Intention

At Thornton Primary School we strive to create a geography Curriculum which we believe helps to provoke and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world through opportunities to question, investigate and debate important geographical issues which will impact the immediate locality, nearby regions and the wider world.

Implementation

We follow the Oddizzi Scheme of work to teach our geography curriculum.  Oddizzi is an e-learning resource and community that immerses children in the real world. It enables children – wherever they are – to ‘break out’ of their own world and join a global community of like-minded children.  Children using Oddizzi can view the world through the eyes of people who are passionate about the places they are sharing. It carefully builds a solid understanding of the people, places and cultures of the world.

The National Curriculum states:

“A high-quality geography education should 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. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the framework and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.”

Aims

The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
• understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
• are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
  • collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
  • interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  • communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length
  •  

From these aims, the scheme identifies four key strands which run through the scheme to ensure that children are taught a broad and balanced curriculum. These strands compromise of

●Locational knowledge

● Place knowledge

● Human and physical geography

● Geographical skills and fieldwork

Learning Connections

Our geography curriculum enables children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas such as maths, science and R.E. Children are given the opportunity to conduct fieldwork both on site and in the local community, which allows them to utilise key mathematical skills such as measuring and collecting and analysing data etc. Subject specific vocabulary is taught explicitly and referred to throughout the units to ensure children have the cultural capital to discuss key geographical concepts amongst their peers. Children continually immerse themselves in high quality texts linked to the geography curriculum to further embed their knowledge and understanding.

To help with our implementation of the geography curriculum we have a variety of resources available to all teachers, including:

• Digimaps
• Atlases
• Globes
• Maps, OS Maps
• Fieldwork equipment etc

SEND

We support our SEND children by pre-teaching subject specific vocabulary where appropriate and scaffolding learning i.e., using word banks, templates, visual resources etc We are lucky to be able to use our Forest School to further embed and consolidate learning for our SEND learners particularly with regards to mapping and fieldwork opportunities.

Impact

We monitor and assess the impact of our geography scheme through both formative and summative assessments. Each lesson provides the teacher with the opportunity to assess the children against the learning objective, this may be through discussions with children or a more formal piece of written work.  At the end of each unit children will be assessed on their understanding by completing a short assessment provided by the geography subject leader. These assessments will be provided at a distance from the initial learning e.g., at least 3 weeks after.

We expect that the impact of providing high quality geography lessons in school is that children will be independent geographers that can recognise and name different places around the world and can leave Thornton Primary with a secure understanding of how people and places are connected, from the local to the global.