Geography

Intent

“An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity, but great fulfillment.” - David Attenborough

At Kippax Ash Tree Primary School our aim is to inspire children’s curiosity and interest to explore the world that we live in and its people as well as their place in it. We intend to equip children with geographical skills and understanding to develop their knowledge through immersive and practical experiences. As geographers, pupils are exposed to a rich and progressive curriculum that provides them with vocabulary and meaningful geographical concepts. Prior learning is revisited to ensure pupils' understanding is retained and becomes embedded in their long-term memory. We allow children to develop knowledge with relevant and local concepts that enable them to gain a fuller geographical understanding. Through our curriculum, we equip children to be Global Citizens: to develop an awareness of the wider world and their place within it, to encourage them to take an active role in the community and to work with others to make our planet more peaceful, sustainable and fairer. We seek to inspire our children’s curiosity and fascination about the world which will remain with them for the rest of their lives, equipping them well for further education and beyond.

Implementation

At Kippax Ash Tree, Geography is taught in subject-specific lessons across half termly units. We alternate our Geography and History topics ensuring that our children receive a well-rounded teaching of the humanities subjects throughout the year. The local area of Kippax is fully utilised to achieve the desired outcomes, with extensive opportunities for learning outside the classroom. By ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we have implemented an inclusive curriculum that is progressed throughout the whole school. All learning will start by revisiting and retrieving prior knowledge which supports children to make connections with new learning. In each lesson, we will explicitly model the subject-specific vocabulary which we want all children to use and understand.

Learning is supported through the use of knowledge organisers that provide children with scaffolding to enable them to retain facts and vocabulary in their long term memory. Learning journeys are displayed in every classroom provide a scaffold for children. Tier three subject-specific vocabulary is displayed on the learning wall along with key facts, questions, diagrams and model examples of the work being taught.

Geography assessment is on-going throughout the unit to inform teachers with their planning of lessons, activities and differentiation. The retrieval task at the start of each lesson shows what knowledge the children have retained and any misconceptions can be addressed. We use half termly quizzes to review learning both current and prior. This ensures we are checking that children can recall the key knowledge by using low-stake testing. These are based on the Kagan research and require children to think deeply. During the half term, the children write an essay based on their current unit. This requires them to remember key knowledge, use specific vocabulary and write about it in detail. Not only does this showcase what they know, it also embeds and strengthens their knowledge.

Our geographers will be given a variety of experiences both in and out of the classroom where appropriate to create meaningful learning opportunities and to further support and develop their understanding.

Impact

Through the high quality teaching of Geography we will see the impact of the subject in different ways. Through pupil voice children will be able to talk about the skills and knowledge they have acquired. They will be enthusiastic about their learning and be able to make connections about their current and prior learning. They will use key vocabulary in the correct context showing they understand the definitions. The children’s books will show clearly planned tasks that allow children to demonstrate their knowledge; this will be accessible to all children. Key vocabulary will be clearly evident in all lessons along with retrieval tasks at the start. Through the use of Kahoot quizzes and essays, the children will demonstrate what they have learnt. The school environment will be Geography rich through displays, resources, diagrams and key vocabulary. During each unit, the children will have developed the geographical knowledge and skills to help them explore, navigate and understand the world around them and their place in it. Children’s knowledge and skills will develop progressively as they move through the school, not only to enable them to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum but to prepare them to become competent geographers in secondary education.