Purpose   

At George Carey C of E Primary School, we strive to make geography accessible to every child. Our aim is to deliver the requirements of the national curriculum for geography with a depth and breadth that ensures the progressive development of geographical knowledge and skills. Furthermore, we seek to inspire a fascination and curiosity about the world its many cultures.

Our curriculum intent for geography is to:  

• Develop knowledge and skills through enquiry.
• Learn about our locality and the broader world.
• Revisit and deepen knowledge and skills
• Build cultural capital for all pupils.

Organisation

At our school we have developed a scheme of work for the geography using some content from the cornerstone’s curriculum with adaptations to make it relevant to the context of our school . The scheme of work is organised so that children learn within a coherent and progressive framework. The scheme of work ensures that all aspects of the geography curriculum are covered whilst children develop a rich and deep subject knowledge and develop new skills through a variety of interesting contexts.

Progression in the geography curriculum is split into 5 strands: locational knowledge, place knowledge, physical geography, human geography and geographical skills and fieldwork.

Some of the regions of the world that we explore are as follows:

Tanzania -  The Serengeti (Contrasting Non-European country)

Italy (European region), 

Scotland- The highlands and England- London and Kent (Regions of the United Kingdom)

Brazil, Canada and the Galapagos Islands (Region within North or South America). 

These are chosen based upon their link to the overall topic and their merit of physical and human geography. 

Each year group has two geography units a year, links to prior learning are utilised within these units and knowledge and skills are revised and revisited. 

We use the mnemonic HOPCLUB, which acts as a golden thread for learning across the key stages. This helps the children to remember key geographical themes as they are revisited across their time at school. Please see the poster below which outlines these concepts.

EYFS

Geography is taught in nursery and reception through their topics and in line with the early year’s curriculum. Children develop an understanding of the world through activities such as investigating our locality, learning about the seasons, different places, and habitats and through books that have been selected for their geographical learning opportunities.

KS1

During Key Stage 1 the children expand on their knowledge of the local area and begin to investigate a non- European country, making comparisons with what they have learnt about their locality. They will learn key locational knowledge such as the continents and the ocean names. The children continue to build on their geographical skills by looking at maps, globes and atlases to locate places as well as identifying features from aerial photographs.

KS2

In Key Stage 2 children will continue to build on their locational knowledge by investigating a variety of places and environments in the United Kingdom and across the world. They will carry out enquiry led fieldwork in their locality and beyond to understand how people affect their environments. Geographical skills and field work will be developed further with the continued use of atlases, maps and globes and with the use of ICT such as digimaps.

How is Geography taught in KS1 and KS2?   

Geography is taught once a week within half term blocks, and lessons will follow a sequence and form a journey. Within this sequence, children will recall key aspects of knowledge learnt previously, build on new knowledge, and using geographical skills. (See long term plan). 

The layout in books may look like: 

• A cover page for the unit of work
• A road map outlining the learning journey of the unit.
• World map at back of book to refer back to
• Retrieval quiz at the end of a unit 
   

Adaptation

As in all areas of the curriculum, teachers should deliver ‘quality-first’ teaching and differentiate to support children with barriers to learning. On an individual basis, teachers should consider any limitations that a child has in accessing the planned lesson and provide resources, word banks with visual cues, stem sentences, adapted tasks and adult support. When planning, teachers are encouraged to lean into the prior knowledge that should be secure to support those who may not find the current unit accessible.

With more able and ‘Greater depth’ pupils the use of open-ended questions should be used to promote deeper thinking and promoting pupils to use prior learning to formulate ideas. These pupils are also encouraged to delve into geographical current affairs and to critically evaluate human impact on geography.