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 teamwork 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 ecocouncil information and activities

Ambition

Our ambition in Geography for children with SEND is broadly in line with our ambition for all children. 

We believe that we need to be ambitious about what our children with SEND can achieve. We should take into consideration their barriers to learning but we shouldn't let these limit their opportunities - just because they find reading or writing difficult, it doesn't mean that they won’t be able to interpret a map or gather geographical data to prove or disprove a hypothesis.

Access (How we may support children with SEND to achieve in Geography)

• At the start of units and lessons, children revisit prior knowledge and vocabulary. 

• Children have visual knowledge organisers which map out the key knowledge and vocabulary within each unit of work. These can be used for pre-teaching new vocabulary prior to the lesson, to help children visualise the concepts they are using in class and can help with spelling and writing activities.

• Check in - For children with SEND, a Geography lesson can be overwhelming with all the new information they are given as well as trying to comprehend ideas that may be very alien to them. Teachers and TAs make a point of checking in with these children and offering further support or scaffolding where necessary.

• Working walls - Images and facts are displayed on working walls and teachers refer to these regularly. 

In preparation for the Year One Geography curriculum, in EYFS, children begin to develop their geographical knowledge by exploring features of our school.

Simple maps are used to investigate different places as we begin to compare and contrast different environments. Lands and places from stories shared together are mapped out. Children have rich opportunities to make use of school grounds to enhance and apply their skills as geographers.

Throughout the year, children observe and discuss the weather and seasonal changes. Children also learn about the different jobs which people do in our community.

Literature is used to enhance children's geographical understanding. Through the book Handa's Surprise, children learn about life in a different country and use maps and globes. We also aim to avoid stereotypical ideas and provide plenty of pictures so that children can understand the contrasts within a country.

Teachers model how to draw simple comparisons between their own country and other countries and children experiment with comparative language.

They begin to build a bank of geographical vocabulary.

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.