Geography

Geography

Intent: 

At Chacewater, our geography curriculum is designed to develop children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. 

Children investigate a range of places – both in Britain and within the world. Teaching will equip pupils with the 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.  

We are committed to providing children with opportunities to explore, investigate and enquire about their local area of Chacewater and Cornwall so that they can develop a real sense of who they are, their heritage and what makes our local area unique and special. Teaching of geography gives pupils an understanding of the world around them, its environments, places near and far, and the processes that create and affect them.

We aspire for every child to see themselves as geographers. 

Implementation:

Geography in our school is taught as part of our termly thematic approach and acts as a driver to form wider cross curricular links. We have made deliberate choices to organise the teaching and learning of geography; Autumn term the children learn about their place in the world with a focus on the UK. During the Spring term, children learn about the physical geography and human geography of the Earth. During the Summer term the children will learn to understand the wider world. Ensuring that there is 30 - 36 hours are Geography taught, per year group, over the year. 

Sequences of learning are built in small sequential steps, where learning is sequenced through enquiry questions which allows our children to engage in research, critical thinking and creative development of new knowledge. We start each of our geography ‘units’ with an enquiry question, which the children investigate and ultimately answer. This approach allows us to focus on key substantive knowledge, whilst also helping the children to develop an understanding of disciplinary concepts, which enables a wider geographical appreciation, helping the children to examine geography in a deeper context than just factual knowledge, therefore being able to think like a geographer. 

To ensure our curriculum is taught to develop cumulatively sufficient knowledge by the end of each Key Stage we follow the stages outlined below:

1.)    Substantive knowledge for each subject is mapped from EYFS to Year 6 to ensure our children learn cumulatively sufficient knowledge by the end of each Key Stage. Substantive knowledge is organised into four interrelated forms: locational knowledge, place knowledge and knowledge of environmental, human and physical processes and geographical skills to ensure that pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding are built upon through successive years towards clearly identified year group learning outcomes.

2.)   Disciplinary concepts that help our pupils to think Geographically are;

•  Scale and Connection (Relationship and interdependence)

• Change 

• Environment and sustainability

• Culture and diversity (Uniqueness)

 The children are also given a knowledge organiser, which outlines knowledge and vocabulary the children will learn during the unit. This is something, which they will continue to refer back to throughout their learning. Along with this, an appropriate curriculum themed home learning task grid, is sent home for children to further their learning and develop their understanding.

This 'Geography @ Chacewater’ document intends to clearly show the sequence and progression of Geography throughout the school. 

Impact: 

Our Geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression and personalised to Chacewater. We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods;

• An opportunity for children to answer the ‘Geographical enquiry’ question, once they have been taught the sequence of lessons.

• At the end of a Geography unit, children complete a final 'show what you know' on an edited knowledge organiser  or extend to show their learning. 
• Ongoing retrieval practise happens within our geography lessons, teachers use a range of strategies such as; the use of quick quizzes, asking pupils to 'Speak like an expert', connecting knowledge learnt to images from our knowledge organisers. 
• Learning is assessed against the Geography key ends points. 

• Pupil discussions about their learning, referring to knowledge organisers and our 'Leap into Learning' books. 

• Our 'Leap into Geography books'  follow the children through the school so that progress can be monitored and children have the opportunity to look back at previous learning.