Geography

Mission Statement

Through the provision of challenging and stimulating learning, geography enables pupils to understand the interaction of people and the physical and human environments in which they live – locally, regionally, nationally and globally –, the processes that give rise to the distinctiveness of these places, and to consider alternative futures for them.

Geography introduction

The study of geography involves our pupils in exploring the relationship and interactions between people and the environments in which they live and upon which they depend. Many of our pupils will live to see the next century and inhabit a world of eleven billion people. The many opportunities and challenges that will arise during their lifetime will be very much about geography – personal, local, national and global. From adapting and mitigating the impact of climate change and predicting natural hazards such as earthquakes, to understanding the causes and effects of people’s actions in environments around the world, our pupils will need to know about geography and to think like geographers.

To prepare our children for this, we have designed a Geography Curriculum which enables children to achieve consistently highly, through progressively knowing more, remembering more and doing more as well as understanding more through EYFS-Y6. We do this by engaging pupils through a bespoke and challenging Geography curriculum, which fosters pupils’ curiosity and sense of wonder about the beauty of the world around them and its people whilst maintaining a paradigm that underpins all the investigations throughout this primary programme – that geography is the study of the interrelationship of people with the environments with which they interact at a variety of scales and locations. This has been represented in our mission statement and simplified for our learners through our what is geography statement.

Intent

For our children to understand that at the heart of geography is the study of the interrelationship of people with the environments with which they interact. This will be revisited at a variety of scales and locations.

We have planned a geography curriculum that is:

Aspirational, in terms of instilling in our pupils a desire to achieve the highest levels of success. We do this through providing pupils with the appropriate opportunities to build their substantive and disciplinary knowledge, master and apply subject skills and techniques and acquire the specialist language and technical terms to communicate their understanding effectively. Progressive and increasingly challenging objectives and end points of each enquiry, define what the pupils will know, understand and be able to do.
Coherent, relevant, and broad and balanced. We have ensured that content coverage includes an even proportion of physical and human investigations such as the effect earthquakes in different locations and the impact of the rise of megacities in the world. Consideration has also been given to making certain that our geography curriculum maintains relevancy and topicality through including enquiries that engage pupils in studying issues such as climate change, sustainability, and trade.
Sequenced to ensure that pupils can build on prior knowledge and understanding as they tackle more complex and demanding enquiries. For example, at Key Stage 1 pupils observe and record the distinctive geographical features of the local area of the school, later moving on to compare and contrast these with the village of Kampong Ayer in Brunei, Asia. At Key Stage 2, children build upon their learning of weather and climate from Key Stage 1, before studying how climate change is affecting the world in Year 6.
Progressive. Our curriculum is progressive and more challenging from EYFS through Year 6 both in terms of the complexity of the subject knowledge we want our pupils to acquire and also the disciplinary thinking skills we support them to master and apply to ensure they understand the significance of that knowledge.
Continuity with the provision for geography established in the EYFS and in particular that which addresses the knowledge and skills expectations of the Understanding the World area of learning and the People, Culture and Communities Early Learning Goal.
Inclusive. We deliver the same curriculum to all our pupils. We differentiate provision where necessary through in class support, different learning environments, alternative learning activities and assessment outcomes judged using a variety of different strategies. In our planning we ensure inclusion through constructing enquiries which are graduated in ‘bite size’ steps and a broad range of learning and teaching strategies including questioning and working with additional adults where appropriate.

We aim to deliver a curriculum that will provide our children with locational knowledge of the earth such as continents, oceans, countries (in line with the national curriculum), and to provide a curriculum that will allows our children to develop their geographical skills and fieldwork. Our geography curriculum is an important part of our broad and balanced curriculum with the aim of providing pupils with the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to succeed in the next stage of their education and in later life.

We ensure geographical vocabulary knowledge is expanded, encouraged and used, progressively building across the year groups and look to enhance learning experiences through making lessons interactive and enjoyable – fieldwork, trips, engaging topics and resources. We use further end points to allow children the opportunity to develop their learning further both in and out of lessons.

Implementation

Our geography curriculum enables our pupils to learn as young geographers and to understand the kind of questions that geographers ask of the world. Through enquiry our pupils not only build their substantive knowledge and understanding but become increasingly adept at disciplinary thinking, conceptual understanding and the use of specialised vocabulary and technical terms. We structure learning in geography through big question led enquiries about relevant geographical topics, places and themes. Our curriculum is therefore ‘knowledge rich’ rather than content heavy as we recognise that if we attempt to teach geographical topics, places, themes and issues in their entirety we will create a very shallow learning experience for our pupils.

