Geography

The History Coordinator is Miss Hallwood. 

"We learn geography to find out about places, people, and how our planet changes."

Intent

The teaching of Geography at Kirk Smeaton CE Primary School is designed to allow and inspire all children to reach their full potential. The skills and knowledge outlined in the national curriculum are built upon across each year group, through inclusive and carefully sequenced lessons and enrichments. Our children explore familiar and unfamiliar parts of the world, beginning with the context of where they live.

We aim to develop each child’s curiosity and fascination of the world and its people. An enthusiasm for learning will be evoked through fieldwork, when children will have the opportunity to observe, collect and analyse data first hand before making insightful conclusions.  We are focused on children becoming caring and responsible citizens who have a secure understanding of the location and characteristics of places.  We aim for children to develop reflective thinking when considering similarities and differences between different people, places and cultures to equip them with the empathy to understand and appreciate different ways of life.  We want our children to appreciate the beauty and power of physical features of the world, the impact humans have on this world and how they are interdependent and changing.

Implementation

In KS1, children begin to use maps and recognise physical and human features to do with the local area, building to using maps to explore the continents and oceans of the world in year 2. Also in year 2, children will begin to compare where they live to places outside of Europe and ask and answer geographical questions. In KS2, map skills are developed further using digital maps, atlas’, more keys and symbols and children begin to use more fieldwork skills. Through revisiting and consolidating skills, our lesson plans and resources help children build on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills and challenge. All children expand on their skills in local knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography, geographical skills and fieldwork. Across both key stages, children have a range of opportunities to experience geography through practical engaging tasks beyond the classroom. Key words and vocabulary are also to be taught and then used by children to deepen their geographical knowledge.

Impact

We believe that through the teaching of high-quality geography lessons, a love of geography is promoted by teachers and pupils benefit from this across school. All children will use geographical vocabulary accurately and understand the different strands of geography, with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Children will begin to make relevant links from geography to other curriculum subjects, such as history and science. They will improve their enquiry skills and inquisitiveness about the world around them, and their impact on the world. All children will realise that they have choices to make in the world, developing a positive commitment to the environment and the future of the planet. Children will become competent in collecting, analysing and communicating a range of data gathered. They will be able to interpret a range of sources of geographical information and they will communicate geographical information in a variety of ways. All children in the school will be able to speak confidently about their geography learning, skills and knowledge.

Please see the vocabulary overview

Please see the whole school overview

Please see the progression of skills

Please see the Geography policy