Streetwatch Teachers' page

This site enables students to compare residential environments in two towns. Initially it was intended to be used by school students in Hemsworth and Tadcaster to enable them to compare patterns of housing in each town but it can readily be adapted by students at other schools using images of their own locality.

Students are presented with pictures of four houses in each town. Use of the 'zoom' tool enables students to see an enlarged picture of the house as well as a view of the residential area in which it is located. Students score facts and opinions about each residential area by clicking responses in each of two tables.

Students can work singly or in small groups on this exercise. The evaluative data for a class can be entered into a spreadsheet (such as Excel) and the results compared with students from another class or school.

Teaching points

• There should be little or no variation between students' scores on the factual assessment of each residential area. (Note, though, that many students will need practice at estimating the age of properties and guidance on what clues to look for in choosing a date). This is objective data.
• There is likely to be greater variation between students' evaluative assessment of residential areas. This is subjective data. The score given to an environment will be influenced by the scorer's experience. Students who familiar with a locality may rate it higher or lower than those who are unfamiliar with it.
• Students are asked to rate environments on a set of evaluative criteria. This is not the same as simply deciding whether one is 'better' or 'nicer' than another.

Our original plan was to link the students' scores to an integral spreadsheet as part of this site. However, it seemed that students would learn more about the operation of a spreadsheet by constructing and entering data into their own rather than have this operation performed automatically for them. Once the data is entered it can be compared with the scores from the local school and graphs produced to display any differences.

A blank template of the spreadsheet is aavailable here for download. Sample results are available for viewing on the Results Page.

This project was funded by NCET (now BECTa) and was co-ordinated by Patrick Wiegand.

Feedback on your use of this site would be welcomed by:
Richard Allen (Castleford High School)
Sue Birkby (Hemsworth High School)
Rob Robson (Tadcaster Grammar School)
Patrick Wiegand (School of Education, University of Leeds)