Geography

Geography

Intent

At Canada Hill Community Primary School, the following overview clearly shows where units of work are taught in our two-year rolling programme. At Canada Hill Community Primary School are using the Geographical Association and Royal Geographic Society’s resources amongst others to help support our aim to provide excellent teaching and learning within geography alongside a clear progression of geographical skills based on the Rising Stars programme.

Each geography unit taught in the school outlines previous and future learning to help teachers set the new learning within context and establish starting points for learning. Geography has been carefully mapped out across the school to ensure a broad and balanced coverage of topics which can be seen on the first part of this subject overview. The geography skills progression below this shows our expectations for each year group in geography across the topics taught. These skills are also present on both medium-term plans and teaching sequences. Moreover, previous geographical knowledge is also present on medium term plans to ensure that that knowledge is reviewed and then built upon. These MTPs and the skills and the knowledge contained within them then feed into our knowledge organisers and teaching sequences.

Our Curriculum follows the National Curriculum objectives for each Key Stage and is taught in blocks in Key stage 1 and 2. As such it aims to:

• 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.

Geography in EYFS

Play underpins learning throughout the Early Years Foundation Stage. Through play, first-hand experiences and high-quality interactions, children begin to make sense of the world around them. Geography is taught through Understanding the World and provides the foundations for later geographical learning. At Canada Hill, children first learn about themselves, their school and their local community. As the year progresses, they explore places beyond their immediate environment and begin to compare their own experiences with those of others. They learn about seasonal change, the natural world and different communities through stories, maps, photographs and real experiences. Our responsive curriculum means the context for learning changes to reflect the interests of each cohort. The geographical knowledge and skills remain the same, ensuring children build a secure understanding of their local area before developing an awareness of the wider world.

Forest School

In our forest school curriculum for EYFS and KS1, there are opportunities for simple map work and field work on the school site which have been integrated in the forest school programme of study.

Additional Aims of the geography curriculum at Canada Hill

Furthermore, additional aims for geography at Canada Hill are:

1. To stimulate pupils’ interest in their surroundings and in the variety of human and physical conditions on the Earth’s surface.
2. To develop pupils’ sense of place.
3. To foster pupils’ sense of wonder at the beauty of the world surrounding them.
4. To help pupils develop an informed concern about the quality of the environment and the future of the human habitat.
5. To enhance pupils’ sense of responsibility for the care of the Earth and its people and secure their commitment to promoting and living sustainable lifestyles.
6. To develop pupils’ skills of critical enquiry and ability to handle and interpret information, through asking and answering geographical questions and using ICT to communicate with and explore a variety of people, places and environments across the world.
7. To help pupils explore values and attitudes about complex issues across a range of places, cultures and environments at a variety of scales, from local to global.
8. To foster a sense of understanding about how we are interconnected and interdependent with other people and ecosystems around the world.
9. For the children to develop and retain the knowledge and skills to carry forward into the next step in their learning, both within the year and into their next year group.
10. To be taught in a way that allows children to be able to work both independently and collaboratively to develop enquiring minds.
11. To promote the children's understanding and use of geographical language.
12. To foster confidence in and enjoyment of geography.

Implementation

We follow a ‘knowledge first’ curriculum which is fostered from EYFS through to Year 6 where knowledge is embedded and built on explicitly within year and across school. Links have been carefully developed within our long-term plan to ensure this is possible and happens.

Additionally, geography topics are often used as a key driver for other subjects areas at Canada Hill including literacy, maths, computing, and PSHE therefore revising key geographical knowledge and vocabulary in other areas of the curriculum.

Geographical skills will also be taught and built upon as children move through the school, using the Rising Stars skills progression as a basis for this. The skills are grouped in the following areas:

• UK and local area
• The world and continents
• Physical themes
• Human themes
• Understanding places and connections
• Map and atlas work
• Fieldwork and investigation

At Canada Hill, we aim to follow a, ‘talk less teaching’ approach with focused and clear inputs in order to reduce cognitive load and allow children to understand and retain the key geographical knowledge and skills being taught.

