St Edward's Church of England Primary School

St Edward’s Values: Thankfulness, Forgiveness, Compassion, Perseverance, Courage, Friendship

‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’ (John 10:10)

Geography Curriculum at St Edward’s

Intent

‘In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.’ Rachel Carson.

Geography Overview

The core threads of the St Edward’s Geography Curriculum:

When selecting the knowledge and skills most appropriate for our children, we wanted to ensure that our decisions were informed by our overall vision for the school:

St Edward’s is a caring, Christian community with a love of learning where children achieve their potential, are confident in themselves and their abilities and are set on a positive path for life.

	Exploration – We want our children to be curious. We aim for them to develop an understanding of where they are in relation to the rest of the world and to develop awareness of the world that exists beyond their own experience. We want to equip them with skills to be explorers and to develop a life-long love of learning.
	Compassion and Community – We want our children to learn about how humans interact with the environment and the impact that they have. We want them to develop empathy and an understanding of their importance and responsibility in the world. We want them to explore race and identity, knowing that everyone is equal and everyone’s heritage is celebrated.
	Creation – we want our children to look at the world with a sense of wonder and curiosity about why the physical world is the way it is and how processes have come together physically to create it.

With this in mind, we identified key threads which would run through our geography curriculum:

The geography projects we deliver are well sequenced to provide a coherent subject scheme that develops children’s geographical knowledge and disciplinary skills. We have selected our own sticky knowledge progression, and have adapted some of the Cornerstones Curriculum Maestro units to support the learning of this knowledge within different geographical contexts.

All year groups deliver a main Geography unit during the Spring term and deliver smaller units which either introduce new concepts or revisit and review those already taught during the Autumn and Summer terms.

Exploration

Place Knowledge

We ensure that place knowledge begins with what children already know so that new knowledge can be embedded within their existing schemas.

Children in EYFS and KS1 begin with exploration of their classroom, the school and the school grounds. They expand this understanding by exploring the local area. This is set in the context of the United Kingdom and they learn about the capital cities of the United Kingdom and develop knowledge of their national heritage in the Bright Lights, Big City unit in Year One. In Year Two, children become confident with their knowledge of Castleton, Rochdale and Greater Manchester,

Children develop their skills of comparison as they consider the human and physical characteristics of the United Kingdom in contrast with those of Kuala Lumpur in Year One and then Somalia in Year Two. These skills are further developed in comparative studies in Key Stage Two as children compare the features of two continents; North America and South America and two regions; Antarctica and the Arctic.

We aim to avoid the development of misconceptions, so place case studies are carefully delivered with sensitivity and teachers challenge stereotypes and question generalisations.

Locational Knowledge

Beginning in EYFS, we aim to develop children’s spatial thinking. Children are taught to grasp positionality – where one feature is in relation to another which underpins their understanding of location.

EYFS work to secure understanding of the concepts of left and right, near and far, behind and in front. Children are provided with appropriate language and experiences to consolidate this.

By Year 2 children are able to use the more technical terms North, South, East and West; and in Key Stage Two this is developed to 8 compass points.

This sound understanding of location enables children to access other geographical concepts and natural and human phenomena such as proximity to the equator.

In Key Stage Two, the children learn to locate places using latitude and longitude and develop an understanding of how location determines time zones.

Geographical Skills and Fieldwork

Each year group has a local area study during which they have opportunities to develop and implement their skills of enquiry.

Compassion and Community

We have given each year group a ‘Compassion and Learning to Look After our World’ topic:

Creation

Physical Geography

In EYFS and Key Stage One, children observe the world around them and learn to identify specific physical features. In Key Stage Two, children look in depth at the causes, features and impact of physical features such as volcanoes, earthquakes, mountains, rivers and climate zones.

A Curriculum for Our Pupils

We have identified some core barriers that the children of our school face when they are accessing the curriculum, and we intend to deliver the geography curriculum with an approach that addresses these:

• Vocabulary – we ensure that our topics are planned with careful and deliberate vocabulary progression. Teachers all have a copy of the St Edward’s Glossary so that the definitions children are given are consistent and accurate across school.
• Communication and team-work skills – our geography curriculum is enquiry-based which lends itself to teamwork. Children can learn to take different roles within a team while carrying out the enquiries. Oracy opportunities are embedded in medium-term planning
• Resilience – we design challenging tasks in our geography curriculum, allowing children to experience failure and errors in a safe environment, scaffolded by the implementation of growth-mindset training
• Differing and sometimes limited life experiences – We offer a curriculum of breadth and wider opportunity. We provide children with opportunities to expand their knowledge and experience of geography beyond the classroom through: assemblies celebrating environmental and ecological events; trips out of school to support fieldwork; School eco-council information and activities
• Children with Special Educational Needs - All children are expected to attain highly – they are not grouped according to ‘ability’ and differentiation occurs via support or scaffolding where necessary, with adhesion to EHCPs and SEND passports

Implementation

Geography Teaching and Learning

Geography is taught through whole-class interactive teaching, where the focus is on all children working together on the same lesson content, whilst at the same time challenging and supporting pupils to gain depth of understanding.

