Geography
Who can I talk to about Geography?
You can talk to your child's class teacher or our Geography Lead, Mr Hawtree
Our Vision for Geography:
At Studley St Mary's we recognise the importance of every child having a great sense of place and then their sense of place within the world. Throughout each Geography lesson we teach our children to be ambitious, curious and inspired. The Geography curriculum prepares our pupils for life in society by fostering attitudes and qualities enabling them to become confident, caring, responsible and aspirational citizens.
We broadly follow The Primary Knowledge Curriculum (PKC) which is carefully adapted to meet the needs of our children. It places “powerful knowledge” at the heart of learning, empowering children to acquire knowledge that takes them beyond their lived experiences. Through a deep respect of the traditions of Geography the PKC recognises the identity its discipline. Our vision, and intent, is for the children to experience a specified, well-sequenced, and ambitious curriculum for all.
A knowledge-rich curriculum exposes our children to ambitious content that has been highly specified and well-sequenced, leaving nothing to chance. Our knowledge-rich curriculum ensures that each precious moment will support our children in acquiring the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they will need to become well-educated Geographers of the future.
Our Geography Curriculum
The knowledge children will be taught has been identified, in each year group, in each unit and in each lesson. As children work through the curriculum they will know more and understand more about their local area, the UK, Europe and the World. This rigorous approach, covering and going beyond the requirements of the National Curriculum, leaves nothing to chance, building geographical knowledge and understanding in a way that builds on children’s prior knowledge, allowing them to make meaningful connections and gain an understanding of how our world is connected. Conceptual understanding is at the heart of our curriculum. Children will learn about key geographical concepts such as place, space, the environment and interconnection. Over time, our children add to their conceptual understanding with many examples of geographical knowledge in context.
Each year our geography curriculum begins with a ‘Spatial Sense’ unit that explicitly teaches geographical skills such as locating places on a map, positioning items on a map, using symbols in a key, interpreting scale, reading climate graphs, identifying locations using co-ordinates, interpreting population data, identifying elevation on relief maps and more. The spatial sense units for each year group are positioned at the beginning of the year to explicitly teach skills which will then be used in context throughout the rest of the year as children apply those skills to learn more about people, places and the environment. The spatial sense units build on prior knowledge before moving children on as the level of challenges increases from year to year and although they are revisited twice in each of our mixed age classes, plans and tasks are adapted to ensure children are building on knowledge year on year. In lower Key Stage 2 the Spatial Sense units require children to undertake fieldwork and use observational skills to study the geography of their school and the surrounding environment. In Upper Key Stage 2 children will study a further unit on local geography where they undertake fieldwork to observe, record and present the human and physical features in the local area, focusing on an issue that the local area faces. The aim of the spatial sense units is to build children’s geographical literacy so that they are able to use an atlas, maps and geographical data with ease to answer questions they may have about the world.
Every year children will study at least one unit of British geography. As with the rest of the geography curriculum, children’s knowledge and understanding of British geography builds incrementally from year to year. Beginning with general understanding of the countries of the UK, children then study units that focus more closely on areas of the UK including the South West, the South East, Yorkshire and Humberside, the Midlands and Northern Ireland. When studying these areas, children look at the defining physical and human characteristics of the regions, key topographical features such as hills, mountains, coasts and rivers, how the landscapes and environments have formed over time and how they are used today.
Across the curriculum, children will study units of European geography that introduce regions of Europe, climate, trade, industry, landmarks, physical features and contrasting environments. Children will interpret a range of geographical information including maps, diagrams and climate graphs. Comparisons will be made between places in Europe and the local area. Areas studied include Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Studying Europe in detail will not only help children to understand the people, places and environment in the regions, but will provide foundational knowledge for their studies in other subject areas, for example their studies of the Vikings in History.
Alongside their study of the UK and Europe, children will extend their knowledge beyond these regions to study world geography. When studying world geography, children will focus on places across the world. Applying their knowledge and understanding of the globe, latitude, longitude, the hemispheres and time zones, children will describe and understand physical geography of countries and continents including biomes, vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes. They will consider a range of human geographical features such as settlements, land use, trade links and natural resources.
Children will use data from around the world, including from Geographical Information Systems, to understand social, economic and political globalisation. Children will have many opportunities to reflect upon the advantages and challenges globalisation brings and will consider the importance of sustainability and equity in relation to human interactions with the physical world. Our geography curriculum equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people and environments. We have seen that arming children with powerful knowledge about the world around them helps them to develop a love for the subject of geography, and also recognise their own role in becoming a responsible global citizen.
Across both our Geography and History curricula, the curriculum itself provides the progression model. If children are acquiring the knowledge and skills we define in our curriculum, we know that they are making progress. In order to ensure our children are making the progress we expect, we build in regular retrieval of prior knowledge across and between each unit and carry out an assessment at the end of each unit which is based tightly on the key knowledge we originally intended children to learn.
At Studley Church of England Academy, in conjunction with the aims of the National Curriculum, our geography teaching offers opportunities for children to gain:
- A secure knowledge of where places are and what they are like, both in Britain and the wider world.
- An understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected
- A wide range of geographical knowledge and vocabulary.
- The ability to apply questioning skills and make links with mathematical and scientific skills, in order to record, interpret/analyse geographical findings.
- The ability to express balanced opinions, rooted in knowledge and understanding about current issues in society and the environment.
- Fieldwork skills.
- A genuine interest in the subject and a real sense of curiosity about the world and the people who live here.