A variety of teaching and modelling approaches are utilized in geography lessons including:

• Children teaching/modelling
• TA’s teaching groups with clear objectives (in class)
• Shared work
• Guided work
• Consolidation lessons
• Kagan/co-operative learning approach
• Drama
• Busy boxes and extension work available for those who finish with meaningful independent activities that extend learning

Additionally, in geography lessons we strive to give our children multi-modal outcomes to focus more on their understanding of the geographical knowledge and skills being taught rather than written outcomes. Examples include:

• Annotated maps of the world or specific countries and regions in it.
• Drawings and pictures.
• Annotated diagrams.
• Model making.
• Extended pieces of writing.
• Observing children using digital mapping technologies.
• Observing children conducting field work.
• Use of animation software.
• Use of green screen technology and drama.
• Geography quizzes to assess key knowledge.

In order to ensure that children retain what they have learnt, all geography units of work have 5 key questions recorded in the medium-term plans that structure the lesson sequence and these are revisited during the unit of work in low stake quizzes that also contain questions from previous related units of work covered in previous year groups. Additionally, the use of spaced retrieval through sticky knowledge sheets onto which children record the key learning of each lesson prior to moving on to the next lesson aims to fully embed the key geographical knowledge and skills learnt. Key vocabulary is also explicitly taught to ensure that children are able to better access and retain the geographical knowledge taught in each unit. Teachers also try to ensure that they work with a range of guided groups during geography lessons with TAs utilized with a variety of groups too. All geography lessons have some form of adaptation that strive not to put a ceiling on the children’s learning and additional extension activities as well as open ended outcomes are provided.

Teachers aim to include SEN with these approaches working on outcomes that are appropriate for their level. We aim for dyslexia friendly classrooms, and on top of multi modal outcomes mentioned before, dyslexic children independently access whiteboards for composition, spell checking and speech to text recognition on iPads and laptops, using have-a-go books, use Seesaw for voice recording of ideas and use of colour filters.

Knowledge organisers contain key knowledge required to reduce cognitive load in geography lessons as children start their learning with some understanding and vocabulary already embedded; they contain information needed to answer the key questions being studied. The geographical knowledge on knowledge organisers is regularly quizzed on in class in order to raise their profile and allow teachers to see how much knowledge the children have.

Impact

Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression throughout the Key Stages from EYFS to Upper KS2, giving pupils the skills, knowledge and vocabulary that they need to move forward in their learning, alongside opportunities to apply their knowledge to different situations. Teachers use the ‘Skills Progression’ part of this document to monitor and track children’s progression in their learning journey through each of the 7 areas: UK and local area, the world and continents, physical themes, human themes, understanding places and connections, map and atlas work, and fieldwork and investigation. As geographers children will develop skills and knowledge they can use beyond school and into adulthood. 

If children are keeping up with the curriculum and are achieving the ‘Progression of Skills’ statements by the end of each year, they are deemed to be making age related or better progress. At the end of each unit of work in geography, we have ARE statements and key skills that we assess against for each year group that are recorded on our medium term plans. The ARE statements are assessed through assessment quizzes at the end of each unit and levels will be inputted into Insight Tracker. These assessments will then guide an overall judgement at the end of the year which will then be updated on Insight Tracker. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Pupil voice discussions about their learning; which includes discussion of their thoughts, ideas, processing and evaluations of work.
• Children will have clear enjoyment and confidence in geography that they will then apply to other areas of the curriculum.
• The large majority of children will achieve age related expectations in geography at the end of each Key Stage, judgements for which will be assessed against the ‘Skills Progression’ part of this document.

Children are assessed at being WT, EXP or GD. If a child is achieving the ARE statements and skills for the year above them, they are assessed as being GD, whilst if they are achieving the ARE statements and skills for the year below them, they are assessed as being WT.

 Geography Overview