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Easilearn: The Island

Your mission... to explore Geography!

Easilearn: The Island is a fantastic new resource for group and individual work when teaching Studies of Society and the Environment to students in Years 4-7. It invites students to explore an island where they complete a series of exciting missions and tasks which will really captivate them.

Working together in small groups, students explore this compelling and realistic environment to discover new information and record and reflect on what they find out about settlements, coasts, rivers and map skills.

At the same time, assessment opportunities have been built into the Island with personalised journals created for each student so you, as their teacher, can easily assess and feedback on each student’s progress and understanding of geography.

Easilearn: The Island is a virtual field trip using a games-like environment to excite, inspire and challenge students.

Bringing physical geography into the classroom

The Island has been designed with the help of acknowledged education and geography experts so that students experience an authentic island environment - it has rocks, soil, hills, lowlands and wildlife. It has springs, streams and a large river that shows the different character of upper, middle and lower courses. It has beaches and cliffs that provide evidence of the effects of erosion and deposition.

The inspiring combination of the missions and environment means that The Island really brings geography to life for your students in an irresistibly engaging way.

Exploring with missions

There are ten missions based on the themes of settlements, coasts, rivers and map skills. Each mission gives students a practical task, for example finding somewhere to build a settlement. Working collaboratively in their groups, students discuss their choices and try out a number of strategies. Characters in The Island provide feedback on students' decisions and encourage them to explore.

The missions will prompt your students to use the island in different ways:

  • To read the landscape to see how people can use it for settlements.To interpret river and coastal features in the landscape.
  • To understand the processes that formed the coastal and river environments.
  • To relate maps and compass directions to what's on the ground.

Assessment - keeping you informed of progress

Students work independently on the Island so, to ensure that teachers are able to review what their students have learnt and understood, Easilearn has built-in assessment opportunities through each student's personal journal.

When working individually or in groups, students' progress around the island is automatically recorded in each of their journals. They are also prompted to justify their decisions at significant points within each mission and given tools such as a camera to help with them with this.

Students' notes, together with the automatic records, provides a comprehensive log of places visited and decisions taken which can then be printed or reviewed by you. Teachers also have the facility to feedback comments either to the whole group or to individuals within the group.

Students can also use their journals to reflect back upon their learning both during and after the Easilearn experience. Posters of the island are included with Easilearn that can be used by your students to present findings from their missions back to the rest of the class.

Additional classroom resources

Each mission is supported by worksheets for individual student work. Easibook plenaries are also included for each unit as well as an image bank specifically for The Island (Easiteach Player is included with The Island).

All these extra materials included with The Island really help to support, extend and reinforce the learning in the missions.