Castles Geography

These five Castle Geography KS1 lessons are a fantastic addition to your cross-curricular castles topic. The downloadable lessons will get your class thinking about where castles are built and why. They will think about the physical features that surround castles and how these features affect a castle's strength. Your class will develop their map-reading skills as they navigate around maps featuring castles.

Each of these five Castle Geography KS1 lessons comes complete with a detailed lesson plan, a slideshow presentation for the teaching input, a range of differentiated activities and printable resources to support children in their learning.

You may also like our Castles Topic Bundle containing four ready-to-teach schemes of work all themed around castles. Great for cross-curricular teaching! 

Why were castles built on hills?

In the first lesson of this Geography Castles topic, your class will find out why castles were built on hills. They will think about the resources the residents of the castles needed to have nearby and how this influenced the location of the castle. Your class will become familiar with the Key Stage One geographical physical features vocabulary, which includes: hill, sea, river, and cliff.

This ready-to-teach lesson contains a detailed lesson plan, engaging slideshow presentation and printable teaching resources all in a downloadable pack.

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Exploring Castle Land Features

In this castle land features KS1 lesson your class will become familiar with the geographical vocabulary to describe physical features that castles are often close to. They will think about how these features made castles easier to defend and any problems the builders of these castles might have encountered.

This downloadable lesson contains a detailed plan, engaging slides and printable teaching resources.

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Capital City Castles

In this lesson, your class will put into action their geographical skills. They will identify the UK on a world map and the countries that make up the UK. They will then go on to name and locate the capital cities of the UK. Your class will identify the land features that each capital city castle has been built on or near and begin to think about which geographical features made people decide to live near the castle site.

This downloadable ready-to-teach lesson contains a plan, slideshow presentation, teaching resources and activity ideas.

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Let's Plan a Map

In this KS1 Geography lesson, your class will use the compass points to move around a map they have created. They will use a simple key and look closely at aerial photos spotting land features and landmarks.

This downloadable ready-to-teach lesson contains a detailed plan, slideshow presentation and printable resources.

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Continental Castles

This final Castles Geography lesson challenges your KS1 class to investigate castles from around the world. They will use a map key to identify the continent that the castles are on before comparing the different features of the castles with the Tower of London.

The lesson aims to have the children apply their knowledge of continents and use their map skills to identify them using a key. They will also apply any cross-curricular learning they have about castles and their features.

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This KS1 Geography Knowledge Organiser has been designed to support your children’s understanding of key vocabulary linked to this scheme of work. Key questions and relevant geographical skills have been identified to encourage children to apply their knowledge around this topic.

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