Geography

At St. John’s Catholic Primary School geography education should be fully inclusive to every child. 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. Furthermore, we aim to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. (The 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England) 

Geography teaching has a wide application to everyday life, teaching the children to enjoy learning about the world and to have a better understanding of how people live in different locations. 

The aims of teaching geography in our school are:

• To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the world

• To enable children to know about the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans.

• To develop in children the skills of interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

• To help children understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes it location and can change over time.

• To provide opportunities to study mathematics across the curriculum through geography lessons.

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At St. John’s Catholic Primary School, we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

The geography curriculum is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document. Teachers can use this document to plan their geography lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn.

When teaching geography the teachers should follow the children’s interests to ensure their learning is engaging, broad and balanced.

Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement.

Geography provides excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through the investigations, analysing sources and writing extending pieces. Children showing extensive aptitude in geography will be placed on our schools gifted and talented register.  These children will be selected for appropriate enrichment opportunities throughout the year.

Educational visits are another opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional geography learning outside the classroom.

Local museums also provide an opportunity to further geography learning, as well as trips to local woods, castles and using map reading skills during residential trips.

Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.