Geography
Without geography you're nowhere.
At the primary level, a child’s education in geography should inspire in them ‘a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives’.
The National Curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all children:
- develop contextual knowledge about the location of places of global significance
- understand the processes that cause key physical and human geographical features of the world
- are competent in key geographical skills relating to data collection and analysis, interpreting geographical information, and communicating geographical information
Within the primary National Curriculum, children should be taught the ‘building blocks’ of geography which are broken down into:
- locational knowledge
- place knowledge
- human and physical geography
- geographical skills and fieldwork
At Adel St John the Baptist school we have endless scope in geography to teach children about so many aspects of the world: from the pockets that they inhabit intimately with family and friends to the wider community, both nationally and internationally. Geography is an opportunity to broaden pupils’ horizons. By the end of Year 6 pupils will understand the part of the world in which they live. They will have developed a broad understanding of how their local pocket sits within the country, the continent, and the world. Like a jigsaw puzzle, where pupils assemble the concepts that they’ve learned over time. To know how the world has developed and changed over time, not just in terms of the physical processes but also how human interaction with the planet has altered its trajectory. To think like geographers, to be able to look at the world and think, how have the processes of this planet come together physically to create this aspect that I’m looking at? How have human actions affected the planet? And what might this look like in the future? We should expect our children to be able to use maps and to have hands-on fieldwork experiences. The national curriculum talks about curiosity and fascination that’s lifelong, and we want children to be able to be lost in wonder at this beautiful world we live in.
To this end, our geography curriculum incorporates three threads running through it:
Creation - where we teach physical geography.
Community - which allows us to consider how the humans interact with their environment and what impact they might have.
Compassion - we want pupils to develop empathy and an understanding of their responsibility in the world
eg. respecting other cultures ; understanding refugee issues
Our curriculum is designed to prepare students with the knowledge, skills and understanding to make sense of the world and face the challenges that will shape our societies and environments now and in the future. This knowledge and understanding will enable students to empathise with different cultures, develop a sense of their own identity within communities at different scales, and gain confidence in their ability to succeed in an ever-changing world that faces complex and dynamic challenges.
These three threads will run through the 5 key components of what will make a good geography curriculum:
1. Local geography – walks in local area ; surveys ; map work ; comparative pics, newspaper reports, tourist pamphlets ; paintings. Forging links between their everyday experiences & school work & understanding local environment.
2. Topical geography – links to local and national news stories – shows impact of changes.
3. Enquiry geography – incorporating data eg. As part of a wider topic on renewable energy - Would it be a good idea to build for a wind farm to be built on edge of town. Chn prepare questionnairres for public ; experts invited in to talk. Its an example of philosophical enquiry and enables children to ask questions and researc
4. Cross curricular
5. Pupil voice – pre unit assessment coupled with what do pupils want to find out about the topic and how to achieve this