Intent

At Beech Hill Community Primary School, our geography curriculum is ambitious and engaging; it provides the opportunity for all children, irrespective of their skills, background, or any additional needs, to acquire the knowledge and skills to succeed. Through the provision of a structure and sequence of lessons, we aim to cover the skills required to meet the aims of the National Curriculum and also inspire pupils to develop skills beyond the classroom, building an awareness of all the opportunities the subject provides.

The content of our Geography curriculum allows for a broader, deeper understanding of the four recognised areas in geography: 

• Locational knowledge
• Place Knowledge
• Human and Physical Geography
• Geographical Skills and Fieldwork 

It will develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places. There will be a deeper understanding of the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, along with how they bring about variation and change over time. We intend to develop children’s curiosity and a fascination with the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. 

The units within our curriculum offer a range of opportunities for investigating places around the world, on every continent, as well as physical and human processes. The lessons are intended to improve children’s map skills, geographical facts and vocabulary.  They should also provide opportunities for consolidation, challenge and variety to ensure interest, enjoyment and progress within the subject. Pupils will be able to build upon their skills and concepts they established from the previous year and develop them further in the current and subsequent years.

Implementation

Every child benefits from discrete geography lessons and teachers also provide opportunities for children to access geographical skills in other areas of the curriculum. Our geography curriculum is based on lessons from the Geographical Association which is accompanied by an explicit teacher knowledge module (In the Know) to give staff the confidence to teach each topic. This is a coherently planned programme which fully covers the requirements of the National Curriculum and is sequenced to allow children to build upon their geographical knowledge and skills as they progress through each year of school. The units for key stages 1  and 2 are based on a spiral curriculum. This means that through revisiting and consolidating skills, our lesson plans and resources help children to build on their prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills and challenges. This style of curriculum design reduces the amount of knowledge lost through forgetting, as topics are revisited regularly. A range of strategies are used to deliver effective lessons, including practical activities, fieldwork tasks, and presentations.

Our EYFS children are learning positional language and how to describe familiar routes/locations/weather types. They enjoy using all their senses to explore the world around them and are encouraged to ask and answer questions about their discoveries. As they progress, they are able to draw information from a simple map. Through yearly events (e.g. Chinese New Year/Olympic Games), children learn that there are different countries in the world and that there are similarities/differences between life in them and our country. Children learn that we live on a planet called Earth and begin to understand the need to respect and care for our environment and all living things (e.g. Palm Oil Project). They also begin to recognise that some environments are different to the ones they live in (e.g. North Pole).

Children in KS1 begin to use maps and recognise human and physical features to do with the local area, progressing to using maps/globes to explore the continents and oceans across our Earth (e.g.Little Blue Planet). Furthermore, pupils will begin to compare where they live to places outside of Europe (e.g. Australia Here We Come). Modelling of asking and answering geographical questions helps to develop children’s critical thinking.

In KS2, map skills are developed further by using digital maps, more keys and symbols with particular emphasis on reading Ordnance Survey Maps. Pupils will learn to compare and contrast countries on a global level, building on their previously acquired knowledge and experiences (e.g. Global Trade). Regular opportunities are provided to engage pupils in Critical Thinking, such as answering Big Questions. 

All children expand on their skills in locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography, geographical skills and fieldwork. Across all key stages, children have a range of opportunities to experience geography through practical, engaging tasks beyond the classroom. 

Each lesson is sequenced to build on learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all pupils can succeed and thrive, through the use of extra resources such as visual prompts. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept, encouraging pupils to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences. At the beginning of each topic, a knowledge organiser is placed into children’s books containing the topic’s key vocabulary and definitions. Teachers use a variety of strategies to help pupils make regular references to their knowledge organisers, so that the organisers become a tool to deepen their geographical knowledge.

The learning that takes place in each unit is documented in children’s geography books, with photos of the more practical elements being stuck into their books. Exemplars of children’s learning are being placed in the units of work for reference. 

Every lesson includes formative assessment opportunities to ensure that misconceptions are recognised and addressed if they occur. This ensures that teachers can adapt their teaching to suit the needs of the pupils that they are working with.  

To ensure that summative assessment is assessing a pupil’s understanding of geographical concepts and skills, as opposed to their reading and writing skills, a range  of assessment opportunities are used. These include observational assessment while pupils are still developing their literacy skills, post learning activities and multiple choice quizzes e.g. Plickers as children move through Key Stage 2. 

These assessments give the teachers and geography subject leader confidence in the progression of skills and knowledge and that outcomes have been met.

Impact

We believe that the impact of using the Geographical Association’s lessons as the basis of our curriculum, is that geography learning is enjoyed by teachers and pupils across school. Confident teachers have higher expectations and more quality evidence can be collected in books. All children will use geographical vocabulary correctly and understand the different strands of geography, with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Children will begin to make relevant links between other subjects such as history or science. They will improve their enquiry skills and inquisitiveness about the world around them and their impact on the world. All pupils will realise that they have choices to make in the world, developing a positive commitment to the environment and the future of the planet. Children will become competent at collecting, analysing and communicating a range of data gathered. They will be able to interpret a range of sources of geographical information and will communicate geographical information in a variety of ways. All children in the school will be able to speak confidently about their geographical learning, skills and knowledge.

The impact of the geography curriculum can be determined through pupil outcomes and the record of coverage in the process of achieving these outcomes using teacher assessment led data. This evidence is shared and celebrated digitally using tools like Class Dojo, the school website and Google Drive as well as through the use of classroom/corridor displays. Progress can be tracked and analysed in real time using Aspire Pupil Tracking. 

Confidence in this subject will enable our pupil’s to become independent and competent in key life skills such as problem-solving, logical thinking, empathy and evaluation, preparing them to take their place as morally responsible, tolerant and productive members of society.