St Erth Geography Curriculum
Intent
At St Erth we believe that Geography helps to provoke and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. Children are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as their place in it. The teaching of geography curriculum at St Erth enables children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and which can and are used to promote their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject, which develops and understanding of concepts, knowledge and skills. We seek to inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives; to promote the children’s interest and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. The curriculum is designed develop knowledge and skills that are progressive, as well as transferable, throughout their time at St Erth and also to their further education and beyond.
Implementation
Geography at St Erth is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children can achieve depth in their learning. Planning identifies the key knowledge and skills of each blocked topic and consideration has been given to ensure progression across topics throughout each year group across the school. At the beginning of each topic children revise their previous learning, in particular their locational knowledge. This informs the programme of study and ensures that lessons are relevant and take account of children’s different starting points. Consideration is given to how greater depth will be taught, learnt and demonstrated within each lesson, as well as how learners will be supported in line with the school’s commitment to inclusion. Cross curricular outcomes in geography are specifically planned for, with strong links between geography and morning literacy lessons identified, planned for and utilised. The local area is fully utilised to achieve the desired outcomes, with opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice. Between topics pupils’ locational knowledge is regularly reviewed following a rolling program focusing on a different continent each term. This is designed to enable pupils to build a broad schema of locational knowledge and ensure lessons are able to give adequate focus to human and physical geography and geographical fieldwork. Mapwork is also provided with additional progression mapping to ensure clear development of this key skill.
Impact
Outcomes in Geography books and pupils’ demonstration of knowledge, evidence a broad and balanced geography curriculum and demonstrate children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge. Children review their successes in achieving the lesson objectives at the end of every session and are actively encouraged to identify their own target areas, with these being identified, shared and verified by teachers as necessary. Children also record what they have learned comparative to their starting points at the end of every topic. As children progress throughout the school, they develop a deep knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their local area and its place within the wider geographical context. Pupils’ locational knowledge is well-developed, providing them with string cultural capital, helping to support further study beyond geography at the next stage of their education. Pupils are able to work with complex maps, using them to navigate and locate. Pupils are able to draw maps using scales and keys. Pupils’ knowledge in relation to the national curriculum is secure and they are well-prepared for the next stage of their geographical education.
Locational Knowledge in our curriculum
As pupils progress through the geography curriculum at St Erth they acquire locational knowledge that builds upon previous teaching, creating a schema of knowledge. In order to know and remember more in this area pupils need to encounter this knowledge regularly and have numerous, continuous opportunities to revise. Adequate time is created within our whole school curriculum to teach geography in depth and develop pupils enquiry skills, however as teaching is blocked there are times in the year where pupils will not have a geography lesson for a number of weeks. To ensure pupils continue to develop their locational knowledge, the following are important parts of the geography curriculum at St Erth:
- The start of every Geography lesson will begin with a recap on Locational knowledge, relevant to the pupils’ progression through the curriculum. This is considered as a non-negotiable
- The national curriculum states that in KS2 pupils must learn to, ‘Locate the world’s countries, using maps to focus on Europe (including the location of Russia) and North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries, and major cities.’
In order to enable pupils to know and remember more and to meet this expectation they again require time and opportunity beyond that provided by curriculum time for geography alone. Therefore, pupils will be given opportunities through guided reading sessions to improve their knowledge to meet the above objective. These sessions will be planned by their class teacher following the cycle below ensuring that pupils become familiar with investigating areas of the world through studying maps and researching their geography.
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Cycle
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Autumn
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Spring
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Summer
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A
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Asia
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Europe
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North and South America
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B
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Africa
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Europe
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Australia
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Supporting children with SEND in Geography
Our aim for all children with SEND is for them to be happy, ready to lean, accessing the curriculum and making progress. To achieve this we aim to ensure that any barriers that they have are addressed as much as possible so as not to limit their opportunities. Our approach to achieving this will always depend on what is best for the individual some examples of how we achieve this through curriculum design and adaptation are below:
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Our curriculum gives opportunities to revisit and revise concepts. Within lessons, children will be revisiting the vocabulary and keys facts they have learnt in previous sessions to help to secure the knowledge in their long term memory. This will give children with SEND more time and opportunities to understand the concepts and vital knowledge they need to access the learning.
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Where appropriate we create a visual word mat for children with SEND. These can be used to pre-teach new vocabulary prior to the lesson, to help children visualise the concepts they are using in class and to help with spelling and writing activities.
- Is your child colour blind? This is essential for our school to know. Map reading is a critical part of the geography curriculum. We are able to use tools to make amendments to the maps children work with based upon what colours they can perceive.
