A place far away
Geography · Key Stage 1 · The School
Somewhere unlike here
The geography curriculum asks you to study a place that is very different from your own — often somewhere far from Europe. Kenya, Brazil, India or a small island each look, feel and work differently from a British town, and comparing one with home is the point of the exercise.
The same questions of both
Ask the same questions about both places. What is the weather like? What do the houses look like and what are they made of? What do people eat, wear and do for work? How do children get to school? Asking identically of both is what makes it a comparison rather than two descriptions.
Similar as well as different
It is easy to notice only what is different, and that gives a false picture. Children everywhere go to school, play games, have families and eat meals together. A good comparison finds the similarities too — otherwise a distant place ends up sounding strange rather than simply somewhere else.
Compare Nairobi with London, not a Kenyan village with London. Both are capitals of several million people. Both have tower blocks, traffic jams, universities and slums. Nairobi is 1,800 m up and on the equator, so it is warm all year and cool at night. London is at sea level and 51° north, so it has cold winters and long summer days. That is a comparison of two cities; the other version compares a village with a city and calls the difference a country.