The Grove Primary School

Geography Curriculum Statement

Vision:

Our Geography curriculum is designed to engage children to love the world that they live in and gain a passion in finding out about the places in which they live. We aim to teach the children core skills in which they can apply in specific topics learnt in various year groups such as, finding specific countries, continents, climate change, compare and contrast different places around the world and to identify physical and human features. We want the children to become enthusiastic learners about Geography so that they have an interest in looking after and protecting their future eco systems with our currently already fragile world. We would like children to become interested and passionate about having a career in Geography in the future. We want to be able to provide rich and practical experiences to our children who may not receive them outside of school.

Intent:

In order to do this, we follow the programmes of study of the National Curriculum for Geography. We also teach skills based on Weaving Skills. Our teaching aims to provide the children with knowledge and facts about places and people, physical and human features of the world and begin then explain how the world has and will change over time. We intend to provide a number of practical opportunities for the children to engage and learn about core skills in relation with Geography, such as using atlases and researching information to gather additional knowledge about the world. We also want the children to develop geographical skills: collecting and analysing data, using maps, globes, aerial photographs, name, identify and locate countries, continents and oceans. We intend to make the world visible for children by bringing resources and experiences to the children so that they can learn first-hand. We want to embed the skills into everyday life at The Grove so that the children are not aware that they are always explicitly doing them.

Implementation:

Geography is taught in every year group within the school beginning at EYFS where they will be taught about Knowledge and Understanding of the World by looking at similarities and differences in their environments through to Year 6 where they can give extended descriptions of the physical features of different places around the world. Teachers are providing a rich and varied curriculum to then teach children about the wider world beyond our grounds. Challenging questions are provided to promote deeper thinking and impacts of activities taken. The curriculum is designed to build on the children’s prior learning and to widen their knowledge of the world from their immediate surroundings and locality to countries in Europe and in other continents. Trips, visitors and educational visits are frequently provided to enhance the learning experience within the classroom.

In addition to the classroom teaching, we are extremely keen to educate and equip children with the tools to safeguard our planet and thus have ‘Eco Monitors’ who take an active role in educating their peers and others to look after our planet. Children are proactive in recycling as many things as possible such as glue sticks, pens, crisp packets, paper, composting fruit etc. We have an active gardening club to educate and promote nurturing the plant cycles by seeing the process of plants growing and understanding the impact of growing trees and plants within our school grounds and then ultimately having the enjoyment and education for the purpose behind this.

Impact:

Our Geography Curriculum is well thought out, relevant and appealing to all of our children. It provides progression throughout the children’s primary experience at The Grove Primary to enable the children to develop previous taught and learnt skills. Children are assessed against skills and knowledge to see if they are making good or better progress within Geography to equip them with the skills needed to extend upon each year and ultimately to be well prepared for the next stage of their education. We want the children to have enjoyed learning about Geography, equip them with the necessary geographical skills, knowledge and vocabulary to enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3. Most importantly, we want the children to have a passion and interest in the world that they live in and be fully aware of how the planet is changing around them and how they can personally make a difference to the world around them in which that we feel our children are very successful in doing.