Our geography curriculum is knowledge rich. This means the knowledge children will gain has been carefully specified and ordered, so it coherently builds over time. Elements are aligned with the school’s history curriculum to. This provides further opportunities to deepen and develop understanding. This approach means that the knowledge children will be taught has been identified, in each year group, in each unit and in each lesson. As children work through the curriculum they will know more and understand more about the UK, Europe and the world.

 Conceptual understanding is at the heart of our curriculum. Children will learn about key geographical concepts such as place, space, the environment and interconnection. Over time, working through an essential process of elaboration, children will add to their conceptual understanding with many examples of geographical knowledge in context. Children will become more skilled at answering questions such as; what is it like to live in this place? What are the challenges of this environment? How have people changed this landscape over time? Children will gain an understanding of what geographers do, what they look for and what they may say about a place.

Each year our geography curriculum begins with a spatial sense unit that explicitly teaches geographical skills such as locating places on a map, positioning items on a map, using symbols in a key, interpreting scale, reading climate graphs, identifying locations using co-ordinates, interpreting population data, identifying elevation on relief maps and more. The spatial sense units for each year group are positioned at the beginning of the year to explicitly teach skills which will then be used in context throughout the rest of the year as children apply those skills to learn more about people, places and the environment. The spatial sense units build on prior knowledge before moving children on as the level of challenges increases from year to year.

National Curriculum Aims

The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
• Understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
• Are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
• Collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
• Interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
• Communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

By the end of Key Stage One

Pupils will have begun to develop knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. They will understand basic subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, to enhance their locational awareness.

By the end of Key Stage Two

Pupils will extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and Europe, North and South America. This will include the location and characteristics of a range of the world’s most significant human and physical features. They should develop their use of geographical knowledge, understanding and skills to enhance their locational and place knowledge.