester grew where flat land, coal and water met" is an explanation. Geography at this level is the move from the first sentence to the second, and it is always worth the extra clause.
Draw a table with one column per region and rows for: relief, climate, main economic activity, population density, transport links. Fill both columns. Now write one sentence for each ROW that names the difference AND explains it: "A receives 400 mm of rain and B 1,600 mm, because B lies on the windward side of the mountains." Six rows, six explained differences. Two descriptions side by side would have earned far less.