Consequently, we adopt a policy of immersive learning in geography that provides sufficient time and space for our pupils not only to acquire new knowledge and understanding but also to develop their appreciation of the importance of subject concepts.

Through enquiry our learning and teaching in geography is interactive and practical allowing opportunities for pupils to work independently, in pairs and also in groups of various sizes both inside and outside of the classroom. Learning activities are very varied to ensure that all pupils have opportunities to demonstrate their strengths. Pupils record their learning in a variety of different ways i.e. writing, diagrams, group work, data interpretation, using geographical skills.

We refer back to our end points throughout and after units of work in order to support knowledge to become embedded and ‘sticky’ and ensure that our pupils can build on what they know and understand from one year to the next.

The planning for each geographical enquiry is carefully structured using ancillary questions, to enable pupils to build their knowledge and understanding in incremental steps of increasing complexity until they reach the point where they are able to answer in full the question posed at the beginning of the investigation.

Geography is delivered as a standalone subject to ensure enough curriculum time is devoted to it and to support children to recognise what geography lessons are and what geography is. This is supported by our ‘What is Geography?’ statement. Geography is delivered on a 50/50 split with history in a time slot from Year 1-6. In order to ensure we can get deep into a topic, 2 units a year are taught per year.

The units of work are based on the David Weatherly Connected Geography scheme of work, which was highly commended by the Geography Association. David has forty years of educational experience as a teacher, senior manager, local authority consultant and school improvement adviser and still teaches today as well as providing additional CPD for schools. The scheme was trialled and investigated before being purchased and implemented. The scheme fits in with our desire to go more in depth in foundation subjects, often doing less better, and provides the teachers with quality CPD.

The children are formatively assessed throughout the topic using the work produced in books, the oral input of the child in lessons, teacher observations of children in pairs and groups tasks and conversations, chats between the teacher and individual children, evidence from the knowledge quiz, and additional ways skills and knowledge can be evidenced (fieldwork, use of GIS, homework etc). At the end of the unit, teachers draw on their professional knowledge and judgement of each pupil – what they now know, understand and can do - gathered over the lifetime of the enquiry to make a summative judgement based on the end points. An assessment sheet is completed that allows identification of how the geography curriculum can be further developed.

Hooks are used in history blocks of work to recap core and additional geography end points to ensure the children retain the learning in their long term memories creating sticky knowledge. Previous end points will be revisited in lessons at relevant points.

Geography will have cross curriculum links to writing (at least one piece of writing each unit of work), reading (purple subject reading boxes), maths (data, graphs, calculations), computing (use iPads for research, on fieldwork, GIS systems, produce work), speaking and listening (debates, making reasoned arguments), and other foundation subjects.

Long term plans show the geography provision from Year 1 to 6. Medium term plans give detail on what will be taught (both substantive and disciplinary knowledge), the end points of learning and what previous knowledge will be built upon. Short term planning will take the form of the lesson slide.

Through our curriculum EYFS – Year 6 provision is made for regular and high-quality fieldwork which we recognise as a core element of our pupils’ statutory entitlement in geography. Our fieldwork provides opportunities to develop and consolidate skills and concepts introduced in the classroom and allows pupils to extend their understanding of the ‘real’ worlds the teaches use to deliver the lessons.

Impact

Each enquiry which forms our programme of learning and teaching in geography sets out clear objectives and outcomes for the pupils in terms of substantive and disciplinary knowledge and understanding and skills’ acquisition. These outcomes are listed as ‘Core and Additional End Points’ i.e. the criteria against which a pupil will be judged to be making good progress.

Progress and assessment will be formative and ongoing, measured against the end points. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of sources to inform the process including interaction with pupils during discussions and related questioning, day to day observations, practical activities (such as role play drama), the gathering, presentation and communication of fieldwork data and writing in different genres. We do not make summative judgements about individual pieces of pupil work but rather use these formative assessments to build an emerging picture of what the pupil knows, understands and can do in relation to the end points of learning. Consequently at the end of each enquiry a teacher is able to make an informed and confident ‘best fit’ judgment.

Assessment data will be collected at the end of each unit with children being assessed against the end points. This data will be used to revise and improve the geography curriculum.

Impact of the subject will be monitored through book looks, pupil voice and learning walks. Subject moderation and assessment data will be used to inform the geography development plan.