Geography

Geography Intent

At St James Primary School, children are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as their place in it. The Geography Curriculum at St James enables children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and which can, and are, used to promote their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Geography, is by nature, an investigative subject, which develops and understanding of concepts, knowledge and skills. We aim to inspire curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives; to promote the children’s interest and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Through our teaching and curriculum we intend to provoke children’s independent thoughts and encourage them to discover answers to their own questions as well as developing their knowledge and skills that are progressive, as well as transferable, throughout their time at St James, to their future education and beyond becoming reflective members of society.

Geography Implementation

The Early Years is the first opportunity we have to see how a child interacts with their environment and how the environment influences them. We aim to help children make sense of their physical world and community through exploration and observation.

In Key Stage One and Two, Geography is taught in blocks throughout the year, so that children can achieve depth in their learning. We use the National Curriculum guidelines to ensure all aspects, knowledge and skills of Geography are being taught across all year groups. Key knowledge and skills for each unit have been identified and these are mapped across the school, ensuring that knowledge progressively builds and skills are developed systematically.

Opportunities for retrieval practice are included in Geography lessons, these require children to remember learning from the previous lesson, previous topic and previous year to ensure the retrieval strength of knowledge is high. Lessons are planned using the skills progression, to build pupils’ knowledge and understanding through quality first teaching. Tasks are selected and designed to provide appropriate challenges to all learners and to develop independent working and confidence. These include locational knowledge, understanding of human and physical features as well as opportunities to develop their skills and fieldwork techniques using maps and atlases, both physical and digital.

Geography assessment is ongoing and informs teachers with planning lesson activities and differentiation; it will be tracked against the Geography progression of skills objectives.

Geography Impact

At St James, we aim to develop children’s geographical knowledge and skills to help them explore, navigate and understand the world around them, as well as their place in it.

As children progress through the school they access a broad and balanced Geography curriculum that helps develop a secure understanding of the subject as well as being able to demonstrate their acquired key knowledge relating to each of the identified National Curriculum strands, as appropriate to their key stage.

Well-constructed and well taught lessons not only help children become confident geographers but also provide them with the essential skills for lifelong learning. Book scrutinies indicate our high expectations of all learners and show that their learning builds towards clearly defined end points and skills.