Geography

At our school, pupils will study places and the relationships between people and their environments. Children will also develop a deep knowledge of the physical and human geography of the local environment, the UK and the wider world, and have the capacity to add to this body of understanding themselves in the future. It is essential that they develop a meaningful understanding of location and place, including that of their local area.

We will deliver a curriculum that:

• Inspires curiosity and fascination about the world and its people.
• Equips children with an understanding of diverse places, people, resources and environments.
• Allows children to build on prior learning about physical and human processes and the formation and use of landscapes and environments.
• Develops an understanding that the Earth’s physical features are interconnected and change over time.
• Encourages exploration of their own environment and supports children to make connections between their local surroundings and that of contrasting settlements.
• Systematically develops disciplinary knowledge: asking enquiry questions, collecting, analysing and interpreting data through fieldwork; interpreting maps, diagrams, globes and aerial photographs; communicating geographical information in a variety of ways; evaluating and debating ideas; and understanding the impact of processes, phenomena and humans on the world.

Learning begins in Reception and Year 1, where pupils learn the component location knowledge of the local area and the UK, such as the names of the countries, capital cities and key human features. In Upper Key Stage 2, this culminates in the development of rich geography schema, encompassing, for example, a deep understanding of South America, World Trade and biomes.

Our pupils use a range of maps, atlases, globes and aerial images so that Geography map and fieldwork skills are systematically developed. Essential geographical concepts – such as the features of rivers, earthquakes and factors affecting settlement location – are taught by focussing on specific locations and regions. This allows invaluable comparisons to be made between the UK and other areas of the world.

We categorise the four main strands in the National Curriculum for Geography as procedural knowledge (Geography skills and fieldwork), declarative knowledge (locational knowledge, human and physical Geography, and place knowledge) and disciplinary knowledge (how to ‘be’ a geographer through asking and investigating geographical questions, evaluating and debating geographical processes). These are carefully mapped out and sequenced, year-on-year, culminating in clearly defined Key Stage learning end points.

These curriculum strands are then developed through a focus on specific geographical aspects of the world. In Key Stage 1, these foci include the local area, the UK, the seven continents and a study of a contrasting locality. These four strands are then systematically developed further in Key Stage 2, including foci on the European geography, settlements and populations, the climate, trade, South America, rivers, biomes and mountains and volcanoes.