Intent
In our Geography curriculum, children learn a wide range of geographical skills to help them with their studies of people and places, and geographical processes. They explore a variety of places in the UK, Europe and the wider world.
The key aims are to ensure children:
• develop knowledge of the location of globally significant places, including their physical and human characteristics, and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of
processes
• understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time.
In addition, to ensure children are competent in geographical skills needed to:
• collect and analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
• interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
• communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skill.
We teach the importance of our locality, starting at our school and village and spreading out to look at its place in our region, our country, our continent and finally the world in which we live. We investigate a wide range of maps to help children understand this. We develop children’s curiosity, positive attitudes and engage them in exploring the world around them. We also aim to give children the knowledge and skills needed to enable them to ask, answer and investigate geographical questions.
Implementation
When teaching geography, we see it as essential that there is a clear progression of skills and knowledge. We teach geography progressively focusing on the key skills or working geographically, including map and fieldwork skills, and key knowledge. Throughout the different year groups, we have a focus on development of vocabulary, specific to the learning challenges being taught. Planning focuses on the key knowledge that the children should know and remember. Teaching and learning in the classroom encourages children to retain key facts and information. Children are taught geography across a term and are given experiences to retrieve knowledge and skills so that they continue to make alterations to their long-term memory.
We capitalise on the local community and international links formed with and around our school to implement a broad range of geographical enhancements for our children. At Escomb, we have particular international links with schools in Spain, Tanzania and Japan.
Impact
Children will have developed the geographical knowledge and skills to help them explore, navigate and understand the world around them and their place in it. Children’s knowledge and skills will develop progressively as they move through the school, not only to enable them to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum but to prepare them to become competent geographers in secondary education.
