Geography

What does Geography look like in our school?

Intent

Starting in EYFS we provide high quality teaching to develop the following essential characteristics of geographers:

• A genuine interest in Geography and a real sense of curiosity about the world.
• An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are life, both in Britain and the wider world.
• A comprehensive understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected.
• An extensive base of geographical knowledge, vocabulary and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas.
• Fluency in geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills and the ability to reach clear conclusions and explain their findings.

We aim for our curriculum to make connections between learning in different subjects as well as connections with their own lives and the world around them. Geographically, this will involve looking at our immediate locality as well as locations in close proximity that will be familiar to children. Curiosity is something that helps to drive learning and through teaching our geographical objectives in our thematic curriculum, we aim to spark and ignite imagination through questions, and an engagement with learning.

Implementation

Our whole school curriculum enables all children regardless of background, ability or additional needs to flourish. Based upon the National Curriculum we have created a progression map which sets out the objectives taught in each year group with clear guidance of skills and knowledge. This ensures that learning is being built on as the children progress through the school and that learning is carefully sequenced to maximise learning.

Children are given opportunities to explore their school grounds, local area and wider community where they will learn to create and follow a variety of route maps and learn how their local area has developed geographically over time. Children learn about their responsibility as a global citizen by understanding more about carbon footprints, the journey their food takes and the dangers facing our future world, including global warming and deforestation.

This half term in Year 2, the children have been exploring the Arctic Circle on a map. They investigate by using GoogleEarth, a globe, a puzzle map and an Atlas. The children identified the countries that make up the Arctic Circle and then located them on maps.

Year 3 have been learning about volcanoes in their Geography unit during this half term (Autumn 2). During this lesson, they explored what happens when a volcano erupts and some of the features of volcanoes. For this investigation, Year 3 created their own models of volcanoes and used baking soda and vinegar to simulate an eruption and the process of lava flowing out of a volcano.

Year 5 have been learning about and investigating different bodies of water. This half term (Spring 2), they visited Juniper Hall to explore the River Tillingbourne on two different sites. They started at Abinger Hammer where they found out that the river had been made to be straight by humans. At this site, they measured and recorded the depth, width and the velocity (speed) of the river. After an hour or so, they then moved onto the second site, Crossways Farm. This was further upstream and had many more meanders (curves) in it where it had not been altered by humans! Again, they measured the depth, width and speed of the river. They found that it was deeper in places but the width and speed at Crossways was lower than Abinger Hammer.

Year 6 have been looking at the Extreme Earth topic. For this particular lesson, the children were exploring earthquakes and what causes them. For the task, they had to come up with a BBC style news report all about what earthquakes are and how tectonic plates cause them.

As a whole school (in mixed age groups), we explored 4 different countries (France, Australia, Brazil and China) throughout the day. As we entered the classrooms, we found out key facts about these countries and where they are located in the world. Each country then had activities that were based on a key fact about the country. We also tried a range of different foods and found out about different cultures.

Useful Primary Geography Links