Geography

Queens’ Federation: Geography Subject Statement

Intent

At the Queens’ Federation we aim to foster ‘Learning for Life.’

We will provide a rich, relevant and inspirational curriculum that promotes a lifelong love of learning and equips our pupils with the key knowledge and understanding, skills and personal qualities that they will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Our curriculum is designed to be relevant to our children and is linked to the context of our school and the local community.

At the Queens’ Federation, we aim to inspire pupil’s curiosity, interest and appreciation about the world and the people who live in it. We strive to provide pupils with a broad and balanced geography curriculum which develops their understanding of locational knowledge, place knowledge and human and physical geography. This is accompanied by the development and application of key skills, supported by fieldwork.

Implementation

Our geography curriculum is centered round the development of an understanding of the geographical area in which we live, including the schools grounds themselves. Pupils will learn about their immediate local area, the wider local community and where our community fits into Great Britain and the world beyond. The curriculum is designed to develop the key knowledge and skills to find out about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with an understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Key geographical skills and knowledge are built upon year by year and are sequenced appropriately to maximize learning for all pupils.

Fieldwork, trips and visits are a key part of our geography curriculum. Our school environment and the local area is fully utilised within the curriculum and extensive opportunities for learning outside the classroom are embedded within units of work. The curriculum is enriched, wherever possible, through links to learning in other curriculum areas such as history, science and mathematics.

We view assessment as a holistic process, which takes place in every lesson through observation of, in questioning and in conversation with pupils and in the production of written outcomes. Geography assessment criteria set out the key knowledge and skills that a pupil should achieve at the end of each unit of work.

Impact

 Our geography curriculum will inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives, equipping them well for further education and beyond. As pupils progress throughout the school, they will develop a deep knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their local area and its place within the wider geographical context. Pupil outcomes evidence a broad and balanced geography curriculum and at the end of each year, pupils achieve age related expectations and retain the knowledge and skills learnt from each unit of work.

Yearly Overview

Below is a table of Geography topics for each year group by term:

For more information please click on the link to view our Geography Policy on our Policies page.

Examples Of Learning

In Reception, we have been reading the story ‘Owl Babies’ and learning facts about owls. During Woodland Explorers, the children used natural resources to make nests for both owls and other animals. We talked about animals who live in nests both in trees and on the ground.

Year 2 have had fun exploring maps of the UK and finding out about the different countries and their capital cities. They used the directional language of North, East, South and West to state where the countries lie in relation to each other.

The children have also found out about physical and human features and sorted them as a group. They discussed where each of the pictures should so and worked together to complete their posters of different physical and human features.

Year 2 students have been working hard to learn about different physical and human features that are in the world. Students drew their own example of each feature and practiced sorting them correctly.

Using Atlases in Topic utilised our year 6 geography skills. One child identified “the key has abbreviations which can help us find the countries on the map.”