Geography
Geography Curriculum
Intent, Implementation, and Impact
Geography Curriculum Statement
Intent: What we want our pupils to learn
Geography forms an important part of the Barham curriculum. We follow the National Curriculum and deliver an ambitious, knowledge-based geography curriculum that aims to inspire children’s curiosity to know more about their own locality and the wider world. As a school, we aim to inspire curiosity and fascination about the UK and the wider world and develop each child’s geographical skills, understanding and knowledge using a wide range of sources. Our geography topics are detailed and there is a clear, progressive sequence in the learning journey. We aim to enthuse, support and challenge all abilities through high quality teaching and learning of geography, where children are encouraged to engage in meaningful discussions using appropriate vocabulary. We would like to enable pupils to gain an understanding of how the earth has changed, and what we can do it about it today that can have an impact on our futures.
Implementation: How do we plan and teach Geography?
Curriculum design and sequencing of content
We teach children a knowledge rich curriculum that is ambitious and designed to build in knowledge content as children progress through school. All year groups study a Geography unit three half terms a year (curriculum content overview). Map skills are practised in every year group and build on skills taught in previous year groups. All year groups study a diverse range of human and physical geography in a range of different locations and contexts.
Retrieval Practice
To ensure children retain knowledge that has been taught, our knowledge organisers are used regularly to support the learning of new information and vocabulary. This ensures that content is regularly recapped and that children can make links throughout their topic. Knowledge organisers are also used as a
quizzing tool to revisit concepts and ensure knowledge is ‘sticking’. These are also used to help children know and remember more.
Community Connections/ Our local area
Children participate in walks around the local area focusing on physical and human geography both in KS1 and KS2. Both Year 1 and Year 6 compare how the local area has changed over time, year 6 with increasingly complex vocabulary and map skills.
In reception, links are made to the local farming community and the school woodland area is used to teach children about the negative effects of littering. This link in with our global goals. They also visit the local park (one tree hill) to look for signs of seasonal change. In KS1, children learn about familiar local places when learning about human geography and in KS2, children learn about different rivers in both a human and physical geography context.
Substantive knowledge
This is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content. Common misconceptions are explicitly revealed as non-examples and positioned against known and accurate content as pupils become more expert in their understanding. Misconceptions are challenged carefully and in the context of the substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
Substantive concepts are the big ideas, and the golden threads, that run through a coherent and cohesive geography curriculum. The substantive concepts that we develop through our Geography curriculum are:
- Locational knowledge
- Place knowledge
- Human and physical geography
- Geographical skills and fieldwork
Our Geography curriculum is built around the principles of cumulative knowledge focusing on spaces, places, scale, human and physical processes with an emphasis on how content is connected and relational knowledge acquired. An example of this is the identification of continents, such as Europe, and its relationship to the location of the UK.
Thinking like a geographer – Disciplinary Knowledge
By allowing the children to ‘think like a geographer’, this enables them to analyse geography in different, interesting ways. We aim to equip our children with the ability to achieve a deeper understanding of the local area and the world around them. When planning and teaching geography topics, we adopt an enquiry approach and each topic will include an enquiry question.
Some of the features that are included while thinking geographically are:
¨ Locational: Location and place are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth’s surface or elsewhere.
¨ Space and Scale: Space being the location of points, features or regions in absolute or relative terms and the relationships that connect them. Scale being the ‘zoom lens’ that enables us to view places from global to local levels.
¨ Physical features: Physical features are natural features on the surface, such as water, mountains and deserts.
¨ Human Features: Human features of a place come from human ideas and actions. They include bridges, houses and schools. Human characteristics of place also include land use and density of population.
¨ Change and Sustainability: An increased demand for resources such an energy, food and fuel means that developing sustainable resources is critical to protect the environment.
These are represented on our planning overview to ensure there is a good coverage of each feature, across the whole geography unit. There is progression for each feature throughout the key stages to enable children to build on prior learning and develop as geographers.
Impact: What we achieve by delivering Geography in this way and how we know?
The impact of our Geography curriculum will be:
- Children will be independent geographers that can recognise and name different places around the world
- Children will leave Barham Primary school with a secure understanding of how people and places are connected from the local to the global
- Children will be confident in fieldwork skills and enthusiastic about exploring their local area
- Children can make links between prior and current learning to allow them to know, remember and be able to do more.
- Children will leave school with a great appreciation for the diversity of the world at its people
Geography Curriculum Overview
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