Geography
KEY QUESTION
'How does the geography of a place influence where and how people live?'
Intent
At St Martin’s Primary School we ensure geography education is fully inclusive to every child. Our Geography curriculum is designed to develop children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills; and for the children to develop a love for Geography and an understanding of our key question - How does the geography of a place influence where and how people live?
We are passionate in providing the children with opportunities to make enquiries about their local area so that they can develop a real sense of who they are, their place in the world and what makes our local area.
Through high quality teaching, we develop the following essential characteristics of geographers:
- A sound knowledge of where places are and what they are like, both in Britain and the wider world.
- An extensive base of geographical knowledge and vocabulary.
- Fluency in complex, geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills.
- The ability to come to a clear conclusion and explain their findings.
- An interest in the subject and a real sense of curiosity about the world and the people who live here.
Through the framework of the 2014 National Curriculum, Geography taught at St Martin’s aims to ensure that all children:
- Are curious to discover more about the world.
- Know about the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans.
- Develop the skills of interpreting a range of sources including maps, diagrams, globes and aerial photographs.
- Understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes it location and can change over time.
- By the time children leave us we want them to have a secure understanding of how the geography of a place influences where and how people live.
Implementation:
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we ensure our curriculum is progressive throughout the school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on the knowledge and skills in the Geography National Curriculum. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our Geography progression document. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group. As part of the planning process, teachers create a knowledge planner which outlines the knowledge and vocabulary the children apply in lessons.
Impact:
Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. Our children demonstrate an appreciation and understanding of their local area and the wider world. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Assessing the children’s understanding of the topic before and after the unit is taught.
- Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
- Pupil voice.
- We continually assess the progress of our children and adapt our approaches to instil a lifelong love and appreciation of our world and how it has been shaped by physical and human processes.