Geography

Intent:

Our Geography curriculum at St Mark’s C..E Primary provides opportunities for children to investigate, ask questions, and develop a secure understanding of both natural and human geography. Geography lessons aim to inspire and stimulate an interest in both local and global geography, whilst helping to build a range of key skills and vocabulary. Our geography units enable children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas, so that children are making links and connections, as well as seeing the relevance of geography in our everyday lives. Geography units seek to inspire children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its diversity, with the aim to build a greater understanding of the world’s physical and human processes. Each unit is designed to provoke critical thinking, develop knowledge and skills, and stimulate interest, which children can explore and apply outside of lessons. Geography planning throughout the school will identify key skills that are progressive and allow children to build upon prior knowledge and skills throughout the school.

Implementation:

In each unit, teachers plan lessons that build on from prior learning to ensure that the learning is relevant and progressive. Where possible, geography will provide opportunities for learning outside, as well as opportunities for using a range of resources to help build and develop key skills.  Geography units are meaningful to the locality of the school to enable fieldwork, such as learning about the New Forest National Park in Year 3. Units are  blocked to allow for a greater depth study on each topic, so that children can focus on key skills over a period of time. Fieldwork and map work are embedded into geography units where relevant. Geography lessons provide rich opportunities where children’s curiosity is encouraged as they interact with the four main areas of learning at each key stage: place, location, physical and human geography.  

Impact:

The Geography curriculum at St Mark’s C.E. Primary will provide opportunities for all learners to explore the world around them, investigate similarities and differences, and foster their curiosity through asking interesting questions. Children will have developed a secure foundation of geographical knowledge and skills, as well as an insight into how both physical and human geography can change over time, and the impact humans can make. Children’s geography work will be presented in their own geography books and teachers will measure the impact of the learning through clear teacher assessment. Children will produce work in a variety of ways, which will enable all learners to communicate their ideas effectively. Children will not only acknowledge the importance of looking after the world, but they will feel inspired and motivated to adopt strategies and mind-sets which will enable them to make a positive impact on the world around them.