Teachers consider their pupils’ understanding in the context of a ‘whole-school’ journey as opposed to simply focusing on their year-group objectives. Prior learning is frequently referred to and revisited.

A small-steps approach is taken where possible – teachers break down geographical learning into as small chunks as possible with the aim of eliminating misconceptions and highlighting areas of difficulty.

Children are fully involved in discussions about the learning process and are therefore aware of what geographical content they have covered, are encouraged to frequently make links back to prior knowledge about geography, and are quizzed about sticky knowledge regularly.

Staff make it a priority to deliberately expand children’s vocabulary by repeated and deliberate exposure to language allocated to that year group, and provide opportunities for children to experiment with that language. All classrooms are language rich – children are given many opportunities to talk and sentence stems are modelled and used. Teachers carefully consider when to introduce geographical vocabulary at the planning stage, and are aware of what vocabulary the children have used in previous year groups.

Teachers are expected to adhere to the school’s marking policy when marking books and presentation policy when guiding children as to how to present their work. Feedback is continually used to move children on with their learning. Misconceptions are explored and addressed throughout lessons, or are revisited to be addressed very soon after the lesson. Any feedback given is purposeful.

Resources

All classrooms in school have a wide range of geography resources. Each class has access to a range of non-fiction texts about the geography unit studied. ICT is used across the school to support learning in Geography, and we hold a school-wide account with Digimaps. Each class has access to age appropriate atlases and globes. Classroom displays reflect current learning and are functional so are regularly referred to and used by pupils and adults within class.

Impact

We believe that assessment in geography should:

• Help pupils make progress
• Identify misconceptions and areas for development
• Reveal the effectiveness of teaching and learning strategies
• Help us report to parents

Our approach to assessment is based on the following underlying principles:

Active geography – Pupils should DO geography, rather than just listen to it by being engaged in practical activities in and beyond the classroom. They may sometimes be taught skills discretely, but this is with a view to later application within a context.

Geographical voice – pupils should have ample opportunity to engage in discussion, debate and oral presentation rather than just writing about the geography they are doing so that it is geographical knowledge and understanding, not literacy, that is being assessed

A planned end point – all learning intentions should be planned against expectations and with continuous formative assessment of progress in mind

We believe that assessment should be useful to teachers so that they can adapt their teaching as necessary and useful to children so that they have an understanding of how they are learning and how to develop further. We have planned assessment opportunities into our curriculum so that teachers are able to confidently evaluate knowledge in the short term, medium term and long term:

Short term – all classes will use the geography knowledge organisers so that pupils are involved in the process and have an overview. Teaching incorporates continual formative assessment and children are quizzed on their knowledge during and after sessions. Teachers make use of the curriculum feedback book when necessary so that they can make notes about misconceptions/ areas to develop or revisit and adapt teaching accordingly. Taught sessions operate using a hands-down policy so that the teacher can target those children they need to assess more carefully. Parents will have access to the knowledge organisers via the website.

Medium term – all classes revisit prior learning at the start of every lesson. Teachers make use of displays so that children can see their learning path and are encouraged to recall relevant knowledge. Assessment tasks in the form of enquiry questions are planned in to each unit of work so that teachers can evaluate how well children have grasped learning within that unit (see the grid below). Spaced practice will deliberately be applied by teachers to allow the pupils and themselves to assess and review knowledge. Children will complete locational knowledge quizzes in which they will be expected to locate the places identified in the progression document for their year group. Any significant information arising from these quizzes will be recorded in the feedback book so that teachers can plan next steps in learning using this.

Long term – all units of work begin by revisiting knowledge and skills acquired in previous units and year groups. Each year group will have the quiz cards for previous learning and will use these throughout the year.

Teachers should make use of the feedback books when children are completing an assessment task to keep a record of any child who either struggles to retain the sticky knowledge or apply geographical skills or might need stretching. This information can be accessed by leaders and discussed within pupil progress meetings so that teachers are encouraged to reflect on this information and consider future actions to support specific children. At the back of the feedback book, teachers will highlight sticky knowledge to show which areas need strengthening next year and this book will be handed to the next teacher to inform their long-term planning for geography.

Assessment tasks

Work Books

We would like our children to be able to record their geographical understanding confidently and effectively.

Teachers may use ‘sticky knowledge stickers’ or children may write which sticky knowledge/skill they were focusing on within a session so it is clear to the children exactly what the learning is and it can be used to jog their memory.

Teachers may choose to include photos, but this will be done purposefully (e.g. to use in a later lesson to remind children what they did previously and how the activity was linked to the learning point.

We know that the subject leader and senior leaders need to know how well children are learning in this subject, so they should monitor progress by:

• Discussions with pupils, looking at the knowledge organisers and discussing the assessment tasks which have been completed. Attention should be focused on knowledge and retention of the sticky knowledge and geographical skills outlined in the geography progression documents.
• Discussion with teachers, or examination of medium-term planning to check that learning points are effectively sequenced in appropriate sized chunks, and that teachers are considering opportunities for spaced practice, interleaving and retrieval.
• Lesson drop-ins so that leaders gain an awareness of what learning in geography looks like across the school, and can action plan or feed back accordingly.