Intent

Geography is a subject which allows children to better understand the world and its people, cultures, places and environments. Woven throughout the creative curriculum, geography allows children to understand how and why places are changing, and raises their interest and knowledge regarding climate change, global warming and wider world issues, meaning they are better equipped to work towards a better future for the planet. Curriculum objectives and skills are taught progressively throughout the school, allowing children to build on their prior knowledge and learning in order to gain a secure knowledge of the world around them, as well as key geographical skills that will stay with them throughout their lives. The children not only enthusiastically explore human, physical and cultural aspects of geography, but they also learn key map skills as well as comparing the countries they are learning about to the UK. Beginning in Year 3, the children learn about local geography, exploring Virginia Water, making historical geographical comparisons, and beginning to develop their map skills. In Year 4, the children learn more about the world around them, recapping continents, oceans and wider world geography before homing in on the European country of Italy and exploring both the human and physical aspects of geography. In Year 5, the children focus on South America and the plethora of geographical knowledge surrounding an area rich with both human and physical aspects of geography to explore, such as the rainforest and Amazon River. In Year 6, the children view the world on a bigger scale through their geographical topic of Planet Earth, exploring vital global issues such as climate change, the impact of it and what they can do to help.

Implementation

Geography is woven throughout the creative curriculum, integrated into units where appropriate and is integrated into creative curriculum units where appropriate. Geographical skills taught are easily identified within year group overviews, and progression of skills across year groups is knowledge based and each year the children build on their geographical knowledge. In geography lessons children have access to a variety of resources which teach key map skills such as atlases or online resources such as Google Maps, as well as other resources geographical, books, videos and documentaries and even class texts which explore areas of geography in interesting and creative ways and spark their interest into research around a range of topics such as climate change. The children are encouraged to share their own knowledge and experiences of other places, countries and cultures, as well as integrating inspirational figures into topics, such as Sir David Attenborough, so that they have a well-rounded view of the world.