Q1.
As a class activity, form groups of four or five students and observe the school's surroundings. What kind of landscape do you see? Will the landscape change a few kilometres away? Or within some 50 kilometres? Compare with other groups.
Answer
This is an observation activity, so your group's answer must describe your own surroundings. Here is how to do it well, and a model answer to adapt.
What to look for and note down:
- Is the ground flat, sloping or hilly? Can you see any hill or ridge on the horizon, or is the sky-line level all round?
- Is there water? A river, canal, pond, lake or the sea — and does the land tilt towards it?
- What is growing? Paddy and wheat fields suggest a plain; scrub, rocky ground and low trees suggest a plateau; terraced fields and conifers suggest mountains.
- What is the soil like? Deep and soft, or thin with rock showing through?
- What are the houses and roads like? Roads that wind and climb, and sloping roofs, point to a hilly area; straight roads and flat roofs to a plain.
Sample answer (a school in the Ganga plain): “From our school gate the land is flat in every direction. We can see paddy fields, a canal and a line of trees, but no hill anywhere. A few kilometres away the landscape is exactly the same — only the villages change. Within 50 kilometres it is still plain, but the river and its sandy bank appear. Group 3, who had visited Chitrakoot, said hills begin about 120 km to the south.”
Sample answer (a school in Almora, Uttarakhand): “Our school stands on a slope. Below us is a valley with a stream, and pine forests rise on the opposite hill. A few kilometres away the landscape changes fast — a new valley, a new ridge, terraced fields on every slope. Within 50 kilometres we reach much higher mountains where snow lies on the peaks in winter.”
The point of comparing groups: different groups will notice different things from the same spot — one sees the fields, another the slope of the road, another the rocks. Put together, the class gets a far better description than any one group could write. That is exactly how geographers work.