Geography
Geography at Overleigh St Mary’s C of E Primary School
Intent
At Overleigh St. Mary’s Primary School we aim for all children to be Informed, Articulate and Empowered. Through our Geography curriculum, we endeavour to provide a fully inclusive curriculum, that inspires children’s curiosity and interest to explore the world that we live in and its people. We aim to provoke and offer answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of our world. Through the teaching of geography, we encourage children to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of their own environment and that of others, as well as recognising the significant impact they can make. All children, including those with SEND or disadvantaged groups, fully access the Geography curriculum. This may include additional adult support, adapted work outcomes or structured sentence stems and taught vocabulary scaffolds to support children in becoming effective geographers.
Informed:
Children acquire knowledge about various locations, individuals, resources, and both natural and human environments. They explore the processes underlying the fundamental human and geographical features of the world, recognizing their interdependence and potential for change. Additionally, children develop the necessary geographical skills for conducting inquiries, utilizing diverse sources, including fieldwork experiences, to communicate geographical information in various ways.
Articulate:
Through the incorporation of subject-specific technical vocabulary and opportunities for focused discussions, children enhance their ability to speculate, establish connections, and interpret evidence. This process contributes to their deeper understanding of the world and its inhabitants.
Empowered:
The selection of diverse localities mirrors the community's richness, allowing pupils to connect with the geography curriculum personally. Resources challenge stereotypical depictions of places, and fostering a growth mindset is integral to geography education. Children are encouraged to embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, persist, and improve. Geography is explored within contexts relevant to the students' lives, such as within the local area, nationally and globally.
Fieldwork is integral to geography education, with local visits reinforcing the appreciation of one's neighbourhood and the understanding of individual impact.
A sense of curiosity and fascination with the world is crucial for engaging in a rich cultural life. Structured sentence stems and instructed vocabulary facilitate meaningful discussions among children. All children, including those with special educational needs or from disadvantaged backgrounds, receive support to fully access the Geography curriculum. This support may involve additional adult assistance or individualised visual aids and scaffolds.
Implementation
In order to foster our children’s curiosity about the world, their interest and creativity, we inspire children to constantly explore and ask questions. Our curriculum is designed to stimulate and be taught in blocks, this way children initially develop their immediate geographical awareness, utilising their local area to achieve the desired outcomes. Additionally, we offer extensive opportunities for learning outside the classroom, embedded in practice. Building on both opportunities and learning over time, helps to achieve a depth of understanding that can be transferred through the key stages.
Our curriculum will be mapped out in EYFS and built upon as they enter Key Stage 1. Once this is consolidated, they will gain a wider experience of global geography. As a child moves through our school, their geographical knowledge and understanding will deepen progressively and their skills will develop systematically. We will continue to build on their experiences year-on-year to the end of Key Stage 2. The key concepts are explored and are revisited in different units, allowing children to apply new knowledge to the concept, in order to prepare them for future learning and life.
We teach geography as a discrete subject. Where it benefits learning, we use opportunities to apply in other areas, for example, maths, science and English through writing linked to humanities. Our key vocabulary for each unit is identified in our medium term planning, and children will learn 6-8 subject and topic specific pieces of vocabulary per unit. The children will also develop knowledge of key facts in each unit, beginning with five key pieces of information in Year 1, building up to 30 pieces of key information in Year 6.
In Key stage 1, children will develop their knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. In Key Stage 2, children will extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and Europe, North and South America. This will be achieved through the four core strands:
- Locational knowledge
- Place knowledge
- Human and physical geography
- Geography skills and fieldwork
At Overleigh St. Mary’s we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is crucial in enabling children to gain tangible experiences. Lessons are planned using our progression of knowledge and skills document. Teachers can plan their geography lessons using this document to inform and guide their children’s interests, this helps to produce lessons that are engaging, broad and balanced. All children, including those with SEND and other vulnerable groups, will have access to the full breadth of the curriculum with work being adapted through the adaption of manipulatives, vocabulary support and geographical equipment, or through expected work outcomes, by the class teacher.
Impact
Our Geography Curriculum is well-thought through and of a high quality, it is planned to ensure progression. Our teachers measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- A knowledge check at the beginning of each unit to see what the children already know.
- Link each of our core strands to previous learning, to compare and contrast and to review understanding.
- Start lessons with a recap of key knowledge and understanding from the previous session.
- Provide opportunities each lesson to use the key vocabulary.
- Focus a minimum of one lesson in each unit on fieldwork, mapping and observational skills.
- Provide opportunities for open-ended tasks, to allow the more-able to demonstrate their greater knowledge.
- Assess children at the end of the unit against key knowledge and learning.
The leadership team check that this impact is being secured through monitoring the subject on a regular and frequent basis. The method of monitoring supports the ongoing development of the curriculum. This includes:
- Staff subject knowledge, which is audited each year to ensure knowledge is secure, and additional support provided if necessary.
- Termly staff meetings to discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of topics with the subject leaders. From this, medium term planning is amended and adapted to ensure the curriculum remains relevant for the children.
- A ‘pupil voice’, which is conducted at the beginning and end of each year to allow pupils to contribute to their curriculum content.
- Bi-termly monitoring of work against the medium-term plans, so that inconsistencies can be addressed.
- Tracking of content against the long-term plan of the school, to ensure the full breadth of the curriculum is met.
The impact of this is to ensure that children at Overleigh St. Mary’s are equipped with geographical skills and knowledge, which will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as an adult in the wider world.