“In our changing world, nothing changes more than geography.” Pearl S Buch

Intent

Our Geography curriculum is designed to develop children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. Children investigate a range of places, both in Britain and abroad, to help develop their knowledge and understanding of the Earth’s physical and human processes. We are committed to providing children with opportunities to investigate and make enquiries about their local area so that they can develop of real sense of who they are; their heritage and what makes our local area unique and special. We are also developing the children’s ability to apply geographical skills and to enable them to confidently communicate their findings and geographical understanding.

Through high quality teaching, we develop the following essential characteristics of geographers:

• An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are like, both in Britain and the wider world;
• A comprehensive understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected;
• An extensive base of geographical knowledge and vocabulary;
• Fluency in complex, geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills, as well as effective presentation techniques;
• The ability to reach clear conclusions and explain their findings;
• Excellent fieldwork skills as well as other geographical aptitudes and techniques;
• The ability to express well-balanced opinions, rooted in very good knowledge and understanding about current issues in society and the environment;
• A genuine interest in the subject and a real sense of curiosity about the world and its people.

Implementation:

We use the Primary Knowledge Curriculum to teach Geography. The PKC has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced. As children work through the geography curriculum they will know and understand more about their local area, the UK, Europe and the World. Children will develop their geographical knowledge and understanding by building on prior knowledge, allowing them to make meaningful connections and gain an understanding of how our world is connected.

Children will:

• Learn about key geographical concepts such as place, space, the environment and interconnection;
• Become more skilled at answering questions such as; What is it like to live in this place? What are the challenges of this environment?
• Gain an understanding of what geographers do, what they look for and what they may say about a place;
• Discover explorers such as Ibn Battuta, Roald Amundsen and Captain James Cook;
• Look at the migration of both animals and people, studying the impact migration and colonialism had on places such as Australia and New Zealand.

Each year our geography curriculum begins with a ‘Spatial Sense’ unit that explicitly teaches geographical skills such as locating places on a map, positioning items on a map, using symbols in a key, interpreting scale, reading climate graphs, identifying locations using co-ordinates, interpreting population data, identifying elevation on relief maps and more. The spatial  sense units for each year group are positioned at the beginning of the year to explicitly teach skills which will then be used in context throughout the rest of the year as children apply those skills to learn more about people, places and the environment. The spatial sense units build on prior knowledge before moving children on as the level of challenges increases from year to year.

Impact:

Our geography curriculum equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people and environments. We have seen that arming children with powerful knowledge about the world around them helps them to develop a love for the subject of geography, and also recognise their own role in becoming a responsible global citizen.

How we assess:

Outcomes in geography books evidence a broad and balanced geography curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of vocabulary and knowledge. Children self-assess against the success criteria at the end of every lesson. They also complete an assessment at the end of each